Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South

Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South

by Neal Shirley Author and Saralee Stafford Author

It's one of the biggest fights against injustice you've never even heard about. In 1891, coal companies in eastern Tennessee brought in cheap convict labor to take over their jobs. Workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prisoners, and loading them onto freight trains. During the following year, tactics escalated to include burning company property and looting company stores. This was one of the largest insurrections in U.S. working-class history. It happened at the same time as the (more widely publicized) northern labor war in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And it was largely ignored, then and now.