On This Day 1891: The Coal Creek War

On October 31, 1891, during the Coal Creek War labour uprising to protest convict leasing, a group of miners seized the Knoxville Iron Company stockade at Coal Creek in Tennessee.
The “convict lease system” was a private-public partnership in which prisoners were leased to private companies for their labor. The convict lease system was used to undermine union organizing and perpetuate a form of slavery by imprisoning African Americans on false charges and forcing them to provide free labor. 
Over the course of the convict wars, striking miners freed hundreds of convicts. In some cases, the miners provided them with fresh food and civilian clothes.

Via Zinn Education Project