Arkansas Town's History of Black Americans Mass Killing By White Mobs: 'Red Summer' 1919
Last edited Sun Aug 18, 2019, 07:46 PM - Edit history (1)
A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans. 100 years after hundreds of African Americans were reportedly killed in Elaine, AR, a memorial is set to bring details of the tragedy to light. The Guardian, 8/19/19.
Charlie McClain was surprised to learn that he was related to one of the Elaine Twelve. It came out when McClain, 58, asked his mother earlier this year about the largely forgotten mass killings in his Arkansas Delta home town a century ago, when white mobs murdered scores of African Americans, but only a dozen black men were ever prosecuted for any crime during the disturbances. “When I got off the phone, I went back and looked at my notes, and I recognized the name: Paul Hall,” McClain said.
The Elaine Twelve were a group of black defendants sentenced to death for what transpired in the autumn of 1919, after an all-white jury found them guilty within eight minutes. Black witnesses later testified that they had been tortured into giving false testimonies and the 12 were eventually released – though no white people were ever charged for any crime. “It was a kangaroo trial,” said Audrey Evans, a retired federal judge, who is part of the planning committee for the Elaine Massacre Memorial in nearby Helena. They are now preparing to commemorate the town’s bloody and largely forgotten past.
What happened a century ago is still a point of contention, but the general consensus today is this: a white mob, upset over African Americans organizing to demand fair wages, descended upon a church in the township of Hoop Spur, just up the road from Elaine, on 31 September 1919. A shot was fired – by which “side” is still up for debate – and a white man was killed. News of a “black insurrection” spread to neighboring communities and hundreds more white men poured in, including federal troops, the Arkansas governor, Charles Brough, and newly deputized soldiers from the American Legion.
The violence spread beyond the church to more communities, and African Americans were killed in their homes and streets. There’s a commonly told story of a family who were off celebrating their son’s return from the first world war, who were pulled off of a train on their way home and killed. In the end, hundreds of African Americans were reportedly killed. The most frequently touted number is 237, but some observers say the number could be more than 800, which would make it the deadliest massacre of African Americans, which would make it the deadliest massacre of African Americans in US history...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/a-rural-town-confronts-its-buried-history-of-mass-killings-of-black-americans
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(Wiki). RED SUMMER was the late winter, spring, summer, and early autumn of 1919, which were marked by hundreds of deaths and a higher number of casualties across the United States, as the result of anti-black white supremacist terrorist attacks that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases many black people fought back, notably in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where an estimated 100–240 black people, and five white people, were killed; Chicago and Washington had 38 and 15 deaths, respectively, and many more injured, with extensive property damage in Chicago.
The racial riots against blacks resulted from a variety of postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs and housing among ethnic European Americans and African Americans. In addition, it was a time of labor unrest in which some industrialists used black people as strikebreakers, increasing resentment. The riots were extensively documented in the press, which, along with the federal government, feared socialist and communist influence on the black civil rights movement following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia 1917. They also feared foreign anarchists, who had bombed homes and businesses of prominent business and government leaders. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer
- Elaine, Arkansas Race Riot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_race_riot
- List of Civil Unrest Incidents in the US: (Excerpt, 1910-1919)
1910–1919[edit]
1910 – Johnson–Jeffries riots
1910–1919 – Bandit War Southern Texas
1910 – Philadelphia general strike (1910), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1912 – Lawrence textile strike, Lawrence, Massachusetts
1913 – Wheatland Riot, August 3, Wheatland, California
1913 – Paterson silk strike, Feb. 25-July 28 Paterson, New Jersey
1913 – Copper Country Strike of 1913–1914, Calumet, Michigan
1913 – Indianapolis streetcar strike of 1913, Oct. 30-Nov. 7, Indianapolis, Indiana
1914 – Ludlow massacre, April 20, Ludlow, Colorado
1916 – Preparedness Day bombing, July 22, San Francisco, California
1916 – Everett massacre, November 5, Everett, Washington
1917 – East St. Louis Race Riots, July 2, St. Louis, Missouri & East St. Louis, Illinois
1917 – Springfield Vigilante Riot, Springfield, Missouri
1917 – Green Corn Rebellion, Aug. 3, A brief popular uprising advocating for the rural poor and against military conscription, Central Oklahoma
1917 – Houston Race riot, August 23, Houston, Texas
1917 – St. Paul Streetcar Riots, October and December, St. Paul, Minnesota
1918 – Detroit trolley riot, Detroit, Michigan {Source: Detroit Free Press' The Detroit Almanac, 2001.}
1919 – Seattle General Strike, Feb. 6-11, Seattle, Washington
1919 – May Day Riots, May 1, Cleveland, Ohio, Boston, Massachusetts, New York City, New York (state)
1919 – Red Summer, white riots against blacks
1919 – Annapolis riot of 1919, June 27, Annapolis, Maryland
1919 – Boston Police Strike, September 9 – 11, Boston, Massachusetts
1919 – Steel Strike of 1919, September 22 – January 8 Pennsylvania
1919 – Centralia Massacre, November 11, Centralia, Washington
MORE, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States
The Elaine Twelve Defendants
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