Armed WWII veterans laid siege to a corrupt sheriff's jail in 1946 Tennessee — then counted the ballots he had locked inside.
In 1946, Athens, Tennessee was a town of about 7,000 run by a Memphis-linked machine. Sheriff Pat Mansfield and former sheriff Paul Cantrell were 'Crump men,' loyal to Memphis boss E.H. Crump, and the county paid deputies a fee for every arrest.
Deputies reportedly had weekly quotas of up to 115 arrests, with $16.50 drunkenness fines regardless of whether anyone was drunk. Mansfield reportedly collected around $104,000 over four years, and returning GIs were easy targets.
Veterans formed the GI Non-Partisan League and challenged every county office, with Knox Henry running for sheriff against Cantrell. When their campaign manager telegraphed the governor and attorney general for election protection, neither responded.
On Election Day, August 1, 1946, Mansfield had sworn in about 200 armed men as deputies. In the afternoon, Deputy Windy Wise attacked a man with brass knuckles at a polling place and shot him in the back, and deputies went on to beat veteran poll watchers.
Deputies locked the ballot boxes inside the jail, the traditional way to stuff them with pre-marked votes. Veterans borrowed keys to National Guard and State Guard armories, collected rifles and pistols, and by 8:45 p.m. surrounded the jail with as many as several hundred armed men.
Gunfire erupted around 9 p.m. and went on for hours, with a deputy's throat slashed and another deputy's jaw shattered. At about 2:30 a.m. dynamite blasted a deputy's cruiser and the jail's front porch, and within thirty minutes the deputies surrendered with their hands raised. No one died.
Veterans recovered the untouched ballot boxes and counted them publicly. In five untampered precincts Henry beat Cantrell 1,168 to 789, Mansfield telegraphed his resignation on August 4, and Henry was appointed sheriff the next day.
The new administration abolished the arrest-for-profit system and capped official earnings at $5,000. Only Deputy Wise faced prosecution, receiving one to three years, and Cantrell went back to banking.
National coverage got it wrong: The New York Times falsely ran 'TENNESSEE SHERIFF IS SLAIN,' and one columnist compared the veterans to a lynch mob. Today the Battle of Athens is cited as a rare case of American citizens taking up arms against officials and prevailing.