Matewan

by Alicia Swords

I rode in the car on the way to Matewan with Beth from Teen DAWG (Direct Action Welfare Group). She described how she and several of the kids of DAWG members chased the commissioner of Health and Human Resources across the capital grounds and then surrounded him to demand answers about the cuts to TANF, or welfare. That’s the day they decided to become Teen DAWG. What spunk! I was impressed.

This morning we studied the biblical text of Isaiah 6 and 61 and reflected on the Poverty Initiative’s immersion trip to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. We watched a slideshow Colleen Wessel-McCoy put together along with Isaiah 6:9 “He said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.” I felt a lot like that as we drove to Matewan.

We left the main highway after stopping at a gas station near a Wal-Mart that seemed to have a mountain carved away just for it. We drove down a windy road along a creek and next to the railroad tracks. I found myself sharply noticing the landscape and imagining how humans have carved it out. But I felt like I was seeing and not perceiving. I kept asking myself, “How did this happen? How did this get here? Who lives here? What is life like for them? Who lived here before? Where are they now?” What we saw seemed to be coal extraction in reverse. We saw barges on the river with coal, trains loaded with coal, the mechanism (what is it called?) that loads coal into the trains, then a glimpse of a mine, the fenced entryway to the mine with trucks parked, and the requisite signs. Above, the hillside with a thin scruff of trees on the ridge. And then we wound around skimming along next to the narrow area between the hillside and the road, the creek and the railroad.

There is a narrow margin for the things of life, for the people that mine the coal and their families, for the people who used to mine coal. Were they expendable? How many people have retired? How many are on disability or Social Security? What do they do now? We saw trailers, more trailers, Christmas ornaments, plastic swing sets, a wooden footbridge that crossed the creek, burned down and abandoned trailers with the insulation hanging out, houses, some new pre-fab ones. We passed a school whose name indicated a collaboration between the coal company and the town. And then a few McMansions. What were they doing there? What resources or energy were extracted to create that capital? And then the Matewan Mall. Brick projects, maybe company housing.

I looked for signs of activity, of dignity, of community.

Then the road wound steeply down, curvy like a car commercial, with some switchbacks that left my stomach uphill. And then we found ourselves in Matewan. “Welcome to Matewan,” a sign announced. The town was a few rows of houses along both sides of the railroad. No coincidence. I imagined some people could capitalize a bit from tourists, but how many tourists come to see the site of a 1920 battle of workers and the company militia? How many families can live year-round on what a few tourists will drop in the town?

We met Eddie Ninnie outside the diner. He owns a department store and told about how the coal mining companies have consolidated and cut jobs. People say there used to be 250,000 jobs in mining and today only 15,000. There were many different coal companies and gradually Massey Coal has bought them all up. Similarly, he said, Wal-Mart has put all the suppliers for his little town department store out of business, which puts him on the edge. The owner of Massey Coal, Eddie said, owns 50-some cars and leaves one in each airport around the state, so he can always drive to wherever he needs to go. He gives Christmas presents to all the families in the community.

The diner was one place to see and try to perceive, to hear and try to understand. Historical photos of Matewan papered the walls.

Donna May came out to tell us about Matewan. She was warm and relaxed and proud of her town and its history. It seemed that she would tell her story to anyone who visited the diner. She has organized a re-enactment of the battle of Matewan for the last 8 years. She tells the story, researches and comes back and tells it again.

She was thrilled that most of us had watched Matewan, the film. 1920, she explained, was the biggest battle of organized labor. The mining contracts at the time prohibited association of people across color lines. But little by little blacks, Italians and whites had unionized. “I don’t understand how you talk, how you cook, but I know we’re all working in the mines,” she said, taking on the role of a worker. The battle made more people join the labor movement, and changed the movement as people saw that workers could associate across color lines, she explained. “I’m not a crusader for the union,” she said, “I’m a crusader for human rights.”

She explained, “We didn’t know segregation in Matewan.” But after the battle, there was more starvation in 1920-21 than in 1918-19, because the company said, “I’m going to starve you out.” Witnesses she interviewed who are still living said they have never seen a worse time than that time in 1920-21. But “no matter what color you were, we stuck together.”

“I came from a whole family of coal miners. My grandfather was 44 when he died from Black Lung. My dad was 15 when my grandfather died. During the last three years of my grandfather’s life, he told my dad over and over, “You do better.” My dad became a mine operator. He got medical and vision care. Why? Because of the lives that were lost in 1920.”

“In 1920, you had to come to Matewan by train and if you didn’t have a white flag, they’d take you in for questioning… “Where the miners lived then was called Tent City. They’d dig 6 to 10 feet underground to hide the children because there was the Bull Moose Special, the coal company’s armored train that would come through shooting, at any hour of the day and night. You never knew when… The least I can do as a business owner, as someone who loves this community, is keep their story told.”

Donna May was solidly committed to teaching Matewan’s history to local students. After having read Luke 18 for one of our textual reflections earlier this week, several of us agreed that Donna May was the “Persistent Widow” who returned repeatedly to the judge of injustice pleading, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” I think we’ll each carry a bit of Donna May’s persistence with us.