On this day in 1891, armed Tennessee Coal Miners freed hundreds of prisoners who were being used as strikebreaking convict labor. The raid took place in the context of the "Coal Creek War", a militant labor uprising in the early 1890s.

The Coal Creek War took place primarily, but not exclusively, in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited in 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system, used in this case as strikebreakers.

Coal workers at the Tennessee Coal Mining Company (TCMC) went on strike on April 1st, 1891, demanding to be paid in cash, not scrip (currency only usable at company stores) and to be allowed to check the weight of their haul (they were paid by weight, but not allowed to check the company's measurement).

Workers initiated a series of raids against the TCMC - on July 14th, armed miners surrounded the stockades where leased convicts were held and sent them by train out of the city. On October 31st, 1891, the miners burned company stockades to the ground and freed hundreds of convicts being held there. On Nov. 2nd, another band attacked stockades in a different location and freed those prisoners as well. From those 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 leasing convict labor, using convicts to work in state-owned mines instead.

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  • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]
    ·
    1 year ago

    who cares, it actively kills queer people. I have zero support for any religious movement

    i will never think positively of religion, it's actively set humanity back and caused immense suffering

    you're telling someone queer not to speak about their perspective on something that directly impacts their life

      • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]
        ·
        1 year ago

        i have a special perspective of being queer and facing bullshit from religion throughout my life and you keep talking over it. you're not going to get me to change my mind. you're being rude as hell

        • SerLava [he/him]M
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah I'm steamed. This is some weird kind of western chauvinism or something. You expressing yourself ends at expressing made up shit about minority religions. Literally on the code of conduct. I don't know how you can see all that shit about Hawai'ian culture and respond with basically nah, tldr, they're fuckin stupid, they talked about people in the sky so they hated queer people, can't possibly be much better than Catholicism or whatever.

          If I'm not going to change your mind, read these. If they can't change your mind, you might have a sincerely held religious belief

          https://kalikianokalei.medium.com/hawaiian-sexuality-and-the-mahu-tradition-b235a76066c6

          https://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2000to2004/2004-sexual-behavior-in-pre-contact-hawaii.html

          https://www.honolulumagazine.com/portraits-of-gender-and-sexual-identities-in-the-hawaiian-community/

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_aik%C4%81ne

          https://gayety.co/a-brief-history-of-hawaiis-ancient-gay-culture

          https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26966855/

          https://www.them.us/story/mahu-hawaii-activism-movement-kumu-hina