The real secret of Phillips countys success the newspaper boasted, is that the Southerner knows the negro through several generations of experience.". ed. More recent textbooks, he added, have better explained the role of the Black union organizers and how the massacre started. New York: Crown, 2008. Thrown into this highly combustible mix was the return to the United States of black soldiers who often exhibited a less submissive attitude within the Jim Crow society around them. Many whites believed that these veterans (including Robert Hill, who co-founded PFHUA) posed a threat as they claimed greater recognition for their rights at home. Elaine is a small city in Phillips County Arkansas in the Arkansas Delta region of the Mississippi River. [Ida B. Even worse from the planters perspective, the much-feared radical Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, were rumored to be organizing in the fields and mills. 1E, 6E. Local whites requested help from Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough, citing a "Negro uprising". Brough, who had ridden on the train with the troops and accompanied them on a march to the Hoop Spur area. She was raised on the South Side of Chicago amid the modern Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Above, defendants S.A. Jones, Ed Hicks, Frank Hicks, Frank Moore, J.C. Knox,. A mob burned the office of a Black newspaper and sent Black workers fleeing into nearby swamps. In some American schools, museums and other institutions, events like Elaine are being discussed for the first time. Their community's fight for basic labor rights was met with retaliation, in the form of the horrific Elaine Race Massacre of 1919, which Sallie and Annie survived. These soldiers had fought for the civil liberties of their countrymen abroad, and they refused to be relegated to a second-class status considering . At the time of settlement, landowners generally never gave an itemized statement to the black sharecroppers of accounts owed, nor details of the money received for cotton and seed. A dozen Black men were convicted of murder by all-white juries in connection with the 1919 massacre in Elaine, Ark. "[25], White had time to talk with both black and white residents in Elaine. Your Privacy Rights Historian Robert Whitaker says, "As with many racial histories of this kind," it was "one of those shameful events best not talked about". The following morning, Gov. Black farmers began to organize in 1919 to try to negotiate better conditions, including fair accounting and timely payment of monies due them by white landowners. One of them, James White Sr., directs programs at the Elaine Legacy Center. On September 29, 2019, a memorial to those who died during the massacre was dedicated in downtown Helena-West Helena. All the white people had to do was stay away from the church while the meeting was going on. One of the convicted 12 wrote to her from prison, requesting help. No one even took the time to confirm the number of kills, as if these people were as worthless as termites. If it's a crime to represent people in an effort to make honest settlements, then he has committed a crime. The decision by the justices was aided by two white men involved in the massacre who reversed their previous testimonies. Taylor, Kieran. were sent back to the lower court for retrial. In Louisiana, the Historic New Orleans Collection published a website this year about Black activists during Reconstruction, the period immediately after the Civil War. Online at https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/2019/08/02/to-those-known-and-unknown (accessed August 16, 2022). The black press picked up the story and other papers began to integrate Whites counter-narrative into their accounts, galvanizing support for the defendants. But in 1919, the Black sharecroppers of Elaine, Arkansas had had enough. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. If we dont teach ALL AMERICAN HISTORY we miss a opportunity to learn about our part, examine our present, and plan and prepare for our future as, ONE NATION, UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. The military placed several hundred African Americans in makeshift stockades until they could be questioned and vouched for by their white employers. Jones appealed these convictions, which were overturned by the State Supreme Court. [9] The Associated Press spoke with author Grif Stockley, who has published a book on the riot. In Florida, the Orange County Library Systems website has a page about the 1920 Ocoee massacre in which a white mob burned Black homes and churches with links to books, films and other materials. Whayne, Jeannie M. Black Farmers in the Red Autumn: A Review Essay. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 68 (Autumn 2009): 327336. They aimed to hire a lawyer to represent them with the landlords. Richard Hall asked my father to come to Mississippi to visit him. A shooting incident that occurred at a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union escalated into mob violence on the part of the white people in Elaineand surrounding areas. Hundreds of U.S. Army soldiers were sent to Elaine at the governors request. Those defendants unsuccessfully petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari from the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision. triggered widespread protests and calls for racial justice, prompted President Biden to visit the city. In 1910, 78.6% of the population of Phillips County was black. . Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Over the next few days, soldiers, police officers and white mobs are believed to have killed hundreds of people. For a time, the NAACP tried to conceal its role in the appeals, given the hostile reception to its reports on the rioting and the trials. In early 2000, a conference on the Elaine riot was held at the Delta Cultural Center in the county seat of Helena, Arkansas. "Reliving the brutal Elaine Massacre 100 years later" New York Post. The Elaine massacre was nothing like an isolated case, although an accurate accounting of casualties might cement its place as the deadliest. One. [3][2] Robert Whitaker estimated 856 people were killed in his 2008 book on this topic. They produced a predictable narrative that resembled those dating back to slavery. Industries often hired blacks as strikebreakers, increasing or creating resentment against them by white workers.[9]. Hundreds of local teachers have incorporated materials from the exhibit into their lesson plans, said Deborah Baldwin, the universitys associate provost of collections and archives. A change at the Library of Congress to use "Elaine Massacre" as a research topic title more accurately describes the racially motivated killings of black residents in 1919, historians and descendants have said. It used intimidation and attacks to keep blacks suppressed. The 1920 census lists my great-great-great-grandmother as a widow. In 1919, the largest mass terror lynchings in American history took place in Elaine, Arkansas. ", Whayne, Jeannie M. "Low villains and wickedness in high places: Race and class in the Elaine riots. Then the real massacre began: For the next five days, Colonel Jencks and his troops, assisted by vigilantes, hunted black people over a 200-mile radius. Hundreds of black citizens were killed in Elaine, Ark., a century ago this week. A white man had been arrested and was "alleged to have been preaching social equality among the negroes". Out of this tragedy, known as the Elaine massacre, and its subsequent prosecution, would come a Supreme Court decision that would upend years of court-sanctioned injustice against African-Americans and would secure the right of due process for defendants placed in impossible circumstances. There were 3,598 black tenants and sharecroppers who farmed 81,000 acres, and only 587 black farm owners in that year. So Professor Mitchell, an expert on African American history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, helped create a virtual exhibit about the massacre and packed it with teaching materials. He worked with farmers throughout Phillips County. We Have Just Begun: Black Organizing and White Response in the Arkansas Delta, 1919. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58 (Autumn 1999): 265284. [9] He freed these six men in 1925 in the closing days of his administration. Walter F. White's risk-taking investigation and report contributed to his advancing in the organization. On September 30, 2021 On this day in 1919, during a union meeting of African American tenant farmers in rural Arkansas, white law enforcement and union members exchanged gunfire, triggering one of the worst race massacres in US history. The NAACP assisted the defendants in the appeals process, raising money to hire a defense team, which it helped direct. White oppression continued, threatening every black family. Robert L. Hill, a black farmer from Winchester, Arkansas, had founded the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA). Even though they served in large numbers, black soldiers realized over the course of the war and in the immediate aftermath that their achievement and their success actually provoked more rage and more vitriol than if they had utterly failed, says Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I. "[9], Whites tried to disrupt such organizing and threatened farmers. To be released, the men would have to plead guilty to second-degree murder and a sentence of five years from the date they were first incarcerated in the Arkansas State Penitentiary. The Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States. Since most blacks had been disenfranchised by Arkansas' 1891 Election Law and 1892 poll tax amendment, which created barriers to voter registration, blacks as non-voters were excluded from juries. [8] A New York Times headline read, "Planned Massacre of Whites Today," and the Arkansas Gazette (the leading newspaper in Arkansas) wrote that Elaine was "a zone of negro insurrection". The murders, thefts, violence and terror continued long after the troops had gone and the convicted men had been released. When White asked what the boys would do to the man, the conductor told White that "when they get through with him he won't pass for white no more! Efforts to teach the histories are gaining momentum even as some states try to limit how racism is discussed in schools. Little Rock, AR. The sharecroppers who gathered at a small church in Elaine, Arkansas, in the late hours of September 30, 1919, knew the risk they were taking. Colonel Jenckss report of his mission supported this view, claiming only two black people and one of his corporals had died. Why Was Benjamin Franklins Basement Filled With Skeletons? The firm was headed by Ulysses S. Bratton, a native of Searcy County and former assistant federal district attorney. