Matewan
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Matewan is a 1987 film.
The year is 1921, and trouble is brewing in the town of Matewan: the workers have organised a labor union and have walked out of the mine. Enter Joe Kinhand, a former wobbly (dirty commie) and current union organiser for the United Mine Workers of West Virginia is riding a train when a group of miners attacks a group of black scabs. Baldwin-felts (Pinkerton detective) agents are called into end the union, and the stage is set for a massacre.
Quoting the Library of Congress:
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Bringing to light a little-remembered moment in labor history, John Sayles’ “Matewan” dramatizes efforts in 1920 to unionize a West Virginia company town and the bloody battle that followed between strikers and coal company thugs. Sayles incorporates elements from related labor struggles into the story to show how Black migrants and European immigrants hired as scabs often united with local miners. Structured as a Western, the film examines collective nonviolence as a strategy to combat ruthless exploitation within an individualistic culture animated by blood feuds. Expertly filmed by Haskell Wexler and featuring engaging ensemble acting by Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, Will Oldham and many West Virginia locals, this low-budget gem illuminates remote Appalachian cultural attitudes at a turning point in labor union history. Photochemically preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with Anarchists' Convention. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023. |
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