Laura Wilson Locke Gary, author of Let Me Tell You About Coal Creek, was born in 1913 on a farm near Coal Creek, Tennessee. Her father, Vernon Wilson was a coal miner who moved to Tennessee from his native Newton, North Carolina as a teenager. Her mother, Agnes Staples Wilson was a descendent of the Staples family of Anderson County, Tennessee and the Gadson family of Gadson Town (now Claxton), Tennessee. Laura grew up in Coal Creek (now Lake City) and received an education up to the eighth grade during a time when there was segregation and no public high schools for blacks in the area. In 1933 she married Carl B. Locke from neighboring LaFollette, Tennessee. They became parents to a son and a daughter and she was pregnant with their third child (a daughter) when he was killed in an accident in the Southern Colleries Coal Mines. How she overcame the hardship of being a penniless coalminer’s widow to become a college graduate, nurse, and honoree of the State of Tennessee House of Representatives is a remarkable story told in her book Let Me Tell You About Coal Creek: My Life and the History of the Black Citizens of Coal Creek. Laura Wilson Gary still lives in Lake City and recently made appearances at Coal Creek Discovery Day 2000 and Miner’s Appreciation Day.

*Home  *About the book *Genene M. Smith *News articles

*Book excerpt *Order form *Email the authors *Read a copy free! *Links