Coal Creek War Begins (1891)

Wed Apr 01, 1891

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Image: A drawing from Harper’s Weekly showing Coal Creek miners firing on Fort Anderson in 1892. [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1891, the Coal Creek War began when the Tennessee Coal Mining Company (TCMC) rejected worker demands, closing operations. After TCMC used strikebreaking convict labor, workers razed their stockades and freed hundreds of prisoners.

Among miners’ demands were to be paid in cash, not scrip (currency only accepted by the employer), and to weigh their own haul to ensure fairness of payment. The strike marked the beginning of a period of open rebellion by workers against capitalists and the state.

On July 5th, TCMC reopened the Briceville mine using convict labor leased from the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway Company (TCI). Convict labor was heavily racialized; of 120 men brought in to work in the mines at Coal Creek by TCI, only five were identified as white.

On July 14th, armed miners surrounded the stockades where leased convicts were held and sent them by train out of the city. After repeated attacks on mine property and the stockades where prison workers were kept, the miners burned the prison to the ground and freed hundreds of convicts being held there on October 31st.

On November 2nd, workers attacked a different set of stockades, freeing the prisoners detained there as well. From these 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 allowing convict labor to replace mine workers in 1892.