The March on Logan County: How the 1921 West Virginia Miners' March Began

Miners in front of Laura Mine in Red Star, West Virginia, in 1908. Photo by Lewis Hine, Library of Congress.

On August 1, 1921, Sheriff Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers, both sympathetic to the miners' union, were murdered on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch, West Virginia. The two had taken part in the Matewan Massacre, a deadly gunfight between union miners and private guards whom the coal operators hired to stamp out union organizing. Their killing left the miners of United Mine Workers (UMW) District 17 seething.

Demands refused

On August 7, 1921, the union miners sent West Virginia Governor Ephraim Morgan a list of demands setting out their grievances against the coal companies. Chief among them was the companies' use of guards from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a brutal force operating outside the law that regularly intimidated miners and trampled their civil liberties. On August 17 Morgan rejected every demand. He did not comment on the killings of Hatfield and Chambers, much less act against the Baldwin-Felts guards.

Gathering at Marmet

Once Morgan's reply was public, union miners began to assemble at Marmet, a small town in Kanawha County eight miles south of the capital, Charleston. It was the second time in the mine wars that miners had massed there. The first was during the 1919 strike, when they gathered to march to Mingo County in support of the strikers there; Governor John Cornwell and UMW District 17 President Frank Keeney pleaded with them to go home, and most did. This time thousands of armed miners came to Marmet, some riding on the roofs of train cars.

As they gathered, Keeney told a New York Times reporter that he had "wash[ed]" his "hands of the whole affair," a misleading statement that suggested District 17 had not approved the gathering. The miners meant to avenge Hatfield and Chambers and to free union miners jailed under the martial law then in force in Mingo County. Their planned stop was Logan County, where they intended to confront, and possibly kill, Sheriff Don Chafin, who took money from the coal operators to enforce their interests.

The state prepares

Morgan expected heavy bloodshed. He sent state police to Mingo County and asked for federal troops. When Secretary of War Newton D. Baker turned him down, Morgan asked Chafin to raise a "home guard" to turn back the marchers before they reached Logan County.

Mother Jones and the telegram

Even people on the miners' side feared the odds they faced, and some tried to stop the march before it began. One was the labor activist Mother Jones. On August 24 she went to Marmet and read the assembled miners a telegram she said had come straight from President Harding, telling them to go home and promising that the president would "forever eliminate" the mine guards from the state.

Several of the men doubted the telegram was real. Frank Keeney called her bluff and told the crowd it was a fake, a break that permanently ruptured the relationship between the two. That night, the march to the southern coalfields began.

Sources

• National Park Service, "The March on Logan County," part of the series West Virginia Mine Wars. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-march-on-logan-county.htm
• Related articles in the series: "McDowell County Courthouse," "Matewan Massacre," "Sheriff Don Chafin," "Mother Jones"; "Resources on the West Virginia Mine Wars": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/resources-on-the-west-virginia-mine-wars.htm