Going "Public" with Matewan

by: Hillary Taylor

Excluding the gigantic poster above their beds, labor historians idolize John Sayles in the same manner that twelve year-old girls idolize the Jonas Brothers. These scholars praise this Hollywood filmmaker for depicting a different perspective of labor history that appeals to a large audience. Before Sayles’ grand entrance into the discussion of work, labor historians largely relied upon their own interpretations and insights. However, through his films that focus on the American working class, Sayles contributes not only to the discussion of labor history, but also to the debate in public history. 

Public history has a brief historiography because it has only recently emerged as a way to speak to the public. For decades, American historians have “paid remarkably little attention to the presentation and perception of history outside the classroom.” 

Believing their discussions far superior to those of the masses, scholars confined their debates within their disciplines; but by excluding the general public, historians ignored the contributions of other professionals, namely journalists. Eventually, they emerged from isolation and recognized the disservice caused by the exclusion. Some scholars argue that the field of public history originated when historians sought redemption for their neglect and decided to train young historians to occupy positions in “such diverse settings as the government bureaucracy, the corporate board room, the local historical society, the national historical museum, the film editing room, the union hall, and the senior citizen center.” 

Yet, others assert that public history originated in the mid-1970s because of graduate unemployment. 

During this time, historians established the Public Historian, a professional journal that examined “the place of historical consciousness in American life.” 

The objective of this academic journal furnishes the best definition of public history as the study of the tactics employed to make history appeal to a broad audience. 

Because of the overwhelming number of tactics that one can employ, it makes sense that historians have segregated the study into three categories, all of which have divergent origins and purposes. The first category consists of the historical images that bombard the average American on a daily basis. This includes mediums such as museums, newspapers, and television docudramas. The second category concerns itself with the “desire to expand the job market for historians beyond colleges and universities,” and it seeks to make the field more appealing to the market of professionals. 

The third category, colloquially termed ‘people’s history,’ includes the efforts made by communities and organizations that “encourage a progressive, accessible, and frequently oppositional historical vision.” 

This third variant of public history has perhaps the most interesting origins because it evolved from the political animosity of the 1960s and 1970s. ‘People’s historians’ contend that an individual’s history can empower change; thus, they experiment with new media and place great significance on the arguments that academic historians ignore and deem irrelevant. 

Despite appearing seemingly discordant, the three classifications of public history all emphasize the ‘public’ context of scholarship and all attempt to reach audiences outside of the academic sphere. But the differences between the categories surface when examining their effectiveness. Currently, “the study is well organized within universities; the National Council on Public History (NCPH) can list over fifty graduate programs‒ usually with core courses in History and Public Policy, and with options like Oral History, Archives Administration, City Planning and Environmental History.” 

However, one can assume that the first category, popular media, most effectively appeals to the masses because of the sheer number of occasions when historical images confront the general public through magazines, commercials, and movies. Nevertheless, fundamental problems arise when one considers the effect that mainstream, popular culture has on history. The film industry, for instance, successfully deceives public history scholars by convincing them that it can successfully portray historical events. One filmmaker even suggested that “the only way a movie is going to work is if the ad says ‘Based on a true story’ because audiences appreciate the fact that something really happened.” 

Ironically, the entertainment aspect of the event, and not its historical accuracy, dominate the cinematic portrayal of a ‘true story.’ 

As a consequence of the disappointing reality that filmmakers erroneously represent historical events, one would presume that historians would find the film industry detrimental to society and to their profession. But, in fact, historians idolize the filmmakers who enjoy depicting their branches of history. For instance, labor historians worship John Sayles and his film, Matewan, which centers on the unionization of coal miners in West Virginia and addresses the contentious relationship between the coal miner and the company. According to Eric Foner, a historian who writes extensively on post-Civil War Reconstruction, Sayles deserves the highest praise because his films do not revolve around one character played by a very popular actor; instead, they “focus on ensemble situations.” 

Perhaps labor historians view Matewan as advantageous because of its limited, but accurate, depictions of female working life. Through the character of Elma Radnor, the film concurs with the 1920 Census that “the main occupation of … [wives of coal miners] was the job of taking boarders and lodgers.” 

Radnor, a coal miner’s widow, houses the conniving agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, an agency intent on impeding unionization attempts. By alluding to the distance that the Baldwin-Felts agents had to travel, the film also introduces an essential component to the study of coal mines. Thankfully, the film unfolds within the context of an impoverished, rural community. Had John Sayles elected to place the story within an urban context, he would have contradicted the available primary evidence that suggests that the coal mining communities were “sufficiently remote from towns and cities [and thus] cut off gainful occupation in many of the important avenues open to women.” 

The presentation of women’s occupations is the only factual discussion of working class culture in the film’s depiction of West Virginian coal mines. By praising Matewan, labor historians place the telling of history in the hands of an interpreter who does not always present the facts. More specifically, by generalizing the lives of African Americans, excluding depictions of the environment, and ignoring the health hazards associated with mining, Matewan erroneously portrays working class life in and around the coal mines of West Virginia. This negligence highlights the notion that historians should not rely on film or popular history to further scholarly discussions. 

