[In the following review, Black praises the historical accuracy of Sayles's rendering of the Matewan massacre.]

In the years immediately following the end of the First World War, the United States was torn by class conflict, which took the form of bloody and protracted strikes that involved millions of workers and affected virtually every industry and community in the country.

The workers involved in these confrontations were seeking wage increases to offset the 14 percent decline in real wages experienced during the War, an end to the brutal and inhumane conditions they faced on the job, and, in many situations, recognition of their unions. Their opponents, America's industrial capitalists, were determined to prevent the spread of unionism and to preserve their “right” to exploit workers on their terms. In virtually every situation where it seemed the workers might wrest gains from their employers, the state, often with the tacit endorsation of the American Federation of Labour (even in strikes, such as the steel strike in 1919, which were nominally AFL strikes), intervened to ensure labour's defeat.

While strikes took place everywhere in the United States, the largest, longest and bloodiest confrontations were in the coalfields, and, in particular, the coalfields of Mingo, Logan and McDowell counties in West Virginia. The story of the conflict in the coalfields of West Virginia is told in rich detail in a useful (despite its apologist line) documentary, Even the Heavens Weep: The West Virginia Coal Wars, (produced by Beth Nogay and directed by Danny L. McGuire), televised on PBS about four years ago.

At the end of the First World War, the coal owners in Mingo, Logan and McDowell counties were the last hold outs against unionization in the West Virginia coalfields.

The owners had absolute power over the lives (and deaths) of the miners and their families. They owned the houses the miners lived in. They built the school and the church, and hired the teacher and preacher. They paid the miners in company scrip and compelled them to buy at the company store. They ignored the state safety laws; it was cheaper to simply replace the thousands of miners killed in slides and explosions than it was to adopt safety measures which might prevent their deaths.

Miners who complained about these conditions were summarily dismissed, evicted from company housing and driven away from the mines. Moreover, the mine owners also controlled most of the communities—the local governments and police forces—in the three counties.

In the spring of 1920, the United Mine Workers launched a major campaign to organize the renegade mine owners. In May, a strike broke out in the Matewan district of Mingo County over the firing of miners who had joined the union. The strike spread to other mines. The companies responded by evicting the miners and replacing them with scabs. Professional strikebreakers from the Baldwin Felts detective agency were hired to protect company property, guard the scabs, evict the striking miners and drive them away from company property, and harass and intimidate union organizers and union sympathizers.

The town of Matewan was an unusual community, because the police chief, Sid Hatfield (an ex-miner, and a member of the famous Hatfield clan), and the Mayor refused to cede their authority to the mine owners and the Baldwin Felts detectives. The conflict between Hatfield and the Baldwin Felts culminated in a shoot-out, which left 10 men dead: two miners, the Mayor, and seven Baldwin Felts detectives. This event—the Matewan massacre—had a tremendous impact on the morale of miners, and within a short time 90 percent of the miners in Mingo county had joined the union.

In the fall of 1920, Sid Hatfield and some of the miners who had participated in the shooting were tried for murder. They were acquitted. In 1921, Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were charged for “crimes” arising from events in Matewan. When they showed up at the courthouse on August 1 to face the charges, they were gunned down on the courthouse steps by Baldwin Felts detectives.

Frank Keeney, UMW president in West Virginia, called for a protest rally in Charleston, the capital, on August 7. The more than 5,000 miners who heeded the call were told that they had no rights in the state of West Virginia and, therefore, had no recourse except to fight. On August 21, 7,000 armed miners assembled near Charleston. They were given basic training by veterans of the War and outfitted in coveralls and red bandannas which they wore around their necks. On August 24, they started the 70 mile march to Logan county.

The march was halted when President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops and charge the union leaders with treason but quickly resumed again when the marchers heard that deputies had killed five miners in one of the camps. On August 28, the miners reached the foot of Blair Mountain, which had to be crossed to reach Logan county. Waiting for them at the top of the mountain was a army of 3,000—deputies, state police, Baldwin Felts detectives—armed with machine guns, submachine guns and other modern equipment.

By September 1 the miner's army had swelled to 10,000. Preparations were made for the taking of the mountain and the subsequent liberation of the miners in Logan and Mingo counties.

Then, on September 3, Harding sent in 2,500 federal troops to put down the insurrection. The miners surrendered. This didn't end the conflict in the coalfields of West Virginia, but it did end the threat to established authority and the power of the mine bosses.

The Matewan massacre was a key incident in this sequence of events, and it is this incident which is the subject of John Sayles' movie [Matewan]. The movie begins with the onset of the strike in response to a cut in wages and ends with the massacre. In between, Sayles attempts to recreate the conditions which left the miners of Matewan—and elsewhere in West Virginia—no choice but to arm themselves and resort to violence in an attempt to improve their lives. The result is at once profound and compelling.

The mine was the dominant factor in the lives of everyone in the region; all else was incidental. Sayles probes the psychology of the different groups involved in the conflict through his main characters: the sadistic creeps who “earned” their keep by terrorizing the miners and anyone and everyone sympathetic to the miner's cause; the union organizer (a former Wobbly), who urged the need for a solidarity which extended across racial and ethnic lines, and counselled against violence; the black and Italian workers, who found themselves in an untenable situation and decided it was better to risk the violence of the bosses and the Baldwin Felts than the violence of their fellow workers; the women, who had lost their husbands to the mine and were now waiting to lose their sons; and Sid Hatfield, who hated the mine bosses and the bully boys who were paid to do their dirty deeds for them.

The one minor flaw in the movie is that Sayles neglects to include the “bloodsuckers” who owned the mines, and who gave the orders to cut wages, recruit scabs and evict and terrorize the miners. They may not have played a conspicuous role in the violence against the miners (as they did in the Cabin and Paint Creek strikes in 1912), but they were giving the orders and were responsible for the violence. Certainly, they have a presence in the movie—everything is done in the name of the owners, but the story would have been strengthened if they had been given a concrete presence.

Sayles also explores the influences which shaped and constrained the actions and interactions of the workers and their families. A major obstacle to the development of solidarity and union consciousness among the miners was their fundamentalist religion, according to which it was God's design for them to submit to the conditions of their wage slavery and look to God for their salvation rather than to the unions and the reds. There was as well the pervasive influence of racism, which meant, among other things, that even in those instances when black workers joined common cause with white workers they were marginalized because of their vulnerability to the violence of the bosses and of the state.

In developing the story and moving it relentlessly toward its conclusion, Sayles highlights incidents which were a commonplace in the coal fields of West Virginia and other parts of the United States during this era: the gratuitous killings of miners by company goons; the indiscriminate firing on the tent villages which the miners retreated to when they were evicted from company houses; the exposure of a company spy and agent provocateur within the union ranks; and the endless discussions among the miners about the objectives of the strike and the ways in which they should respond to the violence inflicted on them by the company.

This is an exceptional movie on all counts. It deals with an important event in American history, and the issues it addresses and the questions it raises are as pertinent now as they were then. Moreover, it is a well-made movie, with superb photography and fine acting. Many critics have proclaimed the movie an artistic success. It should also have been a commercial success. It wasn't. Why? Apparently, because the people who control the distribution of movies in North America decided they didn't want it to be a commercial success and restricted its distribution (it has not been shown in a movie house in Manitoba). To what end? I don't have an answer, but I suspect it's because Matewan reveals aspects of American society that the movie industry would prefer to keep under wraps—especially in the present circumstances, when US workers and unions are once again under attack by the bosses and the state, and are groping for ways to fight back.