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The Fraterville Mine disaster of 1902 – The History Blog

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On May 19th, 1902, an explosion in the coal mine at Fraterville in Tennessee’s Coal Creek Valley claimed the lives of 216 men and boys. Only 184 of them were ever identified. It is the worst mining disaster in Tennessee history and one of the top five worst in the nation’s history. Before that fateful day, the Fraterville Mine had been operating without incident for over 30 years. Its owner, former Union Major Eldad Cicero Camp, had been a U.S. District Attorney for Eastern Tennessee and was widely respected as someone who treated his employees fairly and ran as safe a shop as possible considering the inherent dangers of the job. Major Camp was one of the only industrialists who refused to utilize the state’s appalling convict leasing system, a post-Civil War pretext for Southern states to re-enslave African-Americans using the 13th Amendment which outlawed involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime. When the war was over, black men became targets of law enforcement, arrested

On May 19th, 1902, an explosion in the coal mine at Fraterville in Tennessee’s Coal Creek Valley claimed the lives of 216 men and boys. Only 184 of them were ever identified . It is the worst mining disaster in Tennessee history and one of the top five worst in the nation’s history. Before that fateful day, the Fraterville Mine had been operating without incident for over 30 years. Its owner, former Union Major Eldad Cicero Camp, had been a U.S. District Attorney for Eastern Tennessee and was widely respected as someone who treated his employees fairly and ran as safe a shop as pos

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