Labour Conflict, Race, and Public Memory: Using Public Archaeology to Expand the Narrative on the Tennessee Convict War

The Southern convict lease system was a system of enslavement that emerged in the decades after the US Civil War. In the US South, recently emancipated African American men were disproportionately affected by the system. Tennessee became one of the first states to end the convict lease system after a series of labour rebellions against the use of prison labour in competition with free labour, called the Tennessee Convict War. The public memory of these events currently focuses entirely on the white (Welsh) miners in one geographic area, completely erasing the active presence and participation of free and enslaved Black Americans as well as contributing events that took place in other parts of the state. This article documents the efforts of the Tennessee Convict Stockade Project to incorporate a broader range of participants and a wider geographic area into the public memory of the Tennessee Convict War through public archaeology and public excavations at one of the involved prisons, the Lone Rock Stockade in Grundy County, Tennessee.