On February 25, 1903, an early labor-related shootout took place at Stanaford, near Beckley. At dawn, Deputy U.S. Marshal Dan Cunningham led an armed posse into Stanaford. Several days before, striking miners had prevented Cunningham and others from serving court papers.
The morning of February 25, the miners were awakened by the sound of gunfire. Cunningham and his posse opened fire into the home of G. W. Jackson, where Jackson, his wife, four small children, and eight miners were sleeping. Cunningham’s crew killed three men in Jackson’s house, including one with a bullet in the back of the head. Elsewhere, Cunningham’s men fatally wounded three other miners. When the case came before a Raleigh County jury, Judge B. F. Keller let Cunningham and the others off, claiming they were trying to execute a lawful arrest.
The Battle of Stanaford, as it’s remembered, was the last episode of the 1902 New River coal strike. It was one of the most deadly strike-related incidents up to that point and a precursor to the much greater violence that would occur during the West Virginia Mine Wars.
A project to digitize historical newspaper archives in West Virginia has landed another grant.
The West Virginia University Libraries’ West Virginia & Regional History Center received a nearly $202,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to keep digitizing newspapers published in the state from 1790 to 1923. It’s the fifth grant contribution from the National Endowment for the Humanities, bringing the group’s total contribution to the center’s efforts to $968,000.
The West Virginia center so far has contributed 400,000 pages from more than 50 historic newspapers to the Chronicling America website . The grant will allow another 100,000 pages to be added.
This round of newspapers focuses on the Civil War and the West Virginia Mine Wars.
In August 1921, armed coal miners from the Kanawha Valley and the southern counties of Boone, Fayette, Mingo, McDowell, and Logan gathered at Marmet in Kanawha County. The miners proposed to march to Logan and Mingo counties to rescue union miners who had been jailed or mistreated in attempts to unionize the mines. Their efforts brought on the most spectacular confrontation in West Virginia’s labor history, the culminating event in the era known as the Mine Wars.
While accurate figures are not available, sources estimate the number of miners who participated in the march at anywhere from 7,000 to 20,000. Many were veterans of World War I, and they organized themselves like an army division. The marchers had medical and supply units, posted guards when appropriate, and used passwords to weed out infiltrators. Marchers commandeered trains and other vehicles to take them to Logan County and confiscated supplies from company stores along the march.
State authorities, led by Governor Morgan, quickly organized a group of state police, volunteer militia companies, and coal company employees to keep the miners from invading Logan County. The opposing forces came together at Blair Mountain, near the Boone and Logan borders. The well-armed miners and their opponents battled along the ridge of Blair Mountain, resulting in several deaths. Like other statistics in this event, the exact numbers of killed and wounded are mere conjecture.
Morgan urgently requested federal intervention to end the bloodshed. President Warren G. Harding responded with 2,500 federal troops, including a bomber squadron under aviation pioneer Gen. William ‘‘Billy’’ Mitchell. The federal troops quickly brought the conflict to an end, and the miners returned home. Several hundred miners and their leaders were charged with various crimes from murder to treason. Most were given minor sentences, but serious attempts were made to punish William ‘‘Bill’’ Blizzard, one of the march leaders, who was charged with treason. He was tried in Charles Town, Lewisburg, and Fayetteville before the charges were eventually dropped.
The armed march and the Battle of Blair Mountain resulted in little or no gain for union miners, but the hostilities created by labor strife from the early 1900s to the 1920s color labor relations in West Virginia to the present.
In 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated Blair Mountain as one of the country’s “Most Endangered Historic Places.” The National Park Service added Blair Mountain to its National Register of Historic Places in March 2009. Nine months later, however, the park service reversed its decision following a dispute about property ownership. Several groups—including the Sierra Club and the Friends of Blair Mountain—want the site protected from surface mining. They filed suit in an attempt to have the park service’s decision reversed. On June 27, 2018, the keeper of the National Register declared the removal erroneous and reinstated Blair Mountain’s listing.