The first major flaw of the film involves the depiction of African Americans and the generalization that a union can form that transcends racial animosity. Seeking better wages, African Americans migrated from the South because of the “rise and expansion of the bituminous coal industry.” 

The wages that they earned from coal mining exceeded those previously made in southern agriculture. Many white miners even noted that the African Americans were far too “content with the most meager wages.” 

One should also recognize that, “compared to southern agriculture, coal mining offered black workers a greater measure of individual and collective autonomy.” 

This collective autonomy became useful when African Americans combated racial discrimination in the mines, not just discrimination in social situations as depicted in the film. For instance, black men found it increasingly difficult to secure a job as mainline motormen, who transported coal from underground to the surface. During the 1920s, Pink Henderson recalled that “the mine foremen wouldn’t let the black[s]…run the motor…A white man ran the motor.” And if a black man obtained the position of motorman, he had to relinquish it as soon a white man wanted it. Charles T. Harris, another black miner, agreed with Henderson and further suggested that “there were no black motormen.” 

At one level, the race-based jobs appear to highlight the conventional practices of an urban industry; however, unlike an urban, factory system, “coal mining’s peculiar, dispersed underground terrain precluded the growth of direct and intensive supervision of the labor force.” 

Matewan should have touched upon the peculiarity of West Virginian coal mines because their operators maintained and encouraged racial tension without daily contact between workers. Contradicting the depiction in the film, the unremitting presence of racial animosity would have made the creation of a colorless union difficult. Instead, the coal miners in Matewan consolidate at an alarming, unrealistic speed. 

Although whites sought to maintain racial inequality within the coal mines, the environment produced racial equality by affecting every worker, despite his ethnicity. The most hazardous environmental issue concerned the lack of water facilities for the miners and their families. As early as 1920, investigators of the coal mining industry characterized the inadequate water facilities in company-owned camp towns as “a deplorable condition in view of the extra amount of washing necessary for cleanliness in connection with the coal-mining industry.” 

According to the U.S. Department of Labor in 1923, “only 11.2 percent of company-owned homes in West Virginia had running water, only 2.5 percent had bathtubs or showers, and only 3.9 percent had inside flush toilets.” 

Clearly, the coal mining industry did little for the well-being of its workers, but Matewan makes no reference to the fact that Elma Radnor’s company-owned, boarding house could have an inadequate supply of water. Without acceptable water facilities, coal miners presumably realized that the industry catered to the prosperous, industrial sphere. These individuals’ views of the coal industry contrasted those of the miners because the elite believed that coal production served society. For instance, in 1922 Robert Bruere wrote “with the coming of coal and coal-driven machinery the earth and the fullness thereof was unlocked for the service of man.’” 

Bruere accurately placed coal at the center of American civilization, but his thoughts concerning the good fortune brought by the coal industry failed to acknowledge the lives of the impoverished coal miners, the backbone of the industry. 

The backbone of the coal mining industry also went largely neglected by both the company and Matewan within the context of occupational health. In the first half of the twentieth century, the government loosely regulated the mines; however, the occupational health hazards of the industry became apparent when the government granted the Bureau of Mines in the US Department of the Interior, “the authority to inspect and to close dangerous mines.” 

Government regulatory intervention even increased with the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. This Act implemented health standards, “provided for mandatory inspections, four times each year for underground mines and twice each year for surface mines, and established a variety of sanctions, including mine closure, that could be imposed for noncompliance.” 

In 1972, Orrin B. Conaway, Jr. reasoned that with the passage of the Act by Congress, “many of the states in which coal is produced [would] discontinue efforts to set health and safety standards and enforce them by inspection because of the generally more stringent federal health and safety standards and the far greater federal resources for enforcement.” 

Thus, he asserted that the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 “must be strongly enforced [because] it establishes the strongest single code of health and safety standards for coal mining that the country has known.” 

Unfortunately, in the period of 1975-1977, the United States still possessed soaring fatality rates within the coal mines as compared to other industrial nations. For instance, “the fatality rate in the US mines was forty-five deaths per one hundred million employee hours worked while in the United Kingdom and France, the rates were 15 and 32, respectively.” 

These statistics better depict the severity of the occupation than Matewan. 

By supporting John Sayles’ film, Matewan, labor historians do a disservice to their profession because they acknowledge and condone its historical exaggerations. By generalizing the lives of African Americans, excluding depictions of the environment, and ignoring the health hazards associated with coal mining, Matewan erroneously portrays working class life in the coal mines of West Virginia and thereby presents the notion that historians should not rely on film and popular history to further scholarly discussions. The film’s misguided images indicate that every branch of history should divorce itself from the general population. Matewan is nothing more than an entertaining movie.* 


Endnotes2 Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, xvi.