Looking back, moving forward
The protests taking place across Arkansas and the country share the common goal of bringing about structural social change. Black Americans are subject to disproportionately high rates of police violence, arrest, and incarceration. This is true across the nation; what varies are the approaches that state and local governments have taken to address these issues and work toward social change.
The Little Rock Nine looms largest in Arkansas’ racial history and is taught in primary schools across the country. This incident was a fixture in my constitutional law course during my first year of law school in Boston. However, the historical events which are not regularly taught across Arkansas shine a glaring light on how far we must come to achieve holistic change.
Knowledge about our past necessarily guides the parameters by which we frame the future. To neglect such knowledge is a disservice to ourselves and a fatal blow to the progress we wish to achieve.
In 1919, Phillips County was the scene of one of the deadliest racial conflicts in American history; an event not mentioned during my education as a child in Little Rock nor in my college history courses in Fayetteville.
The area surrounding the town of Elaine was home to a predominantly black population of sharecroppers working for white landowners. The sharecroppers organized into a union in order to negotiate fairer working conditions with the white landowners, forming an organization known as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America.
The Union, led by Robert L. Hill, held a meeting at an Elaine church on how to obtain fairer settlements from landowners. Two white deputies of the local police department attempted to enter the meeting and shots were exchanged, killing one deputy and wounding the other. The identity of who fired the first shot was never discovered.
Sensationalized reporting across the state deemed this event a “black uprising.” Between 500 and 1,000 armed white men descended upon Phillips County, indiscriminately attacking black Arkansans. Governor Charles Hillman Brough requested federal military assistance, and 600 U.S. troops were deployed to the county. The fighting lasted three days, with the official state records listing 11 black men and five white men killed, while 285 black men were placed in makeshift stockades until their white employers could vouch for their freedom.
The state’s death toll has since been disproven, with settled estimates placing the actual number of black Arkansans killed at 237, buried in mass graves around Elaine.
After the massacre, 122 black Arkansans were indicted by an all-white grand jury, with 73 of these Arkansans being charged with murder. Legislation passed in 1891 disenfranchised black Arkansans and prevented them from serving on juries, placing the accused of rural Phillips County at the whim of all-white juries.
No witnesses were called for the accused, none of the defendants were allowed to testify, and the courtroom was populated by armed white Arkansans.
Twelve of the 73 disenfranchised men charged with murder were convicted and sentenced to death by electrocution. The NAACP succeeded in overturning six of these 12 convictions on appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court on due process grounds. The other six convicted men had their sentences vacated after the U.S. Supreme Court held that the use of torture to coerce the defendants’ testimony and the mob-like atmosphere of the courtroom violated the 14th Amendment.
The Elaine Massacre Memorial sits in Phillips County today to acknowledge the lives of these black Arkansans who were lost in 1919. In 2019, a tree was planted in the memory of lives lost; four months later it was cut down by those actively seeking to destroy the memory of this mass killing.
The legacy and lessons to be learned from this horrific event remain under assault by those wishing to keep our state uninformed of its past. If we embrace ignorance of our state’s racial transgressions, we undermine our own capacity for progress.
The Elaine Massacre may very well be the deadliest racial conflict in U.S. history, yet it is not a regular fixture of Arkansas school curricula. If we do not emphasize our state’s history on these issues and instead choose to ignore the conflicts which underpin the problems with which we are currently grappling, there is no hope for lasting change.
Black history is Arkansas history; to say otherwise is a disservice to our state’s heritage and to its future. We cannot hope to build a better society for future generations while simultaneously cutting the knees from beneath it by letting this insidious ignorance take root.
Engage with your communities.
Have critical conversations about race and privilege with your children. Educate yourself on the discrimination and violence of the past that continuously manifests itself in the lives of Arkansans to this day. Teach Arkansas’ racial history in schools.
Call your representatives, advocate for change, and be vocal about the problems you see. If you are disturbed by the treatment of your fellow Arkansans under the current legal regime, question your lawmakers. If you feel that nothing needs changing and that this does not affect you, place yourself in your neighbor’s shoes and check your privilege.
We are in the middle of a referendum on the future of our state and our country. We have a choice between making equitable change or preserving a status quo which actively endangers Arkansans. Elaine happened in 1919; its impact today will be minimized if we fail to acknowledge our own history. Now is not the time for complacency, now is the time for holistic structural change.
This change is rooted in educating ourselves. This change begins with you.