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The Night Rider Movement | Kentucky Life | KET

2,719 views · Published 8 August 2013 · 1:17 · Indexed 25 October 2026

Channel: KET - Kentucky Educational Television · 2013 · Education

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Kentucky Life delves into the history of the Night Rider Movement.

Back in the early 1900s, tobacco growers were getting low prices for their crop from the Duke Trust tobacco monopoly, to the point that they were paid less than what it cost to grow. The growers banded together, forming the Planters Protective Association to boycott the monopoly.

The monopoly took its revenge by paying high prices to farmers who weren't part of the association. The Planters Protective Association started "pressuring" growers to resist the monopoly. So began the Night Rider movement.

Dr. David Amoss, a country doctor who had military training, led the growers in the revolt. The Night Riders led often violent attacks on tobacco farmers who sold to the trust. They would show up in the middle of the night wearing masks, burning tobacco and sometimes attacking the farmers themselves.

A Night Rider raid on Hopkinsville on Dec. 5, 1907, caused $500,000 in damage. Dr. Amoss was put on trial in March 1911 but was found not guilty. The U.S. Supreme Court broke up the tobacco monopoly in an antitrust ruling in May 1911. Dr. Amoss died four years later, in 1915.

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