The Night Riders

The Night Riders

The Night Riders was the name given by the press to the militant faction of tobacco farmers during a popular resistance to the monopolistic practices of the American Tobacco Company of James B. Duke. On September 24, 1904, the tobacco planters of western Kentucky and the neighboring counties of West Tennessee formed the Dark Fired Tobacco District, or Black Patch District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee (called the Association or PPA). It urged farmers to boycott the American Tobacco Company and refuse to sell at the ruinously low prices being offered in a quasi-monopoly market. Groups of a more militant faction of farmers, trained and led by Dr. David A. Amoss of Caldwell County, Kentucky, resorted to physical intimidation or burning the crops to enforce compliance among the growers. Becoming known as the Night Riders because of their night-time activities, they also targeted and destroyed the tobacco warehouses of the ATC. Their largest raid of this type was their occupation and attack on areas of Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1907.

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