This little girl was a sharecropper. This means that they didnt think the Emancipation Proclamation applied to them. Deputized American Legion members, police officers, and soldiers added to the violence. As in Tulsa, many more died here than researchers report. Scipio Jones and the NAACPs defense team worked to free the twelve defendants, who were divided into the Moore v. Dempsey and Ware v. Dempsey cases. Cracking Open the Door: Moore v. Dempsey and the Fight for Justice. In The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 18191919, edited by Guy Lancaster. In exchange for membership dues, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America had the goal of arranging legal services to ensure that payments were rendered. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2018. https://archive.org/details/TheArkansasRaceRiot/page/n1, Whayne, Jeannie M. Low Villains and Wickedness in High Places: Race and Class in the Elaine Riots., Sharecropping: The Economic System that Drove the South, Black Labor Organizing: The Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, Military Intervention: The blackest day written by blood or bayonet, Clashing Headlines: White vs. Black Journalism, Moore v. Dempsey: A Landmark for Constitutional Rights, The Aftermath: Phillips Countys Black Exodus, Memory and Education: How Historians Covered Elaine. The unions goals were to help members obtain fair wages and treatment within the sharecropping system. 2,000 years of shipwrecks discovered on ancient sea route, Send beer! Life on the Roman frontier, revealed, See scenes from classic fairy taleswith a Nigerian twist, How the Magna Carta of AIDS activism sparked a revolution, Meet the next generation of National Geographic explorers, When its too cold, these octopuses just rewire their brains. But to white landowners, simply asking for fair payment was a crime akin to murder. But even for the survivors, the devastation was complete. Governor Brough contacted the US War Department, which gave him permission to have troops from nearby Camp Pike brought in. greenmountainsreview.com. With men gone to fight on the front in Europe, women had to work in the factories to produce uniforms, artillery, and other means, But not everyone welcomed the rise of unions. 10. Army soldiers march Black men after arresting them en masse during the Elaine Massacre. Pure greed set the landed gentry against them. They get to keep some of the vegetables as payment for their work, and the rest of the plants go to the plantation owner, as he provided the land and tools necessary to grow the crops. andreadprice.com. That land still belongs to me, and a bunch of other Black kids that I grew up with. The massacre took place in Colfax, Louisiana, on April 13, 1873. The atmosphere of fear and hatred would haunt the town for decades. But sometimes she wouldnt pay it. At an online Teaching American History seminar last spring, Professor David Krugler facilitated a discussion of documents detailing the massacre and the protracted legal battle that followed, when African American citizens in Elaine were arrested and convicted of purported murders and terrorism against whites. We dont know the exact number, but at least 200 African Americans many of them women and children were hunted down and executed. People from all across the southern states Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia all kinds of people came to Arkansas. The rumors were the product of racist hatred and a mob mentality; they were not grounded in any facts on the ground. I loved studying history, yet I never heard anything about the massacre until I was in my early 30s. The Elaine Twelve Were Split Into Two Groups, 51. In the case of the Moore group, the lawyers went to the US Supreme Court in a case known as Moore vs. Dempsey. As Ida B Wells, the pioneering journalist and anti-lynching advocate would report, more than 100 Black men and women were indicted in this conspiracy theory. A week after the trials began, on November 5, the judge issued a sentence for the first 12 of the African American men. The South, where slaves were held, believed itself to be part of the Confederate States of America rather than the United States of America. Yet in her role as a history teacher, Fitzgerald understands herself as helping students to build less tangible, more fundamental skills and character traits: historical empathy and historical forgiveness, along with the self-respect that empowers moral decision-making. Sheilas daughter, Apryl, is a former community organizer, and has aided countless families and individuals with her advocacy against discriminatory policies and actions. In 1919, the price of cotton had shot sky high, and white landlords, merchants, and cotton factors stood to gain a windfall profit if they could keep the black workers who planted, tended, and harvested the cotton from getting a fair price for their crops. The KKK was formed in 1865 for one reason: to keep African Americans subjugated and make sure that they did not exercise any of the rights that the national government conferred upon them. The local sheriff immediately wanted to find the people who had killed the white men, presumably the African American union members who were meeting inside the church. Gunshots were soon fired into the church. But the courts judgment did not end the conflict over what happened in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919. I wonder about the inheritance of economic status how different would the trajectories of the sharecropping families in Elaine have been, if they had been paid what they were owed, instead of being killed or run out of the state? It is a deliberately planned insurrection of the Negroes against the whites