Brutal Saviours of the Black Patch

by Guest Sun Jun 15, 2014 6:58 am

In 1904 tobacco farmers of Kentucky and Tennessee, pushed into poverty by the American Tobacco Company, formed an association to unite against the monopoly. William H. Funk describes the actions of the Night Riders, a vigilante splinter group, which decided to deliver its own brand of rough justice.

Deepest night in southern Kentucky, the humid air thick with the sprightly scent of tobacco plants. The men approach the darkened farmhouse silently, draped in black, hoods covering their faces, their horses’ hooves wrapped in burlap to muffle their step. They would have been unseen, even if anyone had been watching for them, until it was too late.
As they surround the property a dog barks and the night is split apart with successive bursts of gunfire. Flame belches from the muzzles of deer rifles and double-barrelled shotguns, windows explode and wood splinters. A gutter is severed and slides like the arm of a dying man down the front of the façade. The shooting ceases as the front door tremulously cracks open. A young woman appears, her nightgown bright with blood about the neck from a gunshot wound, and staggers weeping into the yard. A man, similarly garbed, follows close behind her, entreating the mob for mercy. Sobbing hysterically, a child reels out of the door and falls on his knees to the porch, his nightclothes stained with his mother’s blood. He watches wide-eyed as the masked men surround his parents.
They are shouting ferociously at the couple, cursing in words the boy has never encountered. Three of the invaders seize the man and sling him face-first against a tree trunk, one holding each of his arms outstretched in a cruciform position while the third advances with a horsewhip. The child howls in anguish while his father is beaten. The woman cries out and rushes to his aid but is punched by another masked man and falls to the ground, where she is kicked until she curls sobbing within herself.

http://www.historytoday.com/william-h-funk/brutal-saviours-black-patch

Not something I know much about and thus interested with Quill, Ben and Me Lady's take on this and how much this is talked about in American history?