Hellraisers Journal: From the New York Liberator: “The Wars of West Virginia” by Robert Minor, Part III of IV

Share

———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 4, 1920
Robert Minor Arrives in Matewan, Meets Smilin’ Sid Hatfield

From the New York Liberator of August 1920:

WV Mingo Logan Coal Wars by Robert Minor, Lbtr p7, Aug 1920

III of IV

From the five o’clock morning train I alighted at the little. double row of stores and houses that are called Matewan, and before the town was astir I took a walk to the middle of the bridge over Tug River. There boy asked me, “Is it true they got two more thugs up the road last night?” I turned back to talk with the boy, and then I saw a man on a bench before a building on which was scrawled in red letters, “U. M. W. of A.” This man’s face limbered up when I told him I was a friend of Fred Mooney, Secretary of the Mine Workers at Charleston, and he said, “I sized you up as a friend of the Union and I’m glad you didn’t go further across the bridge, because you might have got shot. That is Pike County, over there.

Sid Hatfield by Robert Minor, Lbtr p11, Aug 1920

Toward nine o’clock I saw, standing near the railroad track, a middle-sized man of age about twenty-two. Although this man was alone, he was continually smiling. When he moved, his vest was displaced and exposed two Smith & Wesson revolvers, one stuck into each side of his trousers; A coal digger introduced him as Chief of Police Sid Hatfield.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the New York Liberator: “The Wars of West Virginia” by Robert Minor, Part III of IV”