and i think by bringing desegregation into being it will cause many people slowly change their attitudes, move to the point of changing their attitudes easier than they would have otherwise. >> american history tv is on c-span 3 every weekend and all of our programs are archived on our website at cspan.org/history. you can watch lectures in college classrooms, tours of historic sites, archival films and see our schedule of upcoming programs. that's cspan.org/history. up next -- a discussion about the racially motivated 1919 elaine, arkansas, massacre. panelists contributed to the book of "the elaine massacre and arkansas: a century of atrocity and resistance." this was part of the 2019 southern historical association's annual conference.

>> welcome to new perspectives and sources on the elaine massacre of 1919. the panel is devoted to advancing our understanding of the horrific series of events that began just over 100 years ago in which african-americans were hunted down by a paranoid and enraged crowd of whites inside delta arkansas. i want to recognize first the work guy lancaster did in helping to organize this panel. unfortunately he had to change his plans to join us and participate. all three of our scholars here on this panel are contributors to a book edited by guy lancaster and we are shamelessly plugging that right here. the "the elaine massacre and

arkansas: a century of atrocity and resistance," 1819 to 1919. full disclosure, i'm in there too. but this is not about me. i want to introduce all three of our panelists first, and they will each present for about 20, 25 minutes. and after that i will spend just a few minutes offering some thoughts designed to generate discussion. and then i will get out of the way and we will enjoy a q & a with these folks. so first we have matthew hill, a lecture in the history of school of sociology at the georgia institute of technology and instructor in the department of history at the university of west georgia. he's the author of a lot of things, including green backers, knights of labor and poll u lifts, conservativesy this the 19th century house, the rise and decline of legacy and populism and working class protests, that's pretty recent from the university of missouri and he

coedited with carolyn merritt, he are considering southern racist history, class and power. next cherisse rose brant. her publications include "crossing the lines: women's interracial activism during and after world war ii" her current book manuscript, which will be out with the university of arkansas press is called "better living by their own bootstraps: rural black women's activism in arkansas 1913 to 1965." lastly but not least we have brian mitchell who teaches at the university of arkansas little rock. he's published multiple pieces on various aspects of african-american history. he's also known for amassing

tons of documents associated with the elaine massacre of 1919. he's given so many lectures lately so it's hard for me to keep track but he's highly sought out recently for his expertise in these recently uncovered documents. he's been working with guy lancaster recently on a second edition of "blood in their eyes: elaine massacre of 1919." that will be out in spring 2020. he also has, i just learned, a graphic novel coming out on reconstruction leader oscar james dunn. so we will go in order of the program. matthew will start with labor activism, third party politics and african-americans in arkansas. charisse jones-branch, women and the 1919 elaine massacre. and brian mitchell, when the depths don't give up their dead, a new discussion on primary sources and how they're reshaping debates on the elaine massacre.

>> okay. so ironically for somebody who earned a doctorate at georgia tech and teaches there, i'm going to try to just talk about my paper without reading powerpoint. but i will try not to bore everybody with a word for word disertation. so the elaine massacre of 1919 shocked the nation, but it would have been less shocking to those who are familiar with the history of race relations in arkansas since the civil war. black farm works are who tried to engage in collective bargaining had met with blind opposition before. both aggressive farmers and household leagues in america and construction units in elaine had

deep roots in the state. beginning shortly after the civil war ended and almost immediately these efforts revoked white suppression and resistance. associations such as union league, knights of labor, sons of agriculture star, agriculture wheel and colored farms alliance recruited and immobilized lackar kansas during the three decades after the civil war. furthermore after democrats redeemed the states from republican rule, many african-americans participated in the struggle against their dominance through third party such as the greenback labor party, and people's acaucus party. usually under the ku klux klan but also under mobs, as elsewhere in the south, arkansas democrats also implemented

various measures in the early '90s that disqualified respective people as well as whites for decades to come. elaine massacre represents the culmination of white oppression in the state. i'm just kind of talking through it. u so the documents began after the first emancipation and they came in and started negotiating contract with the foreign masters in many cases. the human league came into arkansas at the same time and began mobilizing black men for voter registration drives, mostly the republican party. there was a pretty infamous incident that somewhat was a prelude to what happened in elaine. on a smaller scale he began organizing fellow slaves in cook county, reportedly encouraged by

federal officers who were already occupying phillips county and eventually brian sinkfield formed a small, unknown name but very much a labor union under these former slaves negotiating mostly with their foreign masters. and ultimately, when sinkfield and his many organizers couldn't get a deal to suit him, they started leaving the farms they were working on, in many cases farms and masters working on. i will ad a quote here. this group of former slaves organized by sinkfield actually led the plantations and formed an independent farm colony on the end plot of land which they basically took over as operators or at least quasi owners. this is right after the civil war, and a huge affrontist to the planters. the planters, man named by bart, who became the sheriff eventually of phillips county.

