Black Patch Tobacco War: Terrorism or Activism?

(WKMS) In the early 20th century, in a poor and largely overlooked region of western Kentucky and west Tennessee, a band of vigilantes carried out its own brand of law and order. From 1905 to 1909, the Night Riders engaged in a sustained and violent uprising that has branded them, by some, as terrorists. A decade after the deadly Pullman Strike in New York that inspired Labor Day, a decade before a massacre in Everett, Washington escalated the west coast labor movement, the Night Riders emerged from a prevailing trend of the day: everyman versus the corporation. Jacque Day explores the rise and fall of the Tobacco War with a Kentucky Supreme Court justice and a lifelong student of local folklore. Continued

Image: Dr. David A. Amoss (Western Kentucky History)