Remembering James Earl Jones, John Sayle’s “Matewan” and the World in Which We Live
The passing of James Earl Jones on September 9, 2024 at the age of 93 marked the end of a remarkable life in theatre, film, and TV.
In 1977 many watched in awe as a spaceship flew toward the horizon of a planet that spanned the movie screen while being pursued by an enormous ship as it fired lasers at it. It was the most stunning special effects movie audiences had ever experienced. It was a scene that would soon lead to the introduction of a seminal character and voice to the world. Darth Vader, with his trademark breathing and voice, would soon appear on screen. The first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, would introduce Jones to new generations of film fans as the voice of Darth Vader. Yes, Jones’ voice was perfectly suited for Vader. Deep, rich and menacing in its articulation of unfathomable power. That same voice could also express tenderness and provide comfort and reassurance.
One such character that Jones played was Few Clothes Johnson in John Sayles’ Matewan. Released in 1987, the movie depicts the conflict between coal companies and miners in West Virginia’s Matewan county during the early 1920s. Jones’ character Few Clothes was the leader of a group of black miners who came to the region looking for work. The plot revolves around the efforts of Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) to organize a union that would be recognized by the coal mine. Such recognition would bring with it the legal right for the miners to collectively bargain for improved health and safety, better working conditions, and better wages. In light of the union organizing efforts of the striking coal miners, white miners, the company used Italian immigrants to work the mines. The coal mining company pitted the striking miners, low paid Italian immigrants, and black miners who would also be low paid against each other.
Divide and conquer. A typical tactic on the race to the bottom for the coal company’s bottom line; minimize and cut costs to maximize profits. If the business model of a company town wasn’t enough to maximize profit – miners being paid by company script and having only the company’s store to buy what they need from, with their housing being owned and controlled by the company – then do everything possible to limit the costs of producing coal.
Few Clothes and the black coal miners he represented were willing to work and were able to work to make their way in the world, but not at the expense of the union organizing efforts of the white miners; not at the expense of being scabs. This is illustrated really well in a scene from the movie in which Few Clothes goes to a secret union meeting.
Transcript of a Union Meeting in which Joe Kenehan and Few Clothes Johnson meet for the first time:
Few Clothes: They told me that C.E. Lively’s is where the unions men meet.
C.E. Lively: So.
Few Clothes: I got business with the union.
C.E. Lively: That so. What’s your name son?
Few Clothes: They call me Few Clothes. (snickering and laughter) I didn’t come here looking for no trouble. The mens got to eat.
Voice in crowd: So why don’t you go eat back where you come from?
Few Clothes: They told me that there was jobs here.
Voice in crowd: Go home n*****, goddamn scab!
Few Clothes: Now you watch your mouth, peckerwood. I've been called n*****, and I can't help that's the way white folks is, but I ain't never been called no scab! And I ain’t been looking to start up now. I’ll go ton for ton loading coal with any man here and when I do, I expect the same dollar for the same work.
Joe Kenehan: “Union men my ass. You want to be treated like men, you want to be treated fair? Well, you ain’t men to that coal company, you’re equipment like a shovel, like a gondola are, a hunk of wood brace. They’ll use you til you wear out or you break down or you’re buried under a slate fall and then they’ll get a new one. And they don’t care what colour it is or where it comes from. It doesn’t matter how much coal you can load or how long your family has lived on this land, if you stand alone you’re just so much shit to those people.
You think this man is your enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world - them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't. That's all you get to know about the enemy.
You say you got guns. Well, I know that you all are brave men and I know that you could shoot it out with the company if you had to but the coal company don’t want this union, and the state government don’t want it, the federal government don’t want it, and they’re all of ‘em waiting for an excuse to come down and crush us to nothing.
Fellas, we're in a hole full of coal gas here. The tiniest spark at the wrong time is going to be the end of us. So we got to pick away at this situation, slow and careful. We got to organize and build support. We got to work together. Together! Till they can't get their coal out of the ground without us cause we're a union! Cause we're the workers damn it and we take care of each other!
Miner in crowd: How can we shut the mines down if we don’t dynamite ‘em?
Joe Kenehan: The men walk out. All of them!
C.E. Lively: Fat chance.
Joe Kenehan: (while looking at Few Clothes) And every man that walks out on his own steam, we take into the union.
Sephus Purcell: All the dagos and all the coloured?
Joe Kenehan: That’s what a union is fellas, and you better get used to it.
For your viewing pleasure, the following is a link to the scene.
Union Meeting Scene from Matewan
Unity between the three groups of workers was created and bound together in their solidarity about withholding their labour so the company couldn’t produce coal. They left the company’s housing and lived together in a makeshift community in which they were able to come together through sport, music, and food. They played baseball. One women’s corn meal became another women’s polenta when a West Virginian and an Italian discovered that although their preparation of meals were different, they were same. Music also brought them together when, if memory serves correctly, the music of the fiddle, mandolin, and harmonica being played separately by each group began playing together.
