Heirs: Honor oral history of the Elaine Massacre
HOT SPRINGS — Descendants of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 spoke about the tragic event on Saturday during the Voices of Elaine Symposium, hosted by NAACP Unit No. 6013 at the Central Theatre in Hot Springs.
A crowd of roughly 250 people gathered for the symposium, to watch a special preview screening of a documentary based on the event followed by a question-and-answer session, and to listen to a keynote address from retired Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen and a panel discussion with descendants of the victims of the massacre.
“One of my big aggravations is that oftentimes the people who have the biggest stake in truth-telling aren’t allowed to tell their truth, but are talked over,” Griffen said before introducing the panelists.
The Elaine Massacre took place Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 1919, when Black farmers organized to negotiate higher prices for their cotton crops. A battle broke out between area whites and Blacks, resulting in the death of five whites and an unknown number of Blacks, with estimates ranging from 100 to several hundreds.
The descendants’ speeches shared a common thread, challenging the official record of the slaughter of their ancestors in Phillips County. Three descendants took the stage, two being affiliated with the Elaine Legacy Center.
Descendants Lenora Marshall and James White were joined via Zoom by Julia Wright, whose father, Richard Wright, was an influential author and civil rights activist. Wright was unable to come to Hot Springs, but joined the discussion from Paris, France. Her father wrote about his uncle, Silas Hoskins, being lynched in Elaine in 1916 and how there was no proper burial for him.
According to the descendants, the Black people of the area have passed down an oral history that is contrary to the written accounts of what happened in Elaine.
The descendants all hope to dispel myths surrounding the era, such as that all the Blacks of the time were sharecroppers. According to them, many of the Southern Black people then owned businesses and their own land.
Marshall brought attention to the murkiness of her family’s land dwindling from 5,000 acres in 1919 to around 300 acres today. Marshall is the vice president of the Elaine Legacy Center.
“Today in Elaine, we are still poor,” Marshall said. “Some of the poorest people in the world, living on the richest soil of the United States. And this horrible event left a fear in the descendants that’s taken them more than a century to live it down.”
Marshall spoke about the fear that leads to Black silence and how that has contributed to the culture that Black people find themselves in today.
As Marshall wrapped up her speech, she called for reparations, leading the crowd to echo the word “reparations” back at her in a show of solidarity.
The Elaine Legacy Center has received at least $300,000 from national reparatory justice groups such as the National African American Reparations Commission and The Fund for Reparations NOW! since being founded in 2017.
Wright addressed the crowd next, reinforcing Marshall’s argument, saying that Black silence and “Black amnesia” are “two peas in a pod” — both acting as weapons against the self-determination of Black people.
“The state feeds on our Black silence,” Wright said. “Black silence is the state’s fossil fuel.”
She said the reaction of Black people has largely been to remain silent to try to keep their loved ones safe from “a state intent on genocide.” She also said her great-uncle’s lynching and the 1919 genocide stemmed from “economic jealousy, financial envy and refusal of our desire for Black political independence.”
“The state says we Black folk do not exist,” she said. “And therefore, we have no memories. Nothing to say.”
She called for a breaking of silence, saying now is the time to speak up and speak out.
Her sentiment was reinforced by White, who called for young minds to think up something new to tackle the continuing problems faced by Black people.
He said he hopes to break the silence and for people to stop spreading narratives that conflict with the oral history passed down since the massacre.
White’s grandparents shared their experiences with him since he was a child, having witnessed the massacre firsthand, he said, noting he worries whether the next generation will pass down the oral history in the same way — a worry shared by all three descendants on the panel.
“I always remember the children of Elaine with their hands in the soil where my great-uncle was lynched,” Wright said. “They were creating history in real time. We will know that we carry the land stolen from us in our bones, that we remember the marooning of our ancestral DNA. If they want to rob us of our history, they will have to re-enslave us first.”