Over in France, farmers have shut down access to Paris in protest of their government's actions. Here in America, truckers are making a pilgrimage to the border with Mexico to show support for the Texas governor and his efforts to stop the entry of illegal aliens. Some people say that these fights are futile because national governments are too powerful for the average citizen to fight, but they are wrong. These struggles have been successfully fought and won in the past. One example is an incident that occurred down in Tennessee that they call the Battle of Athens. It is not well known, but every American should learn about the story.
This conflict happened in 1946 in the city of Athens, which is the county seat of McMinn County, Tennessee. Ten years previously, a Democrat by the name of Paul Cantrell had been elected sheriff. Alaska doesn’t have sheriffs, so readers might not be familiar with the power of that position, but sheriffs have great authority within their county. If they are unscrupulous, they can abuse this power to take advantage of the citizens residing there.
Tennessee in the 1930s was run by a Democrat political organization that used corrupted elections to put their candidates into office. This was not unique to Tennessee, many other places in the country have gone through a similar experience. Previous posts have covered the corruption in San Francisco back in 1851. The Boston, and Chicago Democrat parties have also been accused of relying on election rigging to stay in power. What made the Battle of Athens noteworthy was how the public pushed back when they were confronted with a corrupt government.
Shortly after he took office in 1936, Sheriff Paul Cantrell turned out to be one of the bad kinds of sheriffs. He abused the population with arrests for fraudulent misdemeanors to earn money from fines and turned a blind eye to illegal roadhouses in the county that were locations for alcohol sales, gambling, and prostitution. His corruption was so rampant that McMinn County got the reputation of being like a mini-Las Vegas in the middle of the conservative American heartland.
In a normally functioning democracy, if the residents were unhappy about the sheriff's performance, they would vote him out of office. Cantrell anticipated this and for all subsequent county elections after he was first elected, he would commandeer the ballot boxes and personally count the votes at the McMinn County Jail in the city of Athens. Opposition poll watchers were not permitted to witness the vote counting, and Sheriff Cantrell would announce election results. Not surprisingly, Mr. Cantrell won every election conducted in this manner.
The corrupt sheriff was able to get away with his racket for 10 years. He was able to remain in office and profit from the payoffs he received from the illegal roadhouse industry. That all changed in 1946. The Second World War was over, and tough battle-hardened GIs were returning home. Sheriff Cantrell saw them as a potential threat, so he had his deputies start rousting the GIs if they were caught drinking at one of Cantrell's roadhouses. These actions may have been intended to keep the ex-GIs under control but had the opposite effect. It enraged the GIs who resented being preyed upon, and having just defeated the Nazis, they weren’t about to take a bunch of guff from some local tinpot sheriff and his deputies.
In a series of secret meetings, the GIs decided that they needed to act. They formed a nonpartisan political party and ran their candidates in the county election that August. This included a war veteran by the name of Knox Henry running for the position of sheriff. This was a direct challenge to Sheriff Cantrell’s corrupt system, and the results of the election would determine the fate of the county. The GIs feared that Cantrell would steal the election from them as he had done previously, so they appealed to the governor of Tennessee and to the US Attorney General in Washington DC to send government poll watchers to ensure the election was conducted fairly. Neither government official responded to the requests, meaning the GIs were on their own.
The first sign of trouble on election day was when a black man named Tom Gillespie attempted to vote in support of GI candidates. He was denied the opportunity to vote and as he left the polling place the poll watcher, also one of Cantrell's deputies, shot the man in the back. A crowd gathered to protest, but 4 additional armed deputies were placed at the polling place to defend it. The crowd continued to build and after recognizing how angry the crowd was, the sheriff closed the polling place. One of the deputy sheriffs took the ballot box to the county jail. At the same time, two deputies were sent to the GI election headquarters to arrest their leaders for interfering in the election. The deputies were promptly taken hostage by the GIs, which escalated the situation.
At other polling places in the county, poll watchers observed multiple instances of election fraud involving underage voters and people allowed to vote who were not on the voter rolls. When objections were raised, the Cantrell deputies running the polling locations refused to intervene. At 6:00 PM when the polls closed, the sheriff had all ballot boxes taken to the sheriff's office to be counted. It first appeared as if the corrupt sheriff was about to steal another election, but the GIs had other ideas. They sent a group to the local National Guard armory where they broke down the doors and took all the rifles, two machine guns, and all the ammunition they could carry. The GIs surrounded the jail and threatened Sheriff Cantrell that they would attack unless he delivered the ballot boxes to be counted openly in front of the public. The sheriff refused and shots were exchanged, with two deputies being wounded inside the jail. The GIs knew it would be foolish to try to storm the brick jail house building as they could be mowed down by the sheriff's gunfire, so it became a standoff for a short time.
The confrontation was further escalated when the GIs obtained dynamite and began lighting fuses on sticks of it and throwing them at the jail. One exploded under a police cruiser which was flipped over by the explosion. Eventually, the deputies inside the jail surrendered and released the ballot boxes to the GIs. After which the GIs found that Sheriff Cantrell was not present among the captured. He had slipped away earlier in an ambulance that the GIs had allowed to remove the 2 deputies injured in the initial exchange of gunfire.
In the absence of any legitimate law enforcement in the county, the GIs formed a militia to keep order and to prevent either the corrupt sheriff or his deputies from retaking power. Four days later the sheriff, who was still in hiding, sent a telegram to the governor resigning his position. The next day, State Representative George Woods came to the county and supervised counting the ballots. It was determined that the GI candidate, Knox Henry had defeated Sheriff Cantrell by a vote of 2,175 to 1,270.
The intervention of the GIs and their use of force in this election was vilified in the national press. Their actions were called lawless, but they started a revolution in Tennessee politics that led to the end of the corrupt Democrat machine running things there. A new governor and Senator were elected later that year that were not supported by the Democrat party machine. These successes were likely due to the intervention of a bunch of Angry GIs in one small county.
Unfortunately, neither corrupt Sheriff Cantrell nor his deputies were ever charged for their corruption in multiple elections or for the shooting of Tom Gillespie. They were allowed to resume life as civilians and faded away into history.
Many aspects of this story might sound familiar. We saw the Democrats pull the same dirty tricks in the 2020 presidential election. Poll watchers were denied access to witness the vote counts, mysterious ballot boxes appeared from under tables in Atlanta and were counted without the required witnesses, underage and unregistered voters were allowed to vote. Obvious election fraud occurred with no punishment for the perpetrators of these crimes.
The Battle of Athens is an example of brave men confronting tyranny and doing what was needed to fight against it. Their courage led to a political revolution in Tennessee that went far beyond their county. When I see farmers protesting in France and Texans refusing to obey the federal government at their border, I see the same spirit that was present back in 1946. Hopefully, these new protests will be just as successful.
Citations:
https://www.americanheritage.com/battle-athens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
http://www.prohibitionists.org/background/party_platform/battle_of_athens.html
Thanks, Eileen, this is a little-known event, but I agree with you. It would make a great movie, it is very timely, plus it is an actual event that really happened. Please forward this post to any movie producers you know!
This is really good. Never heard this story before. Something like this maybe needed. Would make a good movie.