In September 1904, following the threat of economic ruin as tobacco prices fell below the cost of production, white farmers in the region formed the Planters’ Protective Association.
"Now we have got to get a new regime in office, new blood, new brains; got to change the whole system and whole spirit of the South…"[6] The first Southern movement of the early 1900s to make a determined fight against economic manipulation ended in assassination.
[7] Led by Governor William Goebel, this campaign against the Louisville and Nashville Railroad marked an attempt to secure labor and franchise laws in Kentucky, and to call for the taxation of hidden railway capital.
In 1904, Felix G. Ewing, a wealthy planter of Cedar Hill, in Robertson County, Tennessee, campaigned throughout the Black Patch calling for downtrodden tobacco farmers to join him in his crusade to become "apostles of the new idea.
[13] Formed in 1890, the American Tobacco Company, headed by North Carolina entrepreneur George Washington Duke, underwent a period of rapid expansion throughout the early 20th century.
[15] As the "Duke Trust" assumed control of the market, it subjected the "ignorant, illiterate, tenant-farmers" that had poured into the Black Patch to raise tobacco on share leases to precarious conditions.
[9] The American Society of Equity, in the meantime, had commenced to penetrate the tobacco areas of Kentucky and Tennessee and once again some of the most influential planters in the region talked of the possibilities of cooperative action.
Riding on the popularity of the American Society of Equity, the Planters’ Protective Association, at its peak in 1905, was estimated to have some 30,000 members in western Kentucky and Tennessee.
Most notably, the unfavorable land tenure system, the indolent and indifferent farmer, financial inability, and trust opposition all succeeded in the delay of progressive action.
Convinced of the futility of the Planters’ Protective Association's peaceful attempts at cooperation, the suggestion of violent action commenced to take hold in the minds of many of the more desperate, downtrodden farmers.