The Little-Known Narrative of America’s Bloodiest Racial Massacre

A century ago today, the streets of Arkansas ran red with the blood of 237 black Americans in what is known today as the Elaine Massacre. It was one of the deadliest racial massacres in the history of our nation, yet it remains shrouded in obscurity, seldom discussed and largely forgotten. But this month marks the centennial of the tragedy, and its victims’ narrative needs to be told now more than ever.

In the small town of Elaine in October 1919, there were 10 times as many black residents as white ones. Like the black Americans of the South, the sharecroppers and tenant farmers of Elaine were subjected to segregation and disenfranchisement. But they were also victims of “debt peonage”—perhaps the most insidious pillar of postbellum white supremacy. Under this system, blacks rented land or were loaned money by plantation owners. They were then forced to sell their crops to the owners at below-market rates and purchase their food and other supplies at exorbitant rates from plantation stores. The system was intended to keep black Americans dependent upon plantation owners and trap them in a cycle of perpetual debt.

But the end of World War I heralded a new era of change for our country’s black residents. The 350,000 African Americans who enlisted in the war were emboldened by their experiences as they returned in early fall of year. They demanded their full rights of citizenship and were enraged by their lack of equality, both before the law and in their labors. Emboldened too were the thousands of sharecropper families who strengthened their calls for black freedom when postwar cotton prices soared, but their efforts to reap the fruits of their labor were met with violent threats. Fueled by both anger and inspiration, the sharecroppers of Elaine sought to unionize.

Two hundred black men, women, and children gathered in a small wooden church in Hoop Spur near Elaine on September 30. They discussed membership in the Progressive Farmers and Household Union, an organization that would help them buy land and secure a fair price for the cotton they picked. They aimed also to hire a lawyer to represent them with landlords. Well aware of the trouble that would erupt if the white landowners discovered their efforts, union leaders stationed armed guards outside to keep watch.

Their fears were confirmed when a band of white men shot into the church as the families convened. Black guards returned fire, killing a white security officer of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. News of the shooting quickly spread, and soon after, the county sheriff summoned white veterans from the American Legion post to suppress what he claimed was an insurrection. With 20-gauge Winchester shotguns in hand, the mob of veterans prepared to turn on the very men who had stood by their side in the struggle for democracy.

The group soon drew yet more men from eastern Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Over 1,000 white vigilantes joined the effort to put down the so-called uprising, killing indiscriminately. And when the day drew to a close, countless black women, men, and children had been brutally slaughtered.

The real massacre, though, began the following morning, as 583 federal troops, including a machine gun battalion, were escorted to Elaine. For the next five days, soldiers and vigilantes hunted black people over a 200-mile radius. According to several accounts from white witnesses, both vigilantes and the troops committed acts of barbarism. They scorched homes with families inside and tortured and slaughtered others. The bodies of some were thrown into a pit and burned. Enraged whites fired at the bodies of the dead blacks as they rode toward Elaine. And others cut off the ears or toes of dead blacks for souvenirs, then dragged their bodies through the streets.

When troops finally withdrew, the courts and papers worked in tandem to investigate what had transpired during the massacre, producing a narrative ridden with falsity. Those deemed insurrectionists were brought to the Phillips County jail. A jury convicted 12 black men of the murders of three white men, even though two of the three deaths had occurred from white people accidentally shooting each other. The “confessions” of the black men were secured by means of torture. Black people were thus blamed, sentenced, and jailed for an anti-black atrocity that was white supremacists’ doing.

Wielding these unjustly extracted “confessions,” The Arkansas Gazette placed blame entirely on sharecroppers in a report that declared, “Negroes Plan to Kill All Whites.” Days later, The New York Times published a similar story headlined “Planned Massacre of Whites Today: Negroes Seized in Arkansas Riots Confess to Widespread Plot Among Them.” Newspapers across the country blamed the violence on black sharecroppers for the next several months, creating a narrative that was especially palatable to white citizens at a time when racial enmity was rampant. They posited that the event had been a deliberately planned insurrection, during which black sharecroppers had intended to murder the plantation owners to seize the land. They also claimed that only two black people had died, praising white troops for their “restraint” in suppressing the rebellion and neglecting the 235 other people whose lives were lost.

These deceitful words presented a picture that was at odds with reality and was decisively refuted by reports from two major civil rights figures, the NAACP’s Walter White and Ida B. Wells. White concluded that black “farmers had organized not to massacre, but to protest by peaceful and legal means against vicious exploitation by unscrupulous land owners and their agents.” And Wells, who traveled to Elaine to investigate, reached a conclusion that echoed White’s. Her 58-page pamphlet, “The Arkansas Race Riot,” reckoned that the sharecroppers who organized the union were simply “seeking through peaceful appeal to win better wages and working conditions,” but were met with brutal slaughter instead.

Ultimately, their efforts to uncover the truth were to little avail, and the massacre has remained largely absent from standard narratives in American history. But the descendants of victims have now begun to share the true stories of their lost loved ones. The Elaine Legacy Center held a Truth Hearing last February, during which several descendants told powerful stories of the massacre. They spoke with anguish of the brutal murders, seeking closure in the form of recognition of the harm done, not empty apologies.

Though 100 years separate us from the events of Elaine, rewriting the long-accepted deceptive narrative is important because of the monetary aid it would provide to the communities that have yet to be recovered from the damage of the past. Progressive Democrats have thrust the issue of reparations for slavery into the 2020 primary race, and the Elaine Legacy Center group maintains that reparations should take into account the atrocities that came after the Civil War. Phillips County, to which the small city of Elaine belongs, is the 15th poorest county in the country, a fact that historians and regular Arkansans alike attribute to the massacre. Without recognition of the tragedy’s magnitude, their calls for reparations will gain little traction.

It is also imperative to spread awareness of the event because the same racial enmity that bred the Elaine massacre persists today, a century after the fact. Legally-sanctioned white supremacy may have ended over a half-century ago, but through tragedies like the shootings at the Walmart in El Paso and at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, we are again reminded of the harrowing white supremacist violence that afflicts us still. According to the Anti-Defamation League, in 2018 alone, there were 50 extremist-related killings, 78 percent of which were by white supremacists.

Far from being relics of the past, both the forces that led to the Elaine Massacre and the damage that resulted are pressing issues that necessitate action. The doings of the past weigh heavily on the present, and until our nation reckons with this history, both will continue to haunt us.