Labor spy C. E. Lively died in Huntington on May 28, 1962, at age 75. Lively first came to Matewan in Mingo County in 1920 and joined the union during the drive to organize Tug Fork miners. He also befriended Sid Hatfield, the police chief of Matewan, who became a hero to miners after the 1920 Matewan Massacre.
Lively coaxed details from miners about the Matewan shootout, while secretly reporting to the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, which was working for the coal operators. Lively revealed his true identity when he testified against Hatfield and the miners in the Matewan Massacre trial; nevertheless, all were acquitted.
On August 1, 1921, Hatfield arrived at the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch to stand trial for allegedly leading a raid on the town of Mohawk. As he and his friend Ed Chambers climbed the courthouse steps—unarmed and with their wives by their sides—Lively and a half dozen other Baldwin-Felts detectives gunned them down in broad daylight. The shooting helped incite the miners’ armed march several weeks later. Lively was acquitted of murdering Hatfield and Chambers the following year.
The West Virginia Mine Wars is a period of our state’s history that until around the 1980s was often censored or left out in classrooms across the state. But a new class through Shepherd University’s Lifelong Learning Program will offer tools for history teachers in West Virginia and beyond.
Coal Country Tours is a company that hosts individuals on trips to southern West Virginia. The history of the mine wars is something owner and tour guide, Doug Estepp covers during the trips.
Starting next academic semester, Estepp will get the word out to even more folks with a class through Shepherd University.
“I grew up in Mingo County in a family of coal miners,” Estepp said, “My family didn’t talk about it; my grandfather didn’t talk about it, they would just kind of brush it off when I would see little hints, I would see stories about tent colonies and strikes, and they just didn’t want to talk about it, and people, that was kind of the way people reacted all around the state.”
Estepp’s class is designed for teachers to learn about the mine wars and get the tools they need to bring the stories into the West Virginia History class.
Quick Facts on 2016 W.Va. Mine Wars Class:
Class begins on January 12, 2016
Any teacher in or out of state may sign-up at any time before the class begins
Classes are held at the Shepherd University Martinsburg campus and online simultaneously.
The cost of the class is $147 (through Shepherd University)
There is a two-day tour component that is a requirement of the class.
The cost for the tour is $340 per person double occupancy, $379 single. Cost covers transportation, lodging, meals, and all admissions and tours.
The dates for the tour are April 23-24, 2016. Teachers may join the tour either in Shepherdstown or at Tamarack in Beckley.
Awards 3 credit hours toward professional development requirements
The class is not open to regular students
Estepp says there will be projects and reading assignments for the class, and the first assignment will be to watch, “The Mine Wars” on PBS’ American Experience, which premieres the same day as the first class.
Monday, marked the 94th anniversary of the Battle of Matewan; a showdown between the United Mine Workers of America and Baldiwn Felts detectives hired by coal operators. The Mingo County town marked the anniversary over the weekend with a re-enactment. Re-enactment organizers hope the momentum of the project will help them complete a 14 year old dream.
Donna May Patarino lives in nearby Kentucky but has organized the Matewan re-enactment for the past 14 years. She, like many involved in the project, think that heritage will play a key role in the revitalization efforts.
Patarino says she wants children to know the stories of the past to appreciate the amenities of today.
“They have no idea what it would have been like to live on company owned property and have to shop at the company grocery store, go to the company doctor go to the company school," she said, "and I feel like they need to know."
The mine war re-enactment depicts efforts in the coalfields to unionize, demand fair wages, and better working conditions.
Credit Daniel Walker
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A crowd of about 100 people sit and stand under white canopies as they watch and listen to the reenactment.
On June 25, 1938, 18 years after the showdown, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which established minimum wages, overtime pay, record keeping, and child labor standards for private sector and government workers.
