Rebellion and Convict Lease in Tennessee’s Coalfields, 1891-1895

Sweet Tea     2010     32p     5 x 8

From the back cover: “Something happened in Tennessee, something almost unimaginable to the mine owners and politicians of that state. When the companies tried to intimidate their workers by bringing in convict labor to take over their jobs, the workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prisoners, and loading them onto freight trains bound for Nashville and Knoxville and places far away…The Tennessee convict war was one of the largest insurrections in American working-class history. And yet, unfolding at exactly the same time as the more publicized labor wars in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, it was largely ignored.””

The Stockade Stood Burning PDF

¢40-$2