On Halloween Night in 1891, Tennessee Miners Made Righteous Mayhem
The Coal Creek War was one of the largest insurrections in American labor history, with thousands of miners batting state troops to end the convict leasing system designed to extend slavery and undermine organized labor.
Illustration of a militant firing a gun from a “miner’s nest.”
On the night of October 31, 1891, hundreds of masked men burned down the stockades of the Tennessee Coal Mining Company and the Knoxville Iron Company. They set three hundred convicts free, dressed them in civilian clothing, and told them to “go and sin no more.”
What sounds like the ultimate Halloween prank was in fact a strategic act of rebellion, a pivotal moment in working miners’ monthslong campaign to end the convict lease system in Tennessee. Tennessee coal companies were putting prisoners to work in mines, simultaneously carrying on slavery through legal means and undermining the strike capacity of newly organized labor unions.
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