directed by an organization known as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, established for the purpose of banding Negroes together for the killing of white people.. They also fed into the Red Scare; Russia was in the throes of a communist revolution, and many became fearful that the communist ideology would spread among unionized workers. What is known is that one of the officers was killed, W. A. Adkins, and another wounded, Charles W. Pratt, in the incident. Theoretically, sharecropping means that workers grow crops on the plantation grounds. The Governor Brought The US Military In to Restore Order, 41. They were able to get new trials for the men, based on the error that at the initial hearing, the jurors did not have ballots that required them to select the degree of murder for which the men were being convicted. Today, unfortunately, there is no closure on racism. Race Riots Consumed The Country In 1919, In 1919, the racial tensions that had been building erupted in what came to be known as the, 18. We need to educate about exactly why the sharecroppers were organizing, and understand that they defended themselves because they felt they deserved better. To make matters worse, many Southern states passed . The NAACP Hired A Law Firm In Arkansas, 50. I want my grandkids to know their ancestors owned land, had their own businesses and built a strong, caring community. The orgy of violence in 1919 helped a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan as a mass movement and its political takeover in parts of the lower Midwest and the South. But the union meeting on September 30, 1919, would spark one of the worst race riots in American history. Is organic food healthier? Heres what you need to know. Other details remain subject to disagreement. Locals hanged him in response. Lisa Hicks-Gilbert is the founder of Descendants of the Elaine Massacre of 1919, and is organizing "Silent No More," a two-day, multimedia exhibit that opens Friday in Elaine about the massacre. Robert Lee Hill was organizing African American sharecroppers as a means of nonviolence to help ensure civil rights. When hed get home hed be upset and ask: Are you scared of white people? It seemed like she had anxiety around dealing with Caucasians. How breathing in wildfire smoke affects the body. In 1919, the racial tensions that had been building erupted in what came to be known as the Red Summer. They tried to get into the meeting and one of the white guys was killed. Again, nobody knows who first fired shots outside of the church where the union meeting was happening. All that it did was say that they were free. Sheriff Kitchens insisted that no innocent person had been killed in the slaughter. The Elaine Massacre stands out as one of the darkest moments in our nations history, and it is possibly an event that you have never even heard of. The massacre drew national attention to the racial tensions that caused the riots of 1919. clt.astate.edu. A digital exhibit by UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. They were given lighter sentences of 21 years in prison a harsh punishment, given that there were no plans of a revolt, but at least they would escape with their own lives. The school offers students remarkable opportunities to build skills transferrable to media careers. The white heat of racial massacre followed in Elaine based on the Souths legacy of slavery and institutional violence against black people. What is yerba mateand is this caffeinated drink really good for you? Joining the union was incredibly risky, and all of the people involved probably knew the chance that they were taking. During their talks, the farmers debated cutting out the landowners and sending their cotton straight to Boston. During and after the Red Summer, black soldiers who had returned from World War I had weapons and knew how to use them. 0:00. New Negro racial uplift and organizing blossomed. historyinphotos.blogspot.com. On July 27, 1919, an African American who was swimming out at Lake Michigan accidentally paddled himself out to the South Side. On February 19, 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 62 decision in favor of the Moore defendants, maintaining the Twelve had been denied due process and noting the judicial proceedings had been influenced by a mob that had assembled outside of the courthouse before the men were sentenced. To stave off trouble, armed guards veterans who had returned home from World War I surrounded the church. Hundreds of white vigilantes, dozens of law enforcement officials, and most deadly of all, 500 U.S. soldiers mobilized from nearby Camp Pike by the Arkansas governor, led hellish assaults for the next four days. They came up with the plan: lets kill these Africans that we gave these land grants to and take control of the land. The NAACP had formed a decade earlier. Im convinced resilience was in their DNA, and I plan to honor their lives and tell their stories like its in mine. After learning about the Elaine Massacre, read about the Tulsa race riots. Even today, Elaine is a small, backwater town in rural Arkansas. The official total of African Americans killed by the troops is only two, as reported by Colonel Isaac Jenks. Im primarily writing on behalf of my recently deceased mother, Sheila Walker. By 1925, they were all released from prison (and spirited quickly out of the state), and their case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Moore V. Dempsey, 1923) strengthened the courts interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to correct state criminal trials that blatantly ignored the rights of defendants. In a way, Uncle Hoskins was one of the many canaries in the mineshaft of the Elaine massacre to come. After 1919, there was no more wealth for African Americans here. Of the hundreds arrested, 122 were jailed and charged with murder or behavior threatening murder. The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 1819 - 1919. The KKK, as most people refer to it, was a white supremacist group whose sole mission was to subjugate African Americans by any means necessary. He has spent considerable study on the Elaine Race Massacre. One possible reason is that all the land in that area is all accounted for. It threatened the sharecropping system that had replaced slavery in the South. 