The Coal Creek War

The rebellion ran for more than a year. In July 1891 miners marched forty convicts and their guards from the Briceville stockade to Coal Creek, now Lake City, and shipped them to Knoxville in boxcars; militia brought them back. On October 31 the miners released the prisoners into the hills and burned the stockade, and two days later raided the Cumberland Mine at Oliver Springs. Militia surrendered there in 1892. The state then voted to end leasing when the contract expired in 1896. Most leased prisoners were Black, and Tennessee's Zebra Law put men in stripes for petty theft.

What the plaque says

"The Coal Creek War" Coal Creek valley was the scene of an armed rebellion against the state by free miners seeking an end to the common practice of leasing convicts to coal companies. On Oct. 31, 1891 the convict laborers at Briceville were freed by armed miners. The revolt was subdued by the state militia, but led to the eventual abolition of the "convict lease system" and the establishment of Brushy Mountain State Prison in 1898.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 5.7 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Norris Dam and Norris Dam State Park — 6.0 mi
  TVA's first dam, finished in 1936 on the Clinch River, and the state park beside it with the 1798 Rice Grist Mill, built for a valley whose families were moved out.
• Museum of Appalachia — 6.4 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 12 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.

More markers nearby

• The Market Place of Pearls — 5.9 mi
• Clinton High School — 5.9 mi
• The Rev. Paul W. Turner — 6.0 mi
• First Integrated Public Schools in the Southeast — 7.2 mi