Hundreds
of African Americans died in a little known spate of white mob
violence that spread in cities and towns across the nation a century
ago. The bloodshed of 1919 doesn’t
get much of a mention in history classes.
J.
Chester Johnson never heard about the mass killing of black people in
Elaine, Arkansas.He is now co-chair of a committee overseeing
construction of a memorial honoring those killed in 1919. The
memorial is set to be unveiled in September.
Others
want to focus instead on reparations to account for what they say
was theft of black-owned land in the wake of the killings.
“It
was literally a war on this area. People wanted the property that was
almost all black-owned,” said Mary Olson, president of the Elaine
Legacy Center, a community center that works to preserve the area’s
civil rights history. Some
residents are calling for descendants of the victims to receive
compensation for what their families lost.
On
the evening of Sept. 30, 1919, as black sharecroppers had gathered at
a small church in Hoop Spur, an unincorporated area about 2½ miles
north of Elaine. The sharecroppers, wanting to be paid better and
treated more fairly, were meeting with union organizers when a deputy
sheriff and a railroad security officer — both white — arrived.
Fighting and gunfire erupted. Whites angered that the sharecroppers
were organizing went on a rampage. Over several days, mobs from the
surrounding area and neighboring states killed men, women and
children. More than 200 black men, women and children were killed.
Hundreds of black people were
arrested and jailed, many of them tortured into giving incriminating
testimony. Some were forced to flee Arkansas and had their land
stolen.
Elaine
is still highly segregated: White residents live predominantly on the
south side and black residents on the north side.
“...there’s
still racial tension here because we’re still divided,” said
James
White, director of the Legacy Center whose
grandmother told him about black residents hiding in swamps to
escape. “One
hundred years later, it’s the same old game, just a different day,”
he said, reflecting on the disparity between those that hold power in
Phillips County and the poor black residents of Elaine. “It’s
hate in this town ... and black people are still afraid” of talking
about the massacre.
On
a hot July day in 1919, a black 17-year-old swimming in Lake Michigan
drifted in a dangerous direction — toward the white section of a
Chicago beach. White beachgoers, angry at Eugene Williams’
intrusion, hurled rocks at him. One struck him in the head, and he
drowned. After Williams’ body was pulled from the water on July 27,
a group of black witnesses pointed to a white man they accused of
throwing rocks, but police refused to arrest him. A crowd gathered
and a black man was arrested instead. Fighting broke out along the
beach and spread from there. White mobs raided black neighborhoods on
the South Side, burning homes and attacking people. Black residents,
determined to hold their ground, fought back. So began a week of
riots that would kill 38 people — 23 of them black, 15 of them
white — and leave more than 500 people injured.
Tensions
had been building along with the Great Migration, the shift of
Southern blacks to Northern cities as they fled life under Jim Crow —
a system of oppressive laws that perpetuated racism, inequality and
brutality. Many white workers saw the influx of black people as a
threat to their livelihoods.
“Even
if Eugene Williams had not been hit on the head by a rock, almost
certainly, racial violence would’ve taken place in Chicago on a
massive scale,” said Brad Hunt, vice president for research and
academic programs at Chicago’s Newberry Library.
Racially
restrictive covenants gave way to messaging from homeowners’
associations discouraging members from selling to black families —
all to keep certain Chicago neighborhoods white and to concentrate
the African American population in the city’s “black belt,” a
string of neighborhoods on the South Side. The boundaries of the
black belt will eventually expand — particularly after World War II
during a second wave of migration from the South.
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