Moving Mountains
So what are some of things that need to ‘turn’ in order to “Turn this Town Around”? Some of the challenges include:
Geography: It’s unlikely that they found Matewan by mistake. The roads that lead to the small town with a population of less than 500 are riddled with switchbacks as they weave their way up the edge of the mountains, far off the beaten path.
Flooding: The town sits at the foot of towering mountains in the Tug River Valley, so flooding has historically been an issue.
Corruption: Mingo County has also endured a few black eyes over the past nine months as the county’s circuit judge, prosecutor, chief magistrate and a county commissioner resigned following their convictions.
Poverty: More than 30 percent of residents in Mingo County live below the poverty level -almost double the rate for West Virginia’s at nearly 18 percent poverty rate from 2008 to 2012 according to the US Census Bureau.
“This looks like the town that time forgot,” eighth grade West Virginia history teacher Claire Webb said. “That was my first impression but I’ve been here just a couple of hours now only but the people here are just so rich and warm.”
Webb teaches at Wildwood Elementary School in Jefferson County.
For Webb, the trip was humbling. She says, Jefferson County is a different West Virginia than Mingo County. As basically a suburb of Washington D.C., her home county has a different environment socially, and economically. The same census report says Jefferson County has more than 50,000 residents with an 11 percent poverty rate, that’s six-percent less than the state average.
“We have different challenges we have a different perspective we have different lives in West Virginia and it’s all about where you’re from,” she said, “and these communities in the southern part of the state and the coalfields, it really is I do feel sometimes an alternate universe.”
“I’m so grateful to my fellow West Virginians for their love for their state that allows them to live here and deal with these immense challenges that exist on a day to day basis that exist with living in a southern coalfield.”
MingoMomentum
The West Virginia Community Development HUB and volunteers aren’t starting from scratch. Federal, state, and local lawmakers are already investing time, money and energy into the region. Here’s a look at some of the work meant improve the region.
Geography: The geographic challenges are being addressed in part with the King Coal Highway; an incomplete road that runs close to Matewan. It’s an example of public private partnerships that allow coal companies to mine coal and leave road beds for paving.
Corruption: Just this week, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin appointed Family Court Judge Miki Thompson to the vacated Circuit Court Judge seat. Former Judge Michael Thornsbury left the seat vacant after pleading guilty to scheme that would protect the former sheriff, who was fatally shot.
Flooding: The late Senator Robert C. Byrd secured federal money to construct a flood wall more than 2,000 feet long, varying in height between 6 and 29 feet above the ground. The wall was completed in 1997.
While residents claim the floodwall has worked to protect the town from high water, Patarino says it’s kept more than flood waters out. “It seemed like … people were afraid to come across those railroad tracks and come into town to shop at our businesses,” she said. “That’s why we’ve got to focus on our history. That’s why we’ve got to focus on that because that’s bringing people here and we’ve got to do all we can to turn this town around.”
Still Patarino says Matewan has a lot to offer visitors.
“Matewan has so much to offer and really you can name just a few small towns across America that have as much rich history as Matewan does. And a lot of those small towns are no more and we’ve got to hold onto our small town.
The reenactment is performed on the main street in downtown Matewan. The show climaxes during a shootout between union organizers and Baldwin Felts detectives hired by coal operators.
If they build it, will they come?
Patarino has worked on the Matewan Massacre drama for 14 years and has been preaching every sermon she can in favor of an amphitheater.
“We can teach our history on a regular basis to our young people,” she said. “We can bring music events in we can do all sorts of things at our theater for our young people that we would no other way be able to do.”
Patarino says the momentum of the Turn this Town Around is igniting even more hope for the $300,000 amphitheater dream.
Leigh Ann Ray, Project Manager for the Mingo County Commission says the county got involved about a year ago and gave $48,000 for engineering and architectural work for an outdoor theatre. Based on those drawings the theatre will cost about $300,000. Some of those funds have already been raised. Town officials were not available to share the financial progress of the project.
