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In the spring of 1912 at the height of one of the bloodiest coal mine wars in West Virginia history, a sweet-looking, grand-motherly little old lady by the name of Mary (better known as "Mother") Jones mounted the capitol steps in Charleston and made the following pronouncement:
"Unless (Gov. William E. Glasscock) rids Paint Creek and Cabin Creek of these goddamned Baldwin-Felts mine guard thugs,there is going to be one hell of a lot of bloodletting in these hills."
This diary will attempt to show the danger inherent with companies like Blackwater by examining the actions of the infamous Baldwin-Felts "thugs."
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I was born in Mingo County West Virginia. Specifically, I was born in Williamson, WV. My grandmother still lives in Mingo County in a little town called Delbarton, which isn’t all that far from Matewan.
My grandfather, who is deceased, used to be the Circuit Clerk of the Courts. It was an elected position and he was a Democrat.
When I was a kid, I once asked him why he was a Democrat. He patiently tried to explain to me that when he was a kid, the Republicans were not nice people at all. "They had guns and they didn’t want people to vote for Democrats."
Obviously, I was too young to understand the nature of things. I could hardly believe that Republicans carried guns. I was naïve, to say the least.
Then one day, years later, I watched the movie, Matewan. Suddenly, I understood exactly what my grandfather’s words meant.
The Massacre
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The spring of 1920 was a troubled time in the West Virginia coalfields. A nationwide coal strike settled during the winter had won unionized miners a 27 percent wage increase. Unfortunately, the settlement didn't help most miners in southern West Virginia, the largest non-unionized coal region in the country. When the United Mine Workers (UMW) stepped up its campaign to organize Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties, coal operators retaliated by hiring private detectives to quash all union activity. Miners who joined the UMW were fired and thrown out of their company-owned houses.
Despite the risks, thousands defied the coal operators and joined the UMW. Tensions between the two sides exploded into violence on May 19, when 13 Baldwin-Felts detectives arrived in Matewan to evict union miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Matewan chief of police Sid Hatfield intervened on behalf of the evicted families. A native of the Tug River Valley, Sid Hatfield supported the miners' attempts to organize. He was also known throughout Mingo County as a man who was not afraid of a fight.
Back then, companies like Baldwin-Felts were hired by companies to do their dirty work. Today, companies like Blackwater are actually contracted by the government, which makes them even more dangerous.
After carrying out several evictions, the detectives ate dinner at the Urias Hotel then walked to the depot to catch the five o'clock train back to Bluefield, Virginia. They were intercepted by Hatfield, who claimed to have arrest warrants from the county sheriff. Detective Albert Felts produced a warrant for Hatfield's arrest, which Matewan mayor C. C. Testerman claimed to be a fake. The detectives didn't know they had been surrounded by armed miners, who watched intently from windows and doorways along Mate Street and, while Felts, Hatfield, and Testerman, faced off, a shot rang out. The ensuing gun battle left 7 detectives and 4 townspeople dead, including Felts and Testerman.
Hatfield became a local hero and was eventually acquitted of murder charges for his part in the "Matewan Massacre." But in the summer of 1921, Hatfield and an associate, Ed Chambers, were shot dead by Baldwin-Felts detectives on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse, where they were to stand trial for a shooting in a nearby coal camp. Their murders galvanized thousands of union miners, who planned to march on Logan County. The march ended with the Battle of Blair Mountain, in which state and federal troops defeated the miners and halted the UMW's campaign in southern West Virginia. Most of the southern coalfields remained non-union until 1933.
A private security guard produced a warrant? Private security guards shot a Sheriff? That’s how much power they had just working for companies. Imagine how much power Blackwater has working for the federal government.
By the way, it took another dozen years to finally unionize those coal mines.
So, whatever happened to the guards who shot Sheriff Hatfield?
The trial of Sid Hatfield and twenty-two other defendants for the murder of one of the detectives, Albert Felts, began on January 28, 1921. Some forty armed Baldwin-Felts agents lined the streets of Williamson that morning to influence the pro-union jury. Despite the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, the jury acquitted Hatfield and the other defendants in what was the lengthiest murder trial in the state's history.
