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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative
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December, 1999
 
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Book Review

Canada and the United States



Karin A. Shapiro. A New South Rebellion: The Battle against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871–1896. (The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 333. Cloth $55.00, paper $22.50.

This book chronicles the rebellion against the convict lease system in Tennessee. In the New South, states passed laws to criminalize petty larceny and the stealing of livestock. Sentences and fines ensured a substantial prison population that could be leased to timbering, mining, and other enterprises. Using a blend of family papers, scrapbooks, business and company records, state records, government documents, newspapers, court cases, and secondary sources, Karin A. Shapiro tells the story of how free miners from the mining communities of Coal Creek, Briceville, and Tracey City assembled a military force to "liberate" convict miners in east and mid-Tennessee. Although emboldened by the Farmers' Alliance movement, Tennessee's miners essentially held to conservative beliefs about the benefits of competitive capitalism, the sanctity of private property, and the preference of political action over militant force. The movement was interracial in the sense that black and white miners worked together in labor organizations during the age of Jim Crow segregation, and this cooperation did restrain rank and file racism. Community life and "the culture of work" always reflected racial biases, however, regardless of interracial labor cooperation. . . .


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