The Coal Creek War was an armed labor uprising that took place primarily in Anderson County, in the American state of Tennessee, in the early 1890s. The struggle began in 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed attempted to replace free coal miners with convicts leased out by the state government. Over a period of just over a year, the free miners continuously attacked and burned prison stockades and company buildings, hundreds of convicts were freed, and dozens of miners and militiamen were killed or wounded in small-arms skirmishes. One historian describes the conflict as "one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in all American labor history."
The Coal Creek War was part of a greater struggle across Tennessee against the state's controversial convict-leasing system, which allowed the state to lease its convicts to mining companies to compete with free labor. The outbreak of the conflict touched off a partisan media firestorm between the miners' supporters and detractors, and brought the issue of convict leasing to the public eye. Although the uprising essentially ended with the arrests of hundreds of miners in 1892, the publicity it generated led to the downfall of Governor John P. Buchanan, and forced the state to reconsider the convict-leasing system. In 1896, when its convict-lease contracts expired, Tennessee's state government refused to renew them, making it one of the first Southern states to end the controversial practice.
Coal Creek may refer to:
Charlie Parr is an American country blues musician, born in Austin, Minnesota, United States. He started his music career in Duluth, Minnesota. His influences include Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis, and Dave Van Ronk. He plays a National resonator guitar, a fretless open-back banjo, and a 12-string guitar in the Piedmont blues style. He is married (to Emily Parr, who occasionally adds back vocals to Charlie's music) with two children.
As of May 2008, the song "1922" has been featured in an Australian and New Zealand Vodafone television advertisement. As a consequence Parr's album, 1922, was re-released in Australia on the Level 2 record label in Melbourne. In 2009, Parr toured Australia with Paul Kelly.
Several of Parr's songs were featured in the Australian drama film "Red Hill" released in 2010, including a full rendition of "Just Like Today" in the closing credits of the film.
Parr played at the 2011 Pickathon Music Festival in Oregon.
Logan is a city in Logan County, West Virginia, United States, along the Guyandotte River. The population was 1,779 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Logan County.
The Chafin House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
Logan is located at 37°50′54″N 81°59′16″W / 37.84833°N 81.98778°W / 37.84833; -81.98778 (37.848381, -81.987651), at the confluence of the Guyandotte River and Island Creek.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.3 square miles (3.3 km²), of which, 1.2 square miles (3.0 km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.3 km²) of it (7.94%) is water.
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,630 people, 750 households, and 423 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,403.5 people per square mile (542.5/km²). There were 965 housing units at an average density of 830.9 per square mile (321.2/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 92.52% White, 4.79% African American, 0.31% Native American, 0.61% Asian, 0.06% from other races, and 1.72% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.80% of the population.
Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.
As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes.
*repeat*
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes-
arrive upon the mountain just to see what we have done,
I ain't cutting my hair, cutting till the good lord
comes.
I ain't open my eyes till we all walk free.
*repeat*
I ain't open my eyes till we all walk free- till the
color of our skin it don't mean a damn thing.
I ain't open my eyes, open till we all walk free.
I ain't pickin' up a paper till the wild wind blows.
*repeat*
I ain't pickin up a paper till the wild wind blows-
till we should say what we should say, till we know
what we should know.
I ain't pickin up a paper, pickin till the wild wind
blows.
Cuz it's a coal, it's a coal war.
Cuz it's a coal, it's a coal war.
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes-
arrive upon the mountain just to see what we have done,
I ain't cutting my hair, cutting till the good lord
comes.
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes-
arrive upon the mountain just to see what we have done,
I ain't cutting my hair, cutting till the good lord
comes.
If we don't walk free with hand in heart, it's time.
If we cannot see all we destroy, we're blind.
It's not the hand that cuts, it's the heart we left
behind
It's not the hand that cuts, it's the hatred deep
inside.
Five dollars and a head to keep, with dull black
scissors and some kerosene; you burnt the house, but
you came to bid him well.
What a thing to tell, "Store poison in the well."
Just to say, just to say, just to say, just to say...
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes.
*repeat*
I ain't cutting my hair till the good lord comes-
arrive upon the mountain just to see what we have done,
I ain't cutting my hair, cutting till the good lord
comes.