They lived together and shared their humanity with each other. The racism and nativism expressed in previous scenes seemingly no longer hampered their interactions and relationships. Is this idyllic movie making and story telling…absolutely. Considering the movie is based on true events, it could have happened. Is it possible that common struggles can bring people together, of course. Did it happen as portrayed in the movie…who knows? It’s a movie. It’s a story that has been fictionalized. Joe Kenehan is a fictional character. Perhaps Jones’ Few Clothes Johnson is too. Does it matter when its messages and themes regarding the human condition are historically transcendent? Matewan’s struggles and conflicts are as timeless as those of Shakespeare.
The tenderness of the relationship between Few clothes and Joe Kenehan is on full display when they share some life experiences at a camp fire after Few Clothes had drawn the short stick which meant he was to kill Joe. It never happened. Jones was able to channel that deep rich voice into an expression of tenderness, sympathy, and understanding. Comfort provided at a time when he was supposed to kill the same man whose humanity he could empathize with – relatively speaking.
Soon enough the conflict between the company and the workers comes to a moment of crisis in which the company hires gunmen to go to Matewan to take care of the strikers and end the strike. A gun battle ensues and many are killed on both sides of the triggers. This is something else that has occurred throughout history.
The use of religion, racism, nativism, sexism, classism, among other “isms” are used to divide and conquer has been happening for eons. The need for a ruling class and its elites to break the will of the “common people” when trying to improve the material conditions of their lives falls under the category of “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Politicians around the world can be found calling for unity while driving wedges between people. Unity and benefit for some. Division, marginalization and table scraps for others. The slow erosion of democracy and its institutions results and is an intended byproduct because less democracy has historically served the interests of the ruling class of the day.
Tommy Douglas and Saskatchewan’s CCF Government – Solidarity in the Spirit of Joe Kenehan & Few Clothes Johnson:
Make no mistake, Canada’s “flag ship” social program, universal public single payer health care, was not implemented by the benevolence of any federal or provincial government. The federal Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson did not arrive at the Canada Health Act and provincial governments did not implement provincial health insurance plans because The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, a political party consisting of a progressive coalition of farmers, unions, and academics was established in 1933 with its programme, the “Regina Manifesto”. Elected to government in Saskatchewan (1944) with under the leadership of Premier Tommy Douglas, it marked the formation of a socialist/social democratic government.
Douglas was intent on implementing universal public health care in Saskatchewan to increase access to health care for all and introduced the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Bill in 1961. Long story short…doctors in Saskatchewan objected to the compulsory and government controlled system, went on strike for 23 days, and eventually with amendments to the plan allowing doctors to practice outside the plan, public health care came to Saskatchewan in 1962. The adoption of Medicare by the federal government in 1966 meant that the federal and provincial governments to share in the cost of providing health care via provincial health insurance plans.
Yes, the promise of Canada and much of its national identity has been steeped in its publicly funded social programs such as public education, the Canadian Pension Plan, Old Age Security, social assistance, and of course, universal public health care. Canada’s social programs and the social democratic institutions that supported were deemed significant and necessary to the lives of Canadians.
However, the pressure to cut taxes, to cut government spending, to make government smaller also puts immense pressure on social programs. Although they helped make Canada one of the global leaders and role models regarding how to bring its federal and provincial macro-economic output together with coherent social policies to provide social services. Tragically, those campaigning for tax cuts, less government spending, somehow believe market forces will provide equity in a way that Canada’s social programs didn’t. The result has been the slow and gradual privatization of social services, namely health care.
The world is dangerously fractured as a result of the politics of division and polarization; us against them, me against you. It’s a dangerous game played out in a race to the bottom, whatever that may mean and at point will it end. Or will it?
Much like the Italian, black, and white miners in Matewan, people have become pitted against each other by forces and interests that seek to benefit from such division. Much like the movie, people are going to have to continue to find the commonality of their humanity in order to organize and develop solidarity to try and improve the material conditions of their lives. For Canada post-WW II, that has been based on the social democratic institutions forming the safety net developed within the historical framework of Canada’s constitution based “peace, order (formerly ‘welfare’), and good government”.
During the interwar years, the world experienced an intense division, polarization and significant threats to democracy. The conflation of lessons learned from the Great Depression, the fight against fascism and National Socialism and the rise of a socialist bloc of nations, helped create the formation and development of social democratic welfare states. Canada being one of them.
“From 1914 to 1918 we lost some 60,000 of our finest young men in Flanders Fields. This was tragedy and we all recognized it. We have raised thousands of cenotaphs to remind of us of that loss. But from 1935 to 1938 Canada lost 61,514 babies under the age of one year in Canada. That is a tragedy too, and one that might have been prevented had more adequate health care services been provided”. (Tommy Douglas)
Who benefitted and was it a “good” thing that public provided social programs – namely health care – came to be implemented in Canada?
The world is once again in a similar state of division, polarization, and threats to democracy which some forces and interests are intent on using to dismantle social democratic institutions that provide equity and opportunity. One of the most significant differences is that the socialist block of nations has disappeared.
This time around, who will benefit from the push to dismantle publicly provided social programs and replace them with privatized alternatives? Will it be a “good” thing?