Episode 36: Matewan (1987) (Guest: Fred B. Jacob)

Matewan (written and directed by John Sayles) dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. In the film, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut), an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers (also known as the “Wobblies”), arrives in Matewan, to organize miners against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Kenehan and his supporters must battle the company’s use of scabs and outright violence, resist the complicity of law enforcement in the company’s tactics, and overcome the racism and xenophobia that helps divide the labor movement. Sayles’s film provides a window into the legal and social issues confronting the labor movement in the early twentieth century and into the Great Coalfield War of that period. I’m joined by Fred B. Jacob, Solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board and labor law professor at George Washington University Law School. Fred’s views on this podcast are solely his own and not those of the National Labor Relations Board or the U.S. Government. Guest: Fred B. Jacob Fred B. Jacob is the Solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). As Solicitor, Mr. Jacob serves as the chief legal adviser and consultant to the entire Board on all questions of law regarding the Board’s general operations and on major questions of law and policy concerning the adjudication of NLRB cases in the Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Solicitor also acts as the Board’s legal representative and liaison to the General Counsel and other offices of the Board. From 1997 to 2014, Mr. Jacob worked as an attorney, supervisor, and Deputy Assistant General Counsel in the NLRB’s Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Branch. Before joining management, he served as Grievance Chair of the NLRB Professional Association, the union representing Washington, DC-based NLRB attorneys. Mr. Jacob is Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University School of Law. Mr. Jacob has previously taught labor and employment law courses at Georgetown University Law Center and the College of William and Mary School of Law. Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction2:46 A miner’s life 7:44 The power of the mining companies12:25 Law’s hostility to labor19:01 Violence and the labor movement25:33 Organizing the miners in Matewan30:08 Racial and ethnic tensions within the labor movement39:29 What was law and who was law46:40 The Battle of Blair Mountain51:54: The Great Coalfield War to the National Labor Relations Act56:59 Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA1:01:59 The power of the strike Further Reading: Green, James, The Devil Is Here in These Hills:West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom (2015) Hood, Abby Lee, “What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History,” Smithsonian Magazine (Aug. 25, 2001) Moore, Roger, “A Masterpiece that reminds us why there is a Labor Day,” Movie Nation (Sept. 2, 2024) Sayles, John, Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan (1987) Zappia, Charles A., “Labor, Race, and Ethnicity in the West Virginia Mines: 'Matewan,'” 30(4) J. Am. Ethnic History 44 (Summer 2011)