In Tracy City, convict labor became a central part of coal and coke production after the Civil War. Beginning in 1871, the Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company leased convicts from the State of Tennessee and used them to stoke, tend, and clean coke ovens and to work in adjacent mines. Hundreds of coke ovens were built from the early 1870s into the 1880s to produce coal coke for iron and steel making. The prisoners, mostly male and of African descent, were housed in a stockade that had been used during the Civil War by the 20th Connecticut Volunteers. For about a quarter century, convicts were part of daily life in Tracy City, where miners later recalled that prisoners were whipped for failing to meet their weekly mining quota, called their task, and where the mortality rate among convicts was said to be high. Those who died were buried on a ridge above the coke ovens. Free miners and workmen resented the convict labor system, and in August 1892 Tracy City miners burned the stockade and sent the convicts back to Nashville by train in protest over jobs being done by prisoners. The Tennessee Legislature ended convict leasing in 1896, but conflict between the mining company and free miners continued. Strikes were frequent, and in June 1904 the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company closed its Tracy City mines and began moving administrators and equipment to Birmingham. The Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company then took over operations with free miners but achieved only limited success, and coke production at the site had ceased by the early 1920s.