Law on Film

Matewan (written and directed by John Sayles) dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. In the film, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut), an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers (also known as the “Wobblies”), arrives in Matewan, to organize miners against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Kenehan and his supporters must battle the company’s use of scabs and outright violence, resist the complicity of law enforcement in the company’s tactics, and overcome the racism and xenophobia that helps divide the labor movement. Sayles’s film provides a window into the legal and social issues confronting the labor movement in the early twentieth century and into the Great Coalfield War of that period. I’m joined by Fred B. Jacob, Solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board and labor law professor at George Washington University Law School. Fred’s views on this podcast are solely his own and not those of the National Labor Relations Board or the U.S. Government.

Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:46 A miner’s life
7:44 The power of the mining companies
12:25 Law’s hostility to labor
19:01 Violence and the labor movement
25:33 Organizing the miners in Matewan
30:08 Overcoming racial and ethnic tensions within the labor movement
39:29 What was law and who was law
46:40 The Battle of Blair Mountain
51:54: From the Great Coalfield War to the National Labor Relations Act
56:59 Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA
1:01:59 The power of the strike

Further reading:

Green, James, The Devil Is Here in These Hills:West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom (2015)

Hood, Abby Lee, “What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History,” Smithsonian Magazine (Aug. 25, 2001)

Moore, Roger, “A Masterpiece that reminds us why there is a Labor Day,” Movie Nation (Sept. 2, 2024)

Sayles, John, Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan (1987)

Zappia, Charles A., “Labor, Race, and Ethnicity in the West Virginia Mines: 'Matewan,'” 30(4) J. Am. Ethnic History 44 (Summer 2011)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
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