MATEWAN The Matewan Massacre Drama will take place this Saturday. The event is part of Matewan’s Fall Festival.
The drama brings to life the shootout between Baldwin-Felts agents and striking coal miners attempting to unionize.
Director of the drama, Donna Paterino says the Matewan Drama Group is made of volunteers eager to bring the history of the area to audiences, and spotlight the struggles of the labor movement in the coalfields. On “What’s Your Opinion” this week Donna she’s proud of Matewan. She says each and every one of the municipal departments in the town have been working together to make sure local history lives on.
“We have a great council, we have a great team of volunteers and people who want to work together and that’s what it takes,” said Paterino. “We’re just so blessed to be able to have so much in our small town – one of the few places where you can come and find out so much history in such a short amount of time.”
Twenty-five years after the Town of Matewan was founded, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was employed by the Stone Mountain Coal Company to evict families that had joined the union and were living in company housing. The agency also intended to evict those forced to live in a tent city just outside the town.
On May nineteenth, 1920, Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield along with Mayor Cabell Testerman, both staunch supporters of the union, demanded to see warrants for the evictions. Unable to produce the documents, agents and their opposition engaged in a verbal conflict before shots were fired.
When the smoke cleared, ten people were dead including Mayor Testerman and seven Baldwin-Felts agents.
The Matewan Massacre Drama starts Saturday at noon as part of the town’s Fall Festival. The festival kicks off at ten o’ clock and will also feature several other events and attractions, including vendors, a pet show, car show and a parade. Registration for the car show starts at eight a.m. and the parade kicks off at four p.m.
According to Paterino, Saturday is the last chance to see the reenactment of the 1920 tragedy until next year. Despite occurring over a century ago, she says its relevance survives even today.
“The people in 1920 went through so much to see a better day for their children. The working man was just dying in 1920 with nothing and working so hard, so this history needs to be told, and it could have happened anywhere in southern West Virginia in a coal town, but it happened in Matewan.”
The reenactment has been a consistent part of Matewan’s cultural heritage for more than two decades.
