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Mines cut pay to 2½¢ per bushel, miners strike, mines lease convicts as
slave labor and on Bastille Day, 7/14/1891, the miners stormed the
stockade, and freed the convicts. The Coal Creek Rebellion (or "Coal
Wars") began. [and/or after imposing company store, company housing,
company-paid checkweighman & payment in scrip instead of money; the
Tennessee Coal Co. tried to impose a "yellow Dog" (no rights/no strike)
contract. The imported convicts were used to tear down the miners homes &
fence off the mine.] 10,000 troops brought in & fought pitched battles
county-wide through the year. Convict leasing ended in Tennessee 1/1/1896.
The system remained elsewhere in the south, however, through WW II.
Info comes from How Can I Keep from Singing &
Korson's Coal Dust on the Fiddle
Way back yonder in Tennessee, they lease the convicts out,
They work them in the coal mines, against free labor south.
Free labor rebelled against it...
"Buddy Won't You Roll Down The Line," Uncle Dave Macon;
also Pete Steele's "Coal Creek March" ("Payday" may be about
a Coal Creek mine explosion in 1911.)
Quoting Seeger: Conventional school histories ignore the events as they
ignore the rent wars of New York State, the Dorr Rebellion of Rhode
Island, slave revolts and early labor struggles. But as always happens,
many topical folk songs were composed by local balladeers. The best of
these have survived and been collected into archives by serious-minded
professors who don't always know what the words are all about.
© Abby Sale - all rights reserved
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