The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas: A Century of Atrocity and Resistance, 1819-1919. Edited by Guy Lancaster,(Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2018).
THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.3, ISSUE#12, JUNE-AUG/2021
The Elaine Massacre, sometime referred to as the Arkansas Race Riot, happened in 1919. It is a story of African Americans trying to organize a union, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America in the Arkansas Delta. But it is also a story of massacre and repression by local authorities. Taking this event as a touchstone, this edited volume of essays by diverse historians looks backward to the official origins of Arkansas as a territory of the U.S. in 1819. They reflect on a century of devastating acts of white supremacy, including rape and lynching, as a prelude to this historical moment where Black farmers organized themselves in the fields, with household toilers, had a union meeting, and became the subject of mob and military attacks. Is this book, with a few others, a turning point where the institution of white supremacy in the history of Arkansas no longer is beyond the boundary of respectable historical inquiry?
We have to be alert that telling such stories in a genteel manner is often not to tell them at all. The power dynamics of antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, Black Codes, and Jim Crow eras can only be underscored with the archetypes of these times on full display. This means this history is marked by white men who purportedly embody restraint, reason, self-reliance, and good citizenship; white women whose essence is the cult of true womanhood placed on a social pedestal as a lady; women of color, official authority insisted, could never be “ladies” and were said to be beyond sexual morality (better to sexually abuse them); and Black men were invented as bestial, a lower life form, a predator. Consequently, white men had to protect their elevated women from those Blacks who were said to have no self-control and wished to assault them, while women of color were free to be assaulted by white men. Perceived inappropriate association of men of color and white women could ignite a lynching or race riot. But also the meaningful organization for self-reliance and self-defense by the Black community as a whole could be met by such ferocious suppression at the smallest pretense.
Guy Lancaster’s introduction to this volume argues that scholars of explosive violent events in society, to historicize them, must pay closer attention to the social conditions of suffering as it shapes traditions of community relationships over longer spans of time. Lancaster notes that this group of scholars seeks to contribute to the public memorial both of this specific Arkansas event, a benchmark of resistance and tyranny, but also the Red Summer of 1919, marked by nationwide race riots (including those in Chicago, Knoxville, Charleston, Norfolk and Washington, DC).
“Race riots” in American history are not best known as violent conflicts between two racial groups. Rather, race riots have been mass attacks by whites on Black communities, their persons and property. In more recent times Black mass uprisings against police brutality and fascist attacks have often been termed “riots” to underscore their irresponsibility. We need more insight to properly label African American rebellions in self-defense. Mass attacks on people of color by whites, in the historical moments this volume considers from 1819-1919, were rarely seen as misbehavior by most but a maneuver to restore legitimate authority over a lower culture in a moment of danger. The moment of danger for whites was in fact any organized effort by Black toilers for social equality and empowerment.
Kelly Houston Jones historicizes white fear of Black rebellion in Arkansas through the end of the Civil War revealing a capacity for Black resistance and organization but also a consistent desire for the white planter class to repress such initiatives in defense of the wealth extracted from Black labor. Jones records the enslaved killing an overseer with an axe in 1859 in Phillips County. But before and after Arkansas newspapers were full of slave rebellions and plots to rebel from as far away as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. The Natchez Courier, for example,
in 1842 recorded repeatedly sensational stories that document runaway slaves, the killing of slave owners or drivers, but also insinuations of plots to rape white women.
Nancy Snell Griffith makes clear that, at least from 1883 to 1904, fear of Black insurrection was the cause of mass lynching. This fear was a response to the continuing effort by Blacks following Reconstruction (1865-1877) to secure land, voting rights, and equal rights. Insurrection and desire for equal rights under capitalism are not the same thing. Griffith records many violent exchanges among blacks and whites in Conway and Crittendon Counties in 1868. These included an assassination of a Confederate leader and the killing of Black men living with white women. In 1892, Griffith records the Hampton Race War (also referred to as the Calhoun County Race War). This was ignited by repression of the Black vote and Nightriders who whipped a Black man for insulting a white woman – one of many incidents of white vigilantes publicly flogging Blacks. In response Black armed self-defense became popular over the next decade including confrontations to secure the vote. But soon Black people would begin to leave the state in mass disgusted with their living conditions.
Guy Lancaster and Richard Buckelew argue that whether the Elaine events are called a massacre, a lynching, or a riot has something to do with how historians classify racial violence as a social event. Should there be evidence that a person was killed? Was this death “illegal”? Are three or more participants in a killing decisive? And what if the killers act in the name of serving justice or tradition? Why not use the term pogrom, terrorism or genocide? These are outstanding questions for a classroom or community discussion.
Lancaster and Buckelew think a lynch mob better fits the mold of state terror than terrorism. This may be so, but we need to reconsider if “restoring order” can be used to fight white racism when white vigilante attacks happen under a white racial state. Further, whether contemporary “stand your ground” laws are not meant equally or at all for people of color, before and after 1919 and 2013.
Legal definitions of violence (and mental illness) always leave out statesmen –regardless of color -- who are always executives of mass murder as they preside over police and military. What needs to be strengthened historically is justifications for Black armed self-defense and a clarification of what justice actually is (before we call for “equal justice.”).
Justice is an administrative transaction that restores official authority after a violent conflict (not initiated by the state) gets “out of hand” or beyond the power of the state for a time. Violence initiated by the state is never corrected institutionally but only by sleight of hand and on occasion individually. A white racist police officer or military member, where on the very rare occasion that they are corrected by the state is surely a “show trial” under institutional racism. We should not wish for show trials but real shifts of power in history and in the present.