what happens is the sheriff and other white planters went on where the patriots were organizing and operating as independent farmers and start killing them. singfield himself is killed actually and body thrown to a swamp. for decades after local legends about his ghost haunting the swamp. as far as i know, that's the first episode of this kind of murderous white oppression of black wayback activism in phillips county, perhaps 5 1/2 decades before the elaine massacre of '18. also this in no way short circuits or ends african-american labor or organizing activism. they keep working on african-american freedoms broken up in 1870. and later on about two decades later the knights of labor come in and they organize

african-american farm workers, african-american sawmill workers in phillips county. the ball is always rolling in decades for elaine. the union, lee, of course, are all gone. you began reconstruction. and then the greenback party came in. nationally, it didn't amount to much in the little sense in arkansas. they never elect a governor in arkansas. never elect a congressman. only had about seven members in the state legislature. nonetheless african-americans in the greenback arkansas and elsewhere becomes important because at that point the republican party is crushed by arkansas and the democrat parties, suburban redeemers, have taken over. so it builds a biracial movement in the 1870s. in fact, in little rock gillum

was elected to the state legislature and in the city of little rock, the greenbackers sweep the elections and about half of the candidates are african-americans. so you have the greenback party building a vibratational line. and in the early 1880s a whole state of really native to arkansas farm organizations are formed. the agriculture we owned, prairie county, brothers of freedom, northwestern part of the state and initially these organizations were all white, but at the same time they're being organized, african-american farmer groups are being organized too. so in monroe county, for example, naenk african-americans formed a group called the organizational star. and they dropped the whites-only membership requirement and narrows the rather appropriate term colored wheels. but nonetheless based on these

chapters of african-american sons became color-wheeled chapters and even though they're locally segregated, they go to meetings and you have white and black together in mid-arkansas by the 1980s. so it's a significant organization. supposedly they were nauc supposedly they were nonpartisan. in 1886, knights of labor national organization comes to arkansas. and in these two massive -- massive in terms of important. massive in terms of workers involved. i argue both are important. one of the labor strikes in 1886 arkansas was the great southwestern railroad strike that supposedly begins in texas. it does begin in texas but it's called the southwest strike, really a south midwest strike in missouri. but in arkansas, up to 3,000

rail workers are in a strike. mostly whites but some african-americans and for that time and place, it was a pretty impressive coalition. and that gets crushed and the democrat from arkansas simon hughes sends the center of strike activity and court injunction issued against strikers so it's over in about two months in arkansas and everywhere else. shortly after that strike ends in july and this is the one in starling time and place, there was a plantation strike just south of little rock, and in this case 40 african-american farm hands had put unorganized a black of knights labor came in and these 40 african-american farm hands, including some women, go on strike for a $1 wage instead of 75 cents and cash payment instead of script. this is not an all-black

workforce coordinating striking in the heart of the jim crow era. what happens is, not surprisingly, the white sheriff of the county came in with a pausetive of deputies and friday morning they come to the house of an african-american man. he opens the door and a deputy shooted him with a double barrel shotgun but miraculously he was not really wounded. news of this gets out about 250 african-americans come to the farm from over placid county and i will read the quote from "the new york times" -- the county is on the verge of one of the bloodiest race conflicts that's occurred since the war. that was basically the put reception that would be a massacre of white law enforcement and all of these black men armed come to the scene. actually what saves the day is knights of labor send their state white leader and local

african-american leader to the plantation, to kind of keep the peace. the strike fails but bloodshed averted. the leader of white leaders in arkansas later writes sheriff wortham and his deputies committed this because of the organizations that do exist and this serves as the pretext for what occurred. so basically the planters and white sheriff were trying to evoke a bloodbath as an excuse to stamp out black labor organization. but the rise of equality african-american communities kept the peace. the strike fails but it doesn't turn into an elaine-like episode in 1918. the state law strikes and the racial wheel, frankly whites pulling most leadership positions, but the membership is very much biracial. in 1886 they start moving to

third party politics. they do not amount to a whole lot in 1986 but the crushing of the rail strike, great southwest rail strike that involved white and black strikers alike and what happened in the plantation strike, these were really counted as helping build a biracial anti-democratic biparty coalition. in 1886 they don't amount to a whole lot but i think it's worth noting in addition to the districts that include placid county, little rock, iseman langley, he ran for congress as independent labor candidate and receives 42% of the vote district wide, a nice way of a strog hoeld, 56%. so even though there's no official third party, they lost biracial support for these anti-redeemer, anti-democrats.

in 1988 a third party, union labor party, sworn in cincinnati in 1887 by a national committee of about 300 labor and farmers. on a massive station, they never amount to much but in certain states in the mid-to southwest, kansas, arkansas, texas, they do. in arkansas there's always a pre-existing farmer labor biracial movement that really welcomes the new party as soon as it's formed. so a short kut 1880 to 1990, both of those elections in the party had democratic elections been allowed, not subverted through violence and fraud and ballot box stuff, they captured control of the party in 1880 and 1890. the whole time this is going on you have chapters of the agriculture knights of labor organizing through the delta, petitioning for reduction of land for crops of both races.

it's a synergