Elaine massacre
Part of the Red Summer and the Nadir of American race relations | |
Date | September 30, 1919 |
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Location | Hoop Spur, Phillips County, Arkansas, U.S. |
Also known as | Elaine Massacre |
Participants | Residents of Phillips County, Arkansas |
Deaths | 100–237 black people,[1][2] 5 white people[3] |
Part of a series on the |
Nadir of American race relations |
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The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "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".[9][10]
After the massacre, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that blacks were planning an
Because of the widespread attacks which white mobs committed against blacks during the
Background
History of Arkansas |
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Located in the
African Americans outnumbered whites in the area around Elaine by a ten-to-one ratio, and by three-to-one in the county overall.
The all-white legislature had
White landowners often underpaid sharecroppers for their crops and paid when they saw fit. Between the prices of goods purchased from the plantation store and the crop underpayments, many were kept in debt to their landlords.[13]
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. The farmers were disadvantaged as many were illiterate. It was an unwritten law of the cotton country that the sharecroppers could not quit and leave a
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. Robert L. Hill, a black farmer from Winchester, Arkansas, had founded the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA). He worked with farmers throughout Phillips County. Its purpose was "to obtain better payments for their cotton crops from the white plantation owners who dominated the area during the Jim Crow era. Black sharecroppers were often exploited in their efforts to collect payment for their cotton crops."[9]
Whites tried to disrupt such organizing and threatened farmers.
The postwar summer of 1919, also known as
Events
The Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America had organized chapters in the Elaine area in 1918–19.[15] On September 29, representatives met with about 100 black farmers at a church near Elaine to discuss how to obtain fairer settlements from landowners. Whites had resisted union organizing by the farmers and often spied on or disrupted such meetings. Approximately 100 African-American farmers, led by Robert L. Hill, the founder of the union, met at a church in Hoop Spur, near Elaine in Phillips County. Union advocates brought armed guards to protect the meeting. When two deputized white men and a black trustee arrived at the church, shots were exchanged. Railroad Policeman W.D. Adkins, employed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad, was killed[16][17] and the other white man wounded; it was never determined who shot first.
According to Revolution in the Land: Southern Agriculture in the 20th Century (2002), in a section called "The Changing Face of Sharecropping and Tenancy":[18]
The black trustee raced back to Helena, the county seat of Phillips County, and alerted officials. A posse was dispatched and within a few hours hundreds of white men, many of them the "low down" variety, began to comb the area for blacks they believed were launching an insurrection. In the end, over a hundred African Americans and five white men were killed. Some estimates of the black death toll range in the hundreds. Allegations surfaced that the white posse and even U.S. soldiers who were brought in to put down the so called "rebellion" had massacred defenseless black men, women and children.
The parish sheriff called for a posse to capture suspects in the killing. The county sheriff organized the posse and whites gathered to put down what was rumored as a "black insurrection".[9] Additional armed white men entered the county from outside to support the hunt and a mob of 500 to 1,000 armed men formed. They attacked black people on sight across the county. Local whites requested help from Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough, citing a "Negro uprising". Sensational newspaper headlines published by the Arkansas Gazette and others reported that an "insurrection" was occurring, and that black people had planned to murder white leaders.[5][19]
Governor Brough contacted the War Department and requested Federal troops. After considerable delay, nearly 600 U.S. troops arrived, finding the area in chaos.[20] White men roamed the area randomly attacking and killing black people.[9] Fighting in the area lasted for three days before the troops ended the violence. The federal troops disarmed both parties and arrested 285 black residents, putting them in stockades for investigation, and according to them, protection, until they were vouched for by their employers.[9]
Although official records of the time count eleven black men and five white men killed,[4][21] there are estimates from 100 to 237 African Americans killed, and more wounded. At least two and possibly more victims were killed by Federal troops. The exact number of black people killed is unknown because of the wide rural area in which they were attacked.[3][1][10][9]
Press coverage
A dispatch from Helena, Arkansas to The New York Times, datelined October 1, said: "Returning members of the posse brought numerous stories and rumors, through all of which ran the belief that the rioting was due to propaganda distributed among the negroes by white men."[22]
The next day's report added:
Additional evidence has been obtained of the activities of propagandists among the negroes, and it is thought that a plot existed for a general uprising against the whites." A white man had been arrested and was "alleged to have been preaching social equality among the negroes". Part of the headline was: "Trouble Traced to Socialist Agitators."[23]
A few days later a Western Newspaper Union dispatch was captioned, "Captive Negro Insurrectionists".[24]
Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough appointed a Committee of Seven to investigate. The group was composed of prominent local white businessmen. Without talking to any of the black farmers, they concluded that the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America was a socialist enterprise and "established for the purpose of banding negroes together for the killing of white people".[25] This version of events has persisted in many histories of the riot.[citation needed]
NAACP involvement
The NAACP promptly released a statement from a contact in Arkansas providing another account of the origins of the violence noting efforts by
The whole trouble, as I understand it, started because a Mr. Bratton, a white lawyer from Little Rock, Ark., was employed by sixty or seventy colored families to go to Elaine to represent them in a dispute with the white planters relative to the sale price of cotton.
It referred to a report in The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee on October 3 that quoted Bratton's father:[26]
It had been impossible for the negroes to obtain itemized statements of accounts, or in fact to obtain statements at all, and that the manager was preparing to ship their cotton, they being sharecroppers and having a half interest therein, off without settling with them or allowing them to sell their half of the crop and pay up their accounts.... If it's a crime to represent people in an effort to make honest settlements, then he has committed a crime.
The
According to his own account, White had been in Phillips County for a brief time when he learned there were rumors floating about him. He quickly took the first train back to
White had time to talk with both black and white residents in Elaine. He reported that local people said that up to 100 blacks had been killed. White published his findings in the Daily News, the
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. Years later, White said in his memoir that people in Elaine told him that up to 200 blacks had been killed.[1]
Trials
In October and November 1919, an all-white Arkansas state grand jury returned indictments against 122 blacks. Since most blacks had been
Those blacks willing to testify against others and to work without shares for terms as determined by their landlords, were set free. Those who refused to comply with those conditions, or were labeled as ringleaders or were judged unreliable, were indicted. According to the affidavits later supplied by the defendants, many of the prisoners had been beaten, whipped or tortured by electric shocks to extract testimony or confessions. They were threatened with death if they recanted their testimony. A total of 73 suspects were charged with murder; other charges included conspiracy and insurrection.[3]
The trials were held in 1920 in the county courthouse in Elaine, Phillips County. Mobs of armed whites milled around the courthouse. Some of the white audience in the courtroom also carried arms. The lawyers for the defense did not subpoena witnesses for the defense and did not allow their clients to testify.[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
After those convictions, 36 of the remaining defendants chose to plead guilty to second-degree murder rather than face trial. Sixty-seven other defendants were convicted of various charges and sentenced to terms up to 21 years.[9] When the cases were remanded to the state court, the six "Moore" defendants settled with the lower court on lesser charges and were sentenced to time already served.
Appeals
During appeals, the death penalty cases were separated. The NAACP took on the task of organizing the defendants' appeals. The NAACP assisted the defendants in the appeals process, raising money to hire a defense team, which it helped direct. 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. Once it undertook to organize the defense, it went to work vigorously, raising more than $50,000 and hiring Scipio Africanus Jones, a highly respected African-American attorney from Arkansas, and Colonel George W. Murphy, a 79-year-old Confederate veteran and former Attorney General for the State of Arkansas.[9] Moorfield Storey, descended from Boston abolitionists and founding president of the NAACP since 1909, became part of the team when the Moore cases went to the Supreme Court. He had been president of the American Bar Association in 1895.[14]
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.[9] The grounds were that the jury had failed to specify whether the defendants were guilty of murder in the first or second degree; those cases (known as Ware et al.) were sent back to the lower court for retrial.[9] The lower court retried the defendants beginning on May 3, 1920. On the third day of the trials, Murphy collapsed in the courtroom.[29]
Scipio Jones had to carry most of the responsibility for the remaining trials. The all-white juries quickly convicted the six defendants of second-degree murder and sentenced them to 12 years each in prison. Jones appealed these convictions, which were overturned by the State Supreme Court. It found that the exclusion of blacks from the juries resulted in a lack of due process for the defendants, based on violations of the Fourteenth Amendment (especially Due Process Clause) and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, due to exclusion of blacks from the juries.[14] The lower courts failed to retry the men within the two years required by Arkansas law, and the defense finally gained their release in 1923.[14]
Moore et al.
The
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. They argued that the accused had not been adequately defended and were convicted under the pressure of the mob, with blatant disregard for their constitutional rights.[30]
The defendants originally intended to file their petition in Federal district court, but the only sitting judge was assigned to other judicial duties in Minnesota at the time and would not return to Arkansas until after the defendants' scheduled execution date. Judge John Ellis Martineau of the Pulaski County chancery court issued the writ. Although the writ was later overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court, his action postponed the execution date long enough to permit the defendants to seek habeas corpus relief in Federal court.[30]
U.S. District Judge Jacob Trieber issued another writ. The State of Arkansas defended the convictions from a narrowly legalistic position, based on the US Supreme Court's earlier decision in Frank v. Mangum (1915). 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. The United States district court agreed, denying the writ, but it found there was probable cause for an appeal and allowed the defendants to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.[30]
In
Just hours before Governor McRae left office in 1925, he contacted
Aftermath
The Supreme Court's decision marked the beginning of an era in which the Supreme Court gave closer scrutiny to criminal justice cases and reviewed state actions against the Due Process Clause and the Bill of Rights. A decade later, the Supreme Court reviewed the case of the
"It is documented that five whites, including a soldier died at Elaine, but estimates of African American deaths, made by individuals writing about the Elaine affair between 1919 and 1925, range from 20 to 856; if accurate, these numbers would make it by far the most deadly conflict in the history of the United States.[33] The Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture notes that estimates of African-American deaths range into the "hundreds".[34]
Since the late 20th century, researchers have begun to investigate the Elaine race riot more thoroughly. For decades, the riot and numerous murders were too painful to be discussed openly in the region. The wide-scale violence ended union organizing among black farmers. White oppression continued, threatening every black family. Historian Robert Whitaker says, "As with many racial histories of this kind," it was "one of those shameful events best not talked about".[29][10]
Another reason for silence was that the second Ku Klux Klan began to be active in Arkansas in 1921, concentrating in black-majority areas. It used intimidation and attacks to keep blacks suppressed. Author Richard Wright grew up in Phillips County and discusses it in his autobiography Black Boy. He wrote that when he questioned his mother about why their people did not fight back, "the fear that was in her made her slap me into silence".[29]
A 1961 article, "Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot", claimed that blacks were planning an insurrection, based on interviews with whites who had been alive at the time, and that they were fairly treated by planters of the area. It repeated rumors of 1919 that certain planters were targeted for murder.[17] This view has been generally discounted by historians publishing since the late 20th century.
In early 2000, a conference on the Elaine riot was held at the Delta Cultural Center in the county seat of Helena, Arkansas.[9][35] It was an effort to review the facts but did not result in "closure" for the people of Phillips County.[9] The Associated Press spoke with author Grif Stockley, who has published a book on the riot. He said that in 2000, there were still two versions of the riot, which he characterized as the "white" version, related to their idea that the union planned an attack on whites, and a "black" version, related to farmers' efforts to gain fair settlements of their crops. Stockley said there "was plenty of evidence to say whites attacked blacks indiscriminately".[36] Local electoral offices were divided between the races in West Helena and the county.[36]
Memorial
In September 2019, 100 years after the event, an Elaine Massacre Memorial was unveiled.[10] A Memorial Willow Tree planted at the memorial in April 2019 was cut down in August, and a "memorial tag" stolen.[37] Local residents wanted the vandalism investigated as a hate crime, but the case was still unsolved as of 2021.[38][39]
Representation in other media
- Wormser, Richard, director. The Elaine Riot: Tragedy & Triumph. VHS Documentary. Little Rock: Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, 2002.
- Evans, Josh, composer. Elaine. Jazz Composition. New York: Jazz at Lincoln Center, 2021.
See also
- Lynching of William Turner 23 miles (37 km) from Hoop Spur in rural Phillips County, Arkansas
- Mass racial violence in the United States
- Nadir of American race relations
- Racism in the United States
- Red Summer (1919)
- Moore v. Dempsey (1923)
- Racial Equality Proposal, 1919
- List of ethnic riots
- List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
References
- ^ a b c Walter Francis White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White, University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA reprint, 1995, pg. 49.
- ^ a b Arkansas Assembly 2017
- ^ a b c d e Elaine Massacre, Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture; accessed April 3, 2008.
- ^ a b Rogers, O. A. (1960). The Elaine Race Riots of 1919. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 19 (2): 142.
- ^ a b [Ida B. Wells (Wells-Barnett, I. B.)] (1920). [The Arkansas Race Riot https://archive.org/details/TheArkansasRaceRiot/].
- ^ White, Walter F. (December 6, 1919). "'Massacring Whites' in Arkansas". The Nation. CIX (2840).
- ^ ISBN 978-0-307-33982-9.
- ^ a b c d e f "The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century". The Washington Post. 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "Elaine Massacre". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 2012-07-07.
- ^ a b c d e Krug, Teresa (18 August 2019). "A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
- ^ Robertson, Campbell (February 10, 2015). "History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names". The New York Times.
- ^ Branam, Chris. "Election Law of 1891". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 3 October 2023.
- JSTOR 40025496. Retrieved 27 August 2023.
The Negroes had been having trouble in getting settlements for the cotton they raised on land owned by whites. Both the Negroes and the white owners were to share the profits when the crop was sold at the end of the year. Between the time of planting and selling the share-croppers "took up" food, clothing, and necessities at excessive prices from the plantation store owned by the planter. It was not a practice of the landowner and share-croppers to go together to a market to dispose of the cotton when it was ready. Rather the landowner sold the crop whenever and however he saw fit. At the time of settlement neither an itemized statement of accounts owed nor an accounting of the money received for cotton and seed was, in most cases, given or shown the Negroes. The total amount owed was stated, and the Negroes then given a settlement which inevitably kept many Negroes in debt with the landlord. The Negroes were afraid, because of intimidation and possible bodily harm, to protest openly the disadvantages of the system. This procedure of accounting led to alleged abuses of padding and peonage by unscrupulous landowners and their agents. Many Negroes were utterly helpless in the face of "vicious exploitation." It was an unwritten law of the cotton country that they could not "quit" and leave a plantation until their debts were paid. Many Negroes in Phillips County whose cotton was sold in October, 1918, did not get a settlement before July of the following year.
Note: The author of this article was President of Arkansas Baptist Colleg, Little Rock. - ^ a b c d e f g Walter L. Brown, "Reviewed Work: A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases by Richard C. Cortner", The Arkansas Historical Quarterly Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 289-91, via JSTOR; accessed February 13, 2017.
- ^ McCarty, J. (1978). The Red Scare in Arkansas: A Southern State and National Hysteria. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 37(3), 264-277.
- ^ ODMP memorial W.D. Adkins
- ^ a b Butts, J. W., and Dorothy James. "The Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot of 1919", Arkansas Historical Quarterly 20 (Spring 1961): 95–104, via JSTOR
- ^ "Electronic History Resources, online since 1990". Historical Text Archive. 1956-11-04. Retrieved 2012-07-07.
- ^ (See scanned Gazette headlines on this page)
- JSTOR 40038126.
- ^ Waterman, J. S., & Overton, E. E. (1932). The Aftermath of Moore v. Dempsey. . Louis L. Rev., 18, 117.
- ^ New York Times: "Nine Killed in Fight with Arkansas Posse", October 2, 1919; accessed January 27, 2010
- ^ "Six More are Killed in Arkansas Riots", New York Times, October 3, 1919; accessed January 27, 2010.
- ^ New York Times: "Captive Negro Insurrectionists", October 12, 1919; accessed January 27, 2010.
- ^ Eric M. Freedman, Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Liberty (New York University Press, 2001), p. 68
- ^ New York Times: "Lays Riots to Cotton Row", October 13, 1919; accessed January 27, 2010.
- ^ a b "Walter White: Mr. NAACP, 2003, p. 52"
- ^ Jason McCollom, "Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA)", 2015, Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture; accessed February 18, 2016
- ^ a b c JAY JENNINGS, "12 Innocent Men", New York Times, June 22, 2008; accessed February 17, 2016.
- ^ a b c d e Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923)
- ^ "Thomas J. Terral". oldstatehouse.com. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved April 14, 2012.
- Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXII (Winter 1963), p. 317
- ^ Grif Stockley, Blood in their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), xiv.
- ^ "Elaine race riot", Encyclopedia of Arkansas; accessed February 13, 2017.
- ^ Reconsidering the Elaine Race Riots of 1919, Conference, February 10–11, 2000, Delta Cultural Center
- ^ a b Associated Press, "Conference to dredge up bloody past of 1919 Arkansas race riot", Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, February 2009
- ^ "Arkansas: tree honoring 1919 Elaine Massacre victims cut down". The Guardian. August 26, 2019.
- ^ Elaine massacre: how a Black labor movement was met with a violent white mob – 360 video
- ^ A new monument will honor the victims of a century-old racist massacre. Some say it's not where it should be
Further reading
- Bowden, Charles (November 2012). "Arkansas Delta, 40 Years Later". National Geographic. 222 (5): 128. Archived from the original on May 28, 2013. Retrieved November 2, 2012.
- Butts, J. W., and Dorothy James. "The Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot of 1919", Arkansas Historical Quarterly 20 (Spring 1961): 95–104, via JSTOR.
- Collins, Ann V. All Hell Broke Loose: American Race Riots from the Progressive Era through World War II. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012.
- Cortner, Richard. A Mob Intent On Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases; Wesleyan University Press ISBN 0-8195-5161-9
- Dillard, Tom. "Scipio A. Jones." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 31 (Autumn 1972): 201–219.
- Holland, Thomas D., and Michael R. Dolski. " 'A Solemn Promise Kept': The 1919 Elaine Race Riot and the Broadening of Habeas Corpus 100 Years Later." Tulsa Law Review . 57 (2021): 65+.
- Janken, Kenneth Robert. Walter White: Mr. NAACP. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 2006; ISBN 0-807-85780-7
- Krugler, David (February 16, 2015). "America's Forgotten Mass Lynching: When 237 People Were Murdered In Arkansas". Daily Beast.
- Johnson, J. Chester, Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre And A Story Of Reconciliation. New York: Pegasus, 2020.
- Lancaster, Guy. "The Elaine Massacre and Memory: An Informed Polemic on Commemoration and Contestation Regarding the Nature of Atrocity." Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies (Aug 2023) 54#2 pp,130-139.
- Lancaster, Guy (ed.), The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 1819-1919 (2018)
- Lancaster, Guy (ed.), Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840–1950. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2018.
- McCool, B. Boren. Union, Reaction, and Riot: The Biography of a Rural Race Riot. Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1970.
- McWhirter, Cameron. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. New York: St. Martin's, 2011.
- Pierce, Michael, ed. Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial of the Elaine Massacre (University of Arkansas Press, 2022)
- Smith, C. Calvin, ed. "The Elaine, Arkansas, Race Riots, 1919." Special Issue. Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 32 (August 2001).
- Stockley, Grif Jr. Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 2001.
- Stockley, Grif, and Jeannie M. Whayne. "Federal Troops and the Elaine Massacres: A Colloquy." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 61.3 (2002): 272-283. online
- Voogd, Jan. Race Riots & Resistance: The Red Summer of 1919 (Peter Lang, 2008). online
- Whayne, Jeannie M. "Low villains and wickedness in high places: Race and class in the Elaine riots." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58.3 (1999): 285-313. online
External links