Matthew Hild asks us to consider a longer view of the union organization drive in Elaine in 1919 in light of third party politics and African American labor activism from 1865-1892. The Union League, Knights of Labor, the Sons of the Agricultural Star, the Agricultural Wheel, and the Colored Farmers’ Alliance organized Arkansas Blacks during the three decades following the Civil War. Further, after 1874 many Blacks participated in the Greenback-Labor Party, the Union Labor Party, and the Populist Movement (sometimes called the People’s Party). Hild tells us this activism should be seen as the forerunner of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union but also the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union that came after. There is a radical democratic tradition in Arkansas if we know where to look for it.
Adrienne A Jones reminds that Elaine in 1919 can be seen as part of a long-view of historical development where Blacks organized through fraternal orders and benevolent societies. Some orders were organized in parallel chapters in groups started by whites. While others were organized with Black founders. These groups could enhance pride and self-worth, be a means of networking across state-lines, and could encourage a sense of patriotism and citizenship, that conservative on one level could be threatening to white racists. One matter to reconsider is that secret societies on the surface were often organized around European ideas and myths. But often overlooked is Black secret societies could be transmission belts of African symbolism that Europeans previously appropriated or identified.
Steven Teske’s essay recognizes the attorney, Scipio Jones., who defended the survivors of the Elaine Massacre who were subsequently placed on trial. Jones had a school and post office named for him. Jones also was the defender of Blacks from a racially motivated attack in a bar room brawl of 1906 that happened in Argenta (now North Little Rock). Jones tried to be an active member of the Republican Party, which had a heritage that included Lincoln, radicals for Reconstruction, and the Union Leagues. But he found himself rejected over time as Republicans eventually wished to maintain an all-white party. This unfolded early in the twentieth century but makes sense when we keep in mind the third party politics that had more anti-racist potential.
Cherise Jones-Branch does an excellent job in highlighting the place of women in the history of the Elaine Massacre. Necessarily, and with dynamism, she mobilizes the heritage of Ida B Wells, the great anti-lynching campaigner, who wrote a pamphlet on the events. White women, as exemplified by Elaine, could be just as racially violent as their men. Evidence is provided of white women ransacking Black women’s homes and appropriating their furniture and clothes. Black women were abused by army officials meant to protect them from white racial rioters. Many Black women were left unemployed with only the clothes on their back. Wells advocated the strike threat of mass migration to undermine the Arkansas planters in her journalism. Perhaps with less programmatic intent, this is ultimately what happened, as the Black population of Arkansas declined tremendously after these events as a result of white supremacist coercion.
Brian K. Mitchell asks us to consider how new primary sources are reshaping the meaning of the Elaine events. He reminds that the union made demands that monies denied them improperly as sharecroppers would no longer be tolerated as the planters refused to pay fair rates for their cotton. The indebtedness that sharecroppers were kept in by the planters was an artificial relation. Over a century has passed since the union meeting was attacked by shooters, and the death toll is still widely disputed. By reconsidering the minutes of the inaugural state convention of the union, the Philips County indictment book, an impressive spreadsheet which Mitchell provides, we can get closer to the truth. This spreadsheet is a remarkable document and as we analyze it, we should keep in mind that because police charge those arrested with a crime it doesn’t mean that these charges are sustained in court or by historical evidence. Mitchell also helps us to ask questions that further clarifies if this event was an insurrection or massacre.
William H Pruden III looks back on the Supreme Court decision Moore v. Dempsey. The seminal case that emerged from the Elaine incident, was a crucial if often unrecognized step toward federal intervention to establish Black legal equality. It embodied a new approach to due process under the 14th amendment, as well as the writ of habeas corpus, the premise that one could not be held indefinitely after arrest but must be charged before a judge in a timely fashion. Pruden is correct that this case was a forerunner of the tactics of the modern civil rights movement (1955-1965). But we might reconsider the power of this approach.
In theory habeas corpus means you cannot be detained without clear charges and a trial date for more than 72 hours. This in fact means you can be kidnapped without cause – even if you are white --under the law for 3 days. Further, the process of appeals, means many can be released without original valid claims to be adjudicated (which doesn’t mean one is guilty) after years. This is the context for one detainee after the Elaine events visiting Ida B Wells to thank her for her agitation against injustice and for his release in 1923 -- four years later.
The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas is a volume that will be remembered for giving us a long view of how the events termed the Arkansas Race Riot by Ida B Wells, and which was a terror attack on Black toilers who desired to organize themselves, shaped state and national history.
While it is important to historicize institutional white supremacy in Arkansas in the post-civil rights era without false genteel manners (the surface identity of lynchers), it is also crucial to historicize Black collaboration with white oppressors – evidence for which is provided in a number of these essays.
Black sell-outs were the spies who undermined slave revolt, and were the prelude to the repression of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union. Are all African Americans supporters of independent organization for self-emancipation in Arkansas today? There are too many professional rewards for mystifying what is true empowerment. If we are to have a long view of race and class struggles in Arkansas, and a desire for multi-racial unity, we must be alert to the difference between collaborations above and potential unity below society.
More important than those who gather at humanitarian banquets to give out awards to elites who purport to have brought the city or state together, and who recognize belatedly that insurrection and equal rights under capitalism are not the same thing, is finding a way to connect up the Blues people with the Bluegrass people, so future atrocities can be minimized and deeper resistance can be encouraged beyond the boundaries of ignorance and miseducation among those deemed, perhaps culturally impressive, but still unrespectable.
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