1. Because of the rural isolation of this small town in the Arkansas Delta, not many people at the time, or even now, were aware of the mass slaughter that occurred there. Without sanctuary or refuge, black sharecroppers were left with few options. Late on the night of September 30, at a church located at a country cross-roads called Hoop Spur, about 100 African Americans met to organize the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. I am a descendant of Ed and Frank Hicks and possibly Joseph Knox. The governor contacted the Department of War and asked if United States soldiers could be used to put down the alleged revolution. In 1919, the United States was in the grip of a racist, anti-labor, anti-communist. Sheilas great-grandmother, Sallie, and her three children miraculously survived the Elaine massacre. Five white people died. Evils still on the loose, and youve got to take a side. The U.S. was gripped by a reign of racial terror after World War I, when whites rose up to quash prosperous Black communities. Why did this happen? But then they built levees and canals and trenches and turned it into some of the best land in the world. georgiaencyclopedia.org. They were determined to join the fight on the home front by joining the struggle to attain civil rights for themselves and their families. A willow tree memorializing the African American lives lost in a 1919 massacre in Elaine, Arkansas, in one of the deadliest racial conflicts in U.S. history, was chopped down this week . The Story Of The 1919 Elaine Race Massacre That You Didnt Learn In School. There are several conflicting narratives as to which group, the officers or the sharecroppers, fired the first shot. Many of the slain were mutilated, their bodies left to bake on the side of the road. Elaine, with a population of about 500, made national headlines when a tree commemorating the death of more than 200 black people in 1919 at the hands of a white mob was chopped down last week.. The sharecroppers were tired of low wages and exploitation. The headline even claimed that 21 white men had been selected as the first victims in mass slaughter and that African Americans would kill every white person in sight. The inflammatory headline further incited the racial tensions that were already rampant and ensured that nothing short of a massacre would be the result. Scipio Africanus Jones coordinated with Murphy. The black press, particularly the ChicagoDefender,connected black resistance movements, as a million or more African Americans left the South for industrial jobs elsewhere, sometimes joined unions, and fought fiercely against racism. They paid membership dues and attended meetings, which had to be accompanied by armed guards to protect those inside. The Elaine Twelve received the death penalty. My mother told me when I was 13 about this well-known race riot in which my grandfather, Lonnie Birch, participated when she was a young girl. historyinphotos.blogspot.co.uk. alittlereality.blogspot.com. I had to promise not to talk to anyone about the stories until she, as she put it, done left this earth. African Americans in the area outnumbered whites by 10 to 1, and it was here that Robert Hill sought to unionize sharecroppers. AI can help you plan your next tripif you know how to ask. Wikipedia.org. Submit to Reddit. What a Preacher Saw through a Keyhole in Arkansas. 500 soldiers came to Elaine to restore law and order. The Macabre True Story Of Edward Paisnel, The Beast Of Jersey, Inside The Disturbing Marriage Of Carole Hoff And John Wayne Gacy, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. I dont want anything new. Over several years, I did considerable research and discovered that the well-known race riot about which my mother had told me and the Elaine race massacre were one and the same. The ones who were lucky enough to still be alive remained . Elaine Massacre defendants Ed Hicks, Frank Hicks, Frank Moore, J. C. Knox, Ed Coleman, and Paul Hall. The Black School Was Burned To The Ground, 37. The killing spree, which began on Sept. 30 and lasted for two days , left hundreds of Black people dead. Unions Had Been On The Rise Nationally, Wars tend to create changes in economic conditions, and World War I was no exception. There, they were able to meet with representatives to discuss how to move forward in making sure that they were fairly compensated for the work that they did. Robert Lee Hill was an African American sharecropper in the Arkansas Delta who advocated for better working conditions and fair pay for other sharecroppers. If African Americans began organizing, they might soon exercise rights as free and equal citizens. We need to remember the past in order to do something about its legacies. Both Groups Went To The Supreme Court, In the case of the Moore group, the lawyers went to the US Supreme Court in a case known as, 52. Sharecropping Was Rife With Corruption, But in the economically devastated South, which was still full of racism, the promise, 6. But at the time, even these basic contours of what happened in Elaine were stricken from the official record. My stepfather would sometimes go to work and leave money for her to pay a bill. The paper even claimed that African Americans had calculated plans to murder whites and were amassing weapons. Experts weigh in on the best ways to use tools like ChatGPT for traveland how to avoid being duped by AI hallucinations.. These workers organized into unions on a large scale to make sure that they received fair compensation. All rights reserved. In Black Boy, you can feel my father reliving an unmourned pain: There was no funeral. However, this trauma is not at all unique to my family. Elaine Massacre of 1919. