Part of the Red Summer and the Nadir of American race relations
Headline in the Arkansas Gazette, October 3, 1919
Date
September 30, 1919
Location
Hoop Spur, Phillips County, Arkansas, U.S.
Also known as
Elaine Massacre
Participants
Residents of Phillips County, Arkansas
Deaths
100–237 black people,[1][2]
5 white people[3]
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Red Summer
April – June
Morgan County, WV (April 10)
Jenkins, GA (April 13)
Sylvester, Georgia (April 14)
Pickens, Mississippi (May 5)
Philadelphia (May 9)
Charleston, SC (May 10)
Sylvester, Georgia (May 10)
El Dorado, Arkansas (May 21)
Milan, Georgia (May 26)
Putnam County, GA (May 27–28)
New London, CT (May 30)
Monticello, Mississippi (May 31)
Macon, MS (June 7)
Memphis, Tennessee (June 13)
Bibb County, Alabama (June 18)
Annapolis (June 27)
Macon, Mississippi (June 27)
New London, CT (June 29)
July
Bisbee, AZ (July 3)
Dublin, Georgia riot (July 6)
Philadelphia (July 7)
Coatesville, PA (July 8)
Tuscaloosa, Alabama (July 9)
Longview, TX (July 10–12)
Baltimore (July 11)
Garfield Park, IN (July 14)
Port Arthur, TX (July 15)
Louise, Mississippi (July 15)
Washington D.C. (July 19–24)
New York City (July 20)
Norfolk, VA (July 21)
New Orleans, Louisiana (July 23)
Darby, PA (July 23)
Newberry, SC (July 24)
Hobson City, Alabama (July 26)
Chicago (July 27–August 3)
Newberry, South Carolina (July 28)
Bloomington, Illinois (July 31)
Philadelphia (July 31)
Syracuse, NY (July 31)
August – November
Whatley, AL (August 1)
Lincoln, Arkansas (August 3)
Hattiesburg, Mississippi (August 4)
Texarkana, Texas riot of 1919 (August 6)
New York City (August 21)
Austin, TX (August 22)
Laurens County, GA (August 27–29)
Knoxville (August 30–31)
Bogalusa, Louisiana (August 31)
Clarksdale, Mississippi (September 10)
Omaha (September 28–29)
Montgomery, Alabama (September 29)
Elaine, AR (September 30–October 1)
Baltimore (October 1–2)
Corbin, KY (October 31)
Macon, Georgia (November 2)
Ocoee, FL (November 2–3)
Magnolia, Arkansas (November 11)
Wilmington, DE (November 13)
Bogalusa, LA (November 22)
Part of a series on the
Nadir of American race relations
Violence in the 1906 Atlanta race massacre
Historical background
Reconstruction era
Voter suppression
Disfranchisement
Redeemers
Compromise of 1877
Jim Crow laws
Segregation
Anti-miscegenation laws
Convict leasing
Practices
Common actions
Expulsions of African Americans
Lynchings
Lynching postcards
Sundown town
Whitecapping
Vigilante groups
Black Legion
Indiana White Caps
Ku Klux Klan
Red Shirts
Lynchings
Andrew Richards
Michael Green
Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer
Eliza Woods
Amos Miller
George Meadows
Joe Vermillion
Jim Taylor
Joe Coe
People's Grocery
Ephraim Grizzard
Alfred Blount
Samuel J. Bush
Stephen Williams
Frazier B. Baker and Julia Baker
John Henry James
Sam Hose
George Ward
David Wyatt
Marie Thompson
Watkinsville
Ed Johnson
William Burns
Walker family
Laura and L. D. Nelson
King Johnson
John Evans
Jesse Washington
Newberry Six
Anthony Crawford
Ell Persons
Jim McIlherron
George Taylor
John Hartfield
1920 Duluth
James Harvey and Joe Jordan
Joe Pullen
Massacres and riots
Opelousas massacre
Rock Springs massacre
Thibodaux massacre
Spring Valley Race Riot of 1895
Phoenix election riot
Wilmington insurrection of 1898
Pana riot
Robert Charles riots
Evansville race riot
Atlanta Massacre of 1906
Springfield race riot of 1908
Johnson–Jeffries riots
1912 racial conflict in Forsyth County
1917 Chester race riot
East St. Louis riots
Elaine massacre
Red Summer
Chicago race riot of 1919
Washington race riot of 1919
Ocoee massacre
Tulsa race massacre
Perry race riot
Rosewood massacre
Reactions
Anti-lynching movement
Exodusters movement
Great Migration
Back to Africa movement
Related topics
Black genocide
Civil rights movement (1865–1896)
Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Mass racial violence in the United States
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The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans and five white men were killed.[4] Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred".[5] Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred".[6] More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds.[3][2][7] The white mobs were aided by federal troops (requested by Arkansas governor Charles Hillman Brough) and local terrorist organizations.[8] Gov. Brough led a contingent of 583 US soldiers from Camp Pike, with a 12-gun machine gun battalion.[7]
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "the Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States".[9][10]
After the massacre, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that blacks were planning an insurrection.[8] National newspapers repeated the falsehood that blacks in Arkansas were staging an insurrection.[8] A New York Times headline read, "Planned Massacre of Whites Today", and the Arkansas Gazette (the leading newspaper in Arkansas) wrote that Elaine was "a zone of negro insurrection".[8] Subsequent to this reporting, more than 100 African Americans were indicted, with 12 being sentenced to death by electrocution.[8] After a years-long legal battle by the NAACP, the 12 men were acquitted.[8]
Because of the widespread attacks which white mobs committed against blacks during the Red Summer of 1919, the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama classified the black deaths at Elaine as lynchings in its 2015 report on the lynching of African Americans in the South.[11]
^Cite error: The named reference Walter Francis White 1995, p.49 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abArkansas Assembly 2017
^ abCite error: The named reference encyclopediaofarkansas.net was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference rogers was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^[Ida B. Wells (Wells-Barnett, I. B.)] (1920). [The Arkansas Race Riot https://archive.org/details/TheArkansasRaceRiot/].
^White, Walter F. (December 6, 1919). "'Massacring Whites' in Arkansas". The Nation. CIX (2840).
^ abWhitaker, Robert (2008). On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation. New York: Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-0-307-33982-9.
^ abcdef"The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century". The Washington Post. 2020.
^Cite error: The named reference AKenc was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Krug, Teresa (18 August 2019). "A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
^Robertson, Campbell (February 10, 2015). "History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names". The New York Times.
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