Realizing the impossibility of gaining a conviction in southern West Virginia, Baldwin-Felts gunmen prevented Sid Hatfield from standing trial in an unrelated case in McDowell County later that year. Hatfield and a deputy, Ed Chambers, were murdered on the steps of the county courthouse, sparking an armed march on southern West Virginia by union miners, which ended with the Battle of Blair Mountain. Again, despite numerous eyewitness accounts, accused murderers went free. Baldwin-Felts agents C. E. Lively, "Buster" Pence, and Bill Salter were acquitted of the Hatfield and Chambers murders on the grounds of self defense, although neither victim was armed.
These private security guards shot the sheriff AND the deputy and walked away free men. Got that? They shot the fucking sheriff and WALKED!
So, who are these private contractors anyway?
Baldwin-Felts
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In 1902, the UMWA finally achieved some recognition in the Kanawha-New River Coalfield, its first success in West Virginia. Following the union successes, coal operators had formed the Kanawha County Coal Operators Association in 1903, the first such organization in the state. It hired private detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in Bluefield as mine guards to harass union organizers. Due to these threats, the UMWA discouraged organizers from working in southern West Virginia.
By 1912, the union had lost control of much of the Kanawha- New River Coalfield. That year, UMWA miners on Paint Creek in Kanawha County demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job on April 18, beginning one of the most violent strikes in the nation's history. Miners along nearby Cabin Creek, having previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and demanded:
* the right to organize
* recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
* an end to blacklisting union organizers
* alternatives to company stores
* an end to the practice of using mine guards
* prohibition of cribbing
* installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
* unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies' checkweighmen were not cheating the miners.
When the strike began, operators brought in mine guards from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to evict miners and their families from company houses. The evicted miners set up tent colonies and lived in other makeshift housing. The mine guards' primary responsibility was to break the strike by making the lives of the miners as uncomfortable as possible.
As the intimidation by mine guards increased, national labor leaders, including Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, began arriving on the scene. Jones, a native of Ireland, was already a major force in the American labor movement before first coming to West Virginia during the 1897 strikes. Although she reported the year of her birth as 1830, recent research indicates she was probably born in 1845. As a leader of the UMWA's efforts to organize the state, Jones became known for her fiery (and often obscene) verbal attacks on coal operators and politicians.
Not only did the UMWA send speechmakers, it also contributed large amounts of weapons and ammunition. On September 2, Governor William E. Glasscock imposed martial law, dispatching 1,200 state militia to disarm both the miners and mine guards. Over the course of the strike, Glasscock sent in troops on three different occasions.
Both sides committed violent acts, the most notorious of which occurred on the night of February 7, 1913. An armored train, nicknamed the "Bull Moose Special," led by coal operator Quin Morton and Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill, rolled through a miners' tent colony at Holly Grove on Paint Creek. Mine guards opened fire from the train, killing striker Cesco Estep. After the incident, Morton supposedly wanted to "go back and give them another round." Hill and others talked him out of it. In retaliation, miners attacked a mine guard encampment at Mucklow, present Gallagher. In a battle which lasted several hours, at least sixteen people died, mostly mine guards.
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By 1910, "thugs" were everywhere. "Thugs" were men who worked for the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who the coal operators hired as guards and strike-breakers. Union organizers and union miners were beaten and killed, and the operators banned the right of assembly, which they defined as three miners at a time talking together...
...The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was owned by Thomas Felts and W.G. Baldwin. They began by protecting the railway and mine payrolls, and they also took on work of the state and federal governments. They were efficient and highly controversial, because their work was of such a secretive nature, and they were hated and feared (Toney). Before Thomas Felts died, he had all the records burned, so we will never know most of the activities of this agency. What few records have been found, the men were referred to by number, not by name (Hall, Interview).
Considering the current administration’s hatred of unions, could it be that Baldwin-Felts is the prototype of today’s Blackwater?
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Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force.
History repeats.