: A central theme is the overcoming of racial and ethnic prejudices. As Kenehan tells the workers, "There's but two sides to this world: them that work and them that don't".

The story follows Joe Kenehan ( in his film debut), a pacifist union organizer and former "Wobbly" (IWW member), who arrives in Matewan to unite local white miners with black and Italian workers brought in as strike-breakers.

: The film vividly depicts the oppression of the Stone Mountain Coal Company , which employs the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to intimidate and evict striking families.

The 1987 film Matewan , directed by John Sayles, is more than a historical drama; it is a cinematic reclamation of a "willfully ignored" chapter of American labor history. Dramatizing the 1920 , the film explores the brutal realities of coal mining in Mingo County, West Virginia, where industrial interests controlled every facet of a miner's life through "scrip" payment and company-owned housing. Core Themes and Narrative