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Soon, word spread that blacks were attacking whites in Elaine. When she came back to her neighborhood, a plantation manager, Billy Archdale, told her if she did not leave, he would kill her, burn her up, and no one would know where she was. Most of those who survived found their homes emptied of possessions that appeared in white peoples homes. The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 18191919. Mulder, Brandon. White supremacists also forced elected Black officials to resign and banished other Black people from Wilmington. White attorneys from Helena were appointed by Circuit Judge J. M. Jackson to represent the first twelve black men to go to trial. After troops arrived in Elaine on the morning of October 2, 1919, the white mobs began to depart the area and return to their homes. And some of these efforts are gaining momentum even as Republican politicians in several states try to block curriculums that emphasize systemic racism. The NAACP sent its Field Secretary, Walter F. White, from New York City to Elaine in October 1919 to investigate events. [5] Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated " twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". The Elaine Massacre Memorial at Court Square Park, 350 Perry St., has been built as a place to honor those killed in violence that began with a shootout on the evening of Sept. 30, 1919, at a . During this Red Scare, the threat of Bolshevism seemed to be everywhere: not only in the labor strikes led by the radical Industrial Workers of the World but also in the cotton fields of Arkansas. Contact African-American men taken prisoner during the Elaine Massacre by U.S. Army troops sent from Camp Pike; 1919. The N.A.A.C.P. He owned 20 acres in Ferguson when the white people in 1919 destroyed everything and took the land. "If you are from Phillips County, stand up," Rev. Mr. Marshall first learned the full history of the 1919 Elaine massacre in her class. The Elaine Massacre Memorial, in Helena, Ark. But the series of injustices the events of that night unleashed would - through several years of tenacious effort - end up before the nations highest court and show that the longstanding tradition of declaring African-Americans guilty absent constitutional guarantees would no longer go unchallenged. It did not dispute the defendants' evidence of torture used to obtain confessions nor of mob intimidation at the trial, but the state argued that, even if true, these elements did not amount to a denial of due process. White Arkansans, fearful of what would happen if African-Americans organized, took violent action, but it was the victims who ended up standing trial. [12], The postwar summer of 1919, also known as Red Summer, had already been marked by deadly massacres targeting African-Americans in more than three dozen cities across the country, (including Chicago, Knoxville, Washington, D.C., and Omaha, Nebraska) being targeted by white mobs. The class created a searchable index of those records and donated it to the Arkansas State Archive. There was a deference that was being paid to state criminal proceedings, then this sort of broke that protection that existed for states.. Railroad Policeman W.D. At the same time, the New York offices of the NAACP, upon the advice of Arkansas attorney Ulysses S. Bratton, hired the Little Rock law firm of George Murphy, a former attorney general and candidate for governor, as counsel for the twelve men. << Previous Wormser, Richard, director. He brought the men and women deemed insurrectionists to the Phillips County jail in Helena. [12] Prominent Little Rock attorney George Rose wrote a letter to outgoing Governor Thomas McRae requesting that he find a way to release the remaining defendants if they agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. Others had their charges dismissed or ultimately were not prosecuted. They attacked black people on sight across the county. They secured new trials for six of the men, known as the Ware defendants, based on the fact that the trial judge had not required jurors to indicate the degree of murder on their ballot forms.The convictions of the other six men, known as the Moore defendants, were affirmed. [There is] a sense of how to do it and who to draw on and what sort of arguments to make. The cases of six of the men would be sent for retrial over a technicality, while the other six defendants including named plaintiff Frank Moore had their cases argued before the United States Supreme Court. These are the same people who dont understand why African Americans choose Black Lives Matter as a valid starting point. Local officials and businessmen conducted their own investigation of what had transpired in the Elaine area. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Families of union members found no welcome when they returned to their homes. A conference on the matter in Helena in 2000 resulted in no closure for the people in Phillips County. As for me, I have a timeline of ten years, 1910 to 1920, in the Delta of Bogy Township, Jefferson, Arkansas, just below Elaine, Arkansas. The recent centennial of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Okla., which prompted President Biden to visit the city, is a prominent example. Colonel Isaac Jenks, commander of the U.S. troops at Elaine, recorded the number of African Americans killed by U.S. troops as only two. Located in the Arkansas Delta, Phillips County had historically been developed for cotton plantations, and its land was worked by enslaved African-Americans before the Civil War. Scipio A. Jones. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 31 (Autumn 1972): 201219. With the success of the Russian Revolution, stopping the spread of international communism was seen as the duty of all loyal Americans. The Elaine Riot of 1919: Race, Class, and Labor in the Arkansas Delta. PhD diss., University of WisconsinMilwaukee, 2019. [6] More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. The troops were aided by seven machine guns. UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. The white leaders put forward their view that black residents had been about to revolt. Descendant of Arkansas Elaine Massacre Victims Push for Restorative Justice. Facing South, October 7, 2020. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/10/descendants-arkansas-elaine-massacre-victims-push-restorative-justice (accessed August 16, 2022). Mr. Wrights 1945 memoir, Black Boy, tells the story of how his uncle was lynched there three years before the 1919 massacre. Elaine was probably the largest massacre of black people in post-Civil War history, yet no federal investigation was ever conducted. 'A Solemn Promise Kept': The 1919 Elaine Race Riot and the Broadening of Habeas Corpus 100 Years Later.". found: The Guardian, August 18, 2019: A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans ("The Elaine Massacre marked one of the darkest moments in our state's history," the office of Arkansas's governor, said in an email.) Pierce, Michael, and Calvin White, eds. [28], The defendants next petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging that the proceedings that took place in the Arkansas state court, while ostensibly complying with trial requirements, in fact complied only in form. He made no motion for a change of venue, nor did he challenge a single prospective juror, taking the first twelve called. By days end, countless black women, men and children had been slaughtered. The re-trials of the Ware defendants began on May 3, 1920. In previous months, racial conflict had occurred in numerous cities in America, including Washington DC; Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Indianapolis, Indiana. In Moore v. Dempsey, the court in 1923 overturned the convictions of six of the Elaine 12, arguing that the confessions had been secured through torture. For decades, the riot and numerous murders were too painful to be discussed openly in the region. This project is funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant award. One of Ms. Browns former students, Edlun Marshall, said that he grew up hearing about the massacre from his extended family. [9][10], After the massacre, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that blacks were planning an insurrection. I first learned of the Elaine Massacre today, February 7, 2017, and I am both saddened and angered. It is estimated that 237 Blacks wee killed compared to 5 Whites. On Oct. 31, a grand jury indicted 122 black men and women for offenses ranging from murder to night riding. The Elaine Massacre was one of a number of massacres that took place in 1919 at the end of WWI. She and her seven siblings . Special thanks to the Department of Arkansas Heritage. The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30October 2, 1919 at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas. Union advocates brought armed guards to protect the meeting. [13] On September 29, representatives met with about 100 black farmers at a church near Elaine to discuss how to obtain fairer settlements from landowners. [9], Twelve of the defendants (who became known as the "Arkansas Twelve" or "Elaine Twelve") were convicted, most of them as "accomplices", and sentenced to death in the electric chair[10] by all-white juries for the murder of a white deputy at the Adkins church. . The massacre. [12], The defendants' lawyers obtained reversal of the verdicts by the Arkansas Supreme Court in six of the twelve death penalty cases, known as the Ware defendants. Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth. The county sheriff organized the posse and whites gathered to put down what was rumored as a "black insurrection". The town was at the center of a rapidly changing lumber and plantation economy known for harsh working conditions. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. 100 Rock Street The ruling also carried broad-ranging implications for all citizens in terms of federal intervention in contested criminal cases. The conflict began on the night of September 30, 1919, when approximately 100 African Americans, mostly sharecroppers on the plantations of white landowners, attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church in Hoop Spur (Phillips County), three miles north of Elaine. The farmers were disadvantaged as many were illiterate. Despite its impact, little about the carnage in Elaine was unique during the summer of 1919. It is best known as the location of the Elaine Massacre which took place on the days of September 30 thru October 1, 1919. As you know, our black history is very limited in some areas. When a tribute gift is given the honoree will receive a letter acknowledging your generosity and a bookplate will be placed in a book. The Year before, a black farmer by the name of Robert L. Hill had founded the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. On October 31, 1919, the Phillips County grand jury charged 122 African Americans with crimes stemming from the racial disturbances. Courtesy of Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. Online at http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Mark-Ellis.pdf (accessed August 16, 2022). He pointed out that the disparity in death toll alone belied the accepted version of events. Calls went out to the governor for federal troops. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine This Day in History Aug. 5, 1896: Polk County Massacre Time Periods: Industrial Revolution: 1877 - 1899 Themes: African American, Labor, Racism & Racial Identity Newspaper account of African Americans killed and wounded during labor strife in Polk County, from the New York Times; August 10, 1896. The parish sheriff called for a posse to capture suspects in the killing. [26], Governor Brough asked the United States Post Office Department to prohibit the mailing of the Chicago Defender and Crisis to Arkansas, while local officials attempted to enjoin distribution of the Defender. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. According to Lentz, when we narrate the black freedom struggle in the 20th century, we actually need to shift our timeline and the pins we put on the timeline for the moments of significant breakthrough and accomplishments. Despite Moore vs. Dempsey being relatively obscure, if the U.S. civil rights movement is understood as an effort to secure the full social, political, and legal rights of citizenship, then 1923 marks a significant event, writes Francis. Brough responded by gaining permission from the Department of War to send more than 500 battle-tested troops from Camp Pike, outside of Little Rock (Pulaski County). It took place in the Delta farmlands of Phillips County, Arkansas. ; and in the plantation region of the Arkansas Delta. Enraged citizens fired at the bodies of the dead negroes as they rode out of Helena toward Elaine.. How could anyone treat people with such horrendous disregard and violence? A seven-man committee formed to investigate the killings. He also told how soldiers brought a suspected union leader to his company store for interrogation, poured kerosene over his body and tossed a match. White wrote in the Chicago Daily News on October 19, 1919, that the belief there had been an insurrection was only a figment of the imagination of Arkansas whites and not based on fact. He said, White men in Helena told me that more than one hundred Negroes were killed. Famed journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett secretly interviewed some of the prisoners in Helena, from which she produced the pamphlet The Arkansas Race Riot. This work also challenged allegations of an insurrection and documented the torture and other depredations the prisoners had suffered. Cortner, Richard C. A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases. He reported that local people said that up to 100 blacks had been killed. Elaine, Arkansas, one of those small towns built upside the railroad, is located in Phillips County, which is bordered by the Mississippi River to the east. Union, Reaction, and Riot: The Biography of a Rural Race Riot. "[25] Biographer Kenneth Robert Janken writes of this description: "It is likely that White exaggerated the dramatic manner of his escape, much in the way he did his childhood experiences in the Atlanta riotsurviving documents reveal several inconsistencies between what White wrote at the time and what he later recalled having happened. S. Bratton, a black farmer by the State Supreme Court 's decision ( accessed August 16 2022... Status considering and vouched for by their white employers, thefts, violence and terror continued long after the and... Delta, 1919, requesting help across the County returned to their emptied... 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