The "Night-Rider" trials in Tennessee, 1909 (litho)

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 western Tennessee formed the Dark Tobacco 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 ridiculously low prices it offered. A more militant faction of farmers, led by Dr. David B. Amoss of Caldwell County, Kentucky, resorted to physical intimidation or burning the crops of those who ignored the boycott, finally targeting the tobacco warehouses of the ATC itself.