John Price Buchanan was an American politician and farmers' advocate. He served as the 25th governor of Tennessee from 1891 to 1893, and was president of the Tennessee Farmers' Alliance and Laborers' Union in the late 1880s. Buchanan's lone term as governor was largely marred by the Coal Creek War, an armed uprising by coal miners aimed at ending the state's convict lease system.
Portrait of Buchanan by Willie Betty Newman
The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system.
Coal Creek emerging from its Walden Ridge water gap in Rocky Top.
Entrance to the Knoxville Iron Company mine near Coal Creek, photographed by Lewis Wickes Hine in 1910.
Convicts placed on railroad cars by striking miners for transport out of the Coal Creek valley.
Drawing in Harper's Weekly showing miners gathered at Thistle Switch on July 16, 1891.