USFREEDOM911 (08-18-2019)
USFREEDOM911 (08-18-2019)
signalmankenneth (08-18-2019)
A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans
USFREEDOM911 (08-18-2019)
signalmankenneth (08-18-2019)
black people began to ask for more pay
so the town murdered hundereds of them
One family was away when the murders began
They were riding home on the train after celebrating their sons return from WW1 when they got home they were dragged from the train and murdered
the Town of Elaine never spoke of it afterwards
Most of the people were never told the history
UNTIL NOW
USFREEDOM911 (08-18-2019)
Sharecropping, the African Americans had been having trouble in getting settlements for the cotton they raised on land owned by whites. Both the Negroes and the white owners were to share the profits when the crop was sold for the year. Between the time of planting and selling, the sharecroppers took up food, clothing, and necessities at excessive prices from the plantation store owned by the planter.
— O.A. Rogers, Jr., President of the Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1960 issue
The landowner sold the crop whenever and however he saw fit. At the time of settlement, landowners generally never gave an itemized statement to the black sharecroppers of accounts owed, nor details of the money received for cotton and seed. The farmers were disadvantaged as many were illiterate. It was an unwritten law of the cotton country that the sharecroppers could not quit and leave a plantation until their debts were paid. The period of the year around accounts settlement was frequently the time of most lynchings of blacks throughout the South, especially if economic times were poor. As an example, many Negroes in Phillips County, whose cotton was sold in October 1918, did not get a settlement before July of the following year. They often amassed considerable debt at the plantation store before that time, as they had to buy supplies, including seed, to start the next season.
Black farmers began to organize in 1919 to try to negotiate better conditions, including fair accounting and timely payment of monies due them by white landowners. Robert L. Hill, a black farmer from Winchester, Arkansas, had founded the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. He worked with farmers throughout Phillips County. Its purpose was "to obtain better payments for their cotton crops from the white plantation owners who dominated the area during the Jim Crow era. Black sharecroppers were often exploited in their efforts to collect payment for their cotton crops."[4]
Whites tried to disrupt such organizing and threatened farmers.[6] The union had hired a white law firm in the capital of Little Rock to represent the black farmers in getting fair settlements for their 1919 cotton crops before they were taken away for sale. The firm was headed by Ulysses S. Bratton, a native of Searcy County and former assistant federal district attorney.[6]
The postwar summer of 1919 had already been marked by deadly race riots against black Americans in more than three dozen cities across the country, including Chicago, Knoxville, Washington, DC, and Omaha, Nebraska. Competition for jobs and housing in crowded markets following World War I as veterans returned to society resulted in outbreaks of racial violence, usually of ethnic whites against blacks. Having served their country in the Great War, African-American veterans resisted racial discrimination and violence. In 1919 blacks vigorously fought back when their communities were attacked. Labor unrest and strikes took place in several cities as workers tried to organize. As industries hired blacks as strikebreakers in some cities, worker resentment against them increased.[4]
USFREEDOM911 (08-18-2019)
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