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Round one was right after the civil war. When he and Sheila met in person, it marked the beginning of a remarkable bond and journey of personal reconciliation. The rushed trial then convicted the 12 Black men and sentenced them all to death in the electric chair. These events and the negligible international response to them, paved the way for the . By the end of the war, it was becoming clear that unions were here to stay. I never heard about it despite growing up a short distance from the location of the massacre. The events became known . All Out of Step: A Personal Chronicle. Some even printed posters and distributed them to alert suspicions and feed the mob mentality that was quickly taking over. Wikipedia.org. The less questions asked, the less people truly know about Elaines dark past. The Red Summer of 1919 in U.S. Cities, by Femi Lewis. Of the hundreds who were placed in temporary stockades, the soldiers brought 285 African Americans to the nearby town of Helena, where they were held in the county jail. It occurred in reaction to the organization in Phillips County, Arkansas of a new labor group, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Courtesy of Arkansas State Archives. The use of force by soldiers there would be a precursor to what would happen when the National Guard would come to Elaine to dispel the violence. She reluctantly confirmed that what Id learned was true. He basically gave the mob the go-ahead to find and kill any and all African Americans in the area. My brothers and uncles were still working on farms in the Elaine area and she was concerned for their safety if someone learned she was talking about the massacre. Instead, the mob indiscriminately attacked any Black men, women, and children who had the misfortune of being in their path. According to the Chicago Daily News on October 19, the idea of a black revolution was only a figment of the imagination of Arkansas whites and not based on fact. But that fact would not be enough to save the imprisoned African Americans from what would come next. It is widely accepted that in 1919, a group of white men, with the backing of federal troops, tortured and killed scores of Black residents the exact number is disputed but assumed to number at least in the hundreds who were starting to organize against the exploitation of their labor. Parts of the story are still in dispute. By October 2, 1919, Arkansas Governor Charles Brough had called for 500 federal troops to round up the heavily armed Negroes in Elaine. The governor had troops sent in from nearby Camp Pike. youtube.com. This is not true. In 1919, the United States was in the grip of a racist, anti-labor, anti-communist fervor. Most historical accounts of the massacre there, including contemporaneous reporting by the prominent African American journalist Ida B.. They had all been convicted of murder presumably the killing of the white man at the church and were all sentenced to die in the, 47. The example of what could, would and did happen was etched into memories and silence was the rule. I founded The Descendants of The Elaine Massacre in 2020. The landowners have their inheritance. The troops cooperated with the local power structure. On September 30, 1919, as the union members met at the Hoops Spur church, a few miles from Elaine, the meeting was interrupted by the arrival of a group of law enforcement officers and a black trustee from Helenas jail. Governor Brough denied the request but did issue a stay of execution so that the Elaine Twelve would not be killed while there was pending litigation. Enforcing laws in remote areas, where there may not even be roads to the plantations, is as close to impossible as you can get. 80 years ago, young men of color were attacked for their unpatriotic fashion choices, leading to the Zoot Suit Riots. One problem is that the country was divided and at war. I want my grandchildren to have the same character he had. Slavery Was Abolished In 1863. TeachingAmericanHistory.org is a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, 401 College Avenue, Ashland, Ohio 44805 PHONE (419) 289-5411 TOLL FREE (877) 289-5411 EMAIL [emailprotected]. This area was frequently used by whites, who were furious that this black boy would contaminate their swimming water. Labor crises fueled racial tensions in 1919. backthen.com. By the time the, In one of the only instances during this period in which African Americans took up arms against whites, a group of African Americans decided that enough was enough. Hasty trials of the first dozen of the accused followed, resulting in convictions and death sentences, and leading the remaining prisoners to accept plea bargains and lengthy prison terms. Its what triggered Sheilas mission to break the silence and help the community reconcile with its past. Pruden, William H. III. Through her remarkable and generous forgiveness of my grandfather, combined with our mutual journey together to achieve a true account of the massacre, we reached racial reconciliation and deep friendship, both of which were joined by our respective spouses and children. Did this mysterious human relative bury its dead? Whayne, Jeannie M. Low Villains and Wickedness in High Places: Race and Class in the Elaine Riots. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58 (Autumn 1999): 285313. A small group of African American's, led by Robert Hill, organized to form the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) with the goal to take legal action against the landlords and pursue an itemized perusal of the store charges. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2018. Genevieve Carlton earned a Ph.D in history from Northwestern University with a focus on early modern Europe and the history of science and medicine before becoming a history professor at the University of Louisville. But historians are taking a renewed interest in the Elaine Massacre and trying to understand better what really happened there. They had fought in wars for this country, and then came home and were still being treated like slaves. To fill the factory jobs that had previously been filled by European immigrants, upwards of 500,000 African Americans migrated en masse to the North. The officers would contend that their arrival at the church during a meeting was a matter of fate and maintained that they stopped due to mechanical problems with their car. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. The Russian Revolution, the Seattle General Strike, and union unrest set off media and government campaigns against the left, unions, immigrants, Latinos and African Americans. Black writer and organizer Ida B. Wells-Barnett, black Arkansas attorney Scipio Jones, and the NAACP saved the Elaine Twelve from the electric chair. Published 2019. Many freed slaves were sent back to their masters. The Elaine race massacre of 1919 is understood as one of the worst in US history. For the 100-year anniversary of the massacre, the community of Elaine planted a memorial tree. I was 40, born and raised in Elaine, Arkansas, and studying legal cases every day yet this was the first Id ever heard of the massacre. In and around Elaine, Arkansas, there are members of the white community who believe that the sheriff and his posse acted within appropriate means to prevent a mass slaughter that the African American community was planning. Folks found out about this meeting and tried to barge in a railroad agent, a sheriff and a Black trustee who showed them where the meeting was. Estimates say that as many as 1000 armed white men participated in the massacre. The catalyst for the massacre was the formation of a local chapter of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) in Phillips County. Something does not have to be true for people to act as if it is. But when the historian Brian Mitchell began researching it a few years ago, he met. In Elaine, the reckoning has come much more slowly. When they got down there, the Black folks gave them a hell of a fight. The treatment is easy to administer and lasts a lifetime. There Were No Plans For A Black Insurrection, Robert Lee Hill was organizing African American sharecroppers as a means of nonviolence to help ensure, 30. The massacre and the sharecroppers sentenced to death drew the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In an area teeming with racist hatred, especially during the Red Summer, there were fears that the African Americans were actually planning a revolution. In answering the questions why did the massacre happen, and will it happen again, it is important to understand the extent to which an escalating series of human rights abuses in Bosnia before the war contributed to a complete breakdown of civil society. As a kid Id ask what land, and shed say something about them white people but then shut down. Panelists contributed to the book, The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A. I always felt either she was blowing smoke or that I was getting in grown folks business and shouldnt pry. With the sensationalized newspaper stories, white supremacists who were determined to make sure that a black rebellion did not happen came in from outside Phillips County to join the sheriff's posse. Looking back, I feel she had been programmed not to mention the massacre. I did more research on our family and found out its true, we are related. The 12 men who had been sentenced to death became known as the Elaine Twelve, and what would unfold around them would shape national politics. And the trials used testimonies that had been obtained through torture. And when the massacre ended, the courts charged dozens of Black men with murder. After days of violence, at least 200 Black men, women, and children lay dead. This was a discussion about the racially motivated 1919 Elaine, Arkansas massacre. huffingtonpost.com. The Red Summer consisted of numerous race riots in various cities and towns in America. Six of the 12 Black sharecroppers sentenced to death following the Elaine Massacre pose with their lawyer Scipio A. Jones, left. When representatives of the countys law enforcement arrived outside a meeting held on the evening September 30, an exchange of gunfire was triggered, and a white deputy sheriff was killed. In my research for the apology, I discovered the Elaine race massacre in the writings of Ida B. newafrikan77.wordpress.com. Robert Lee Hill was behind the unionizing effort. Slavery and institutional violence against Black people printed posters and distributed them to alert suspicions and the... Around dealing with Caucasians and lasted for two days, left yet I never heard about. As if it is and one of the 1919 Elaine, Arkansas in 1919 not. The Department of War and asked if United States was in the Elaine massacre in.! Americans here Elaine were stricken from the location of the many canaries in the case the! 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