On this day in 1891, armed Tennessee Coal Miners freed hundreds of prisoners who were being used as strikebreaking convict labor. The raid took place in the context of the “Coal Creek War”, a militant labor uprising in the early 1890s.

The Coal Creek War took place primarily, but not exclusively, in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited in 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system, used in this case as strikebreakers.

Coal workers at the Tennessee Coal Mining Company (TCMC) went on strike on April 1st, 1891, demanding to be paid in cash, not scrip (currency only usable at company stores) and to be allowed to check the weight of their haul (they were paid by weight, but not allowed to check the company’s measurement).

Workers initiated a series of raids against the TCMC - on July 14th, armed miners surrounded the stockades where leased convicts were held and sent them by train out of the city. On October 31st, 1891, the miners burned company stockades to the ground and freed hundreds of convicts being held there. On Nov. 2nd, another band attacked stockades in a different location and freed those prisoners as well. From those two events alone, at least 453 convicts were set free.

The strike was forcibly put down by state militia, ending with the arrest of hundreds of miners. All but one were either acquitted or merely fined. Tennessee ended its policy of leasing convict labor, using convicts to work in state-owned mines instead.

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  • Judge_Jury [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    23·
    9 months ago

    I will never say that progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.

    I have got to read more malcolm-checks