Trouble! at Coal Creek

Activist and artist Sauerbrei’s rousing debut graphic novel makes a timely case for solidarity in its nimble depiction of the founding of the Knights of Labor. In the 1890s, a young Welsh family moves to Coal Creek, Tenn., so Pa can earn “a fair wage for honest work” in the mines. His son sees his father’s hopes crushed by a system that makes sure miners are in constant debt to the company store. When the miners refuse to sign a new and even more exploitative contract, the coal bosses bring in Black prison laborers to replace them. Three hundred armed miners demand an end to convict labor, but the governor quashes their initial success by sending in militias alongside more prisoners. Movingly, the story pivots to the perspective of one Black prisoner, who was initially exploited as a sharecropper before he was arrested for sitting next to a white woman on a train. In grayscale watercolors and orderly panels, Sauerbrei depicts the dark, claustrophobic conditions of the mine, and the eerie power of the protestors—now 2,000 strong—storming the stockade. A detailed, wordless sequence portrays how several Knights blow up the mine; the prisoner watches with a small smile of solidarity, and a raised hand to help. Sauerbrei’s account lands with force, like a protest song demonstrating how many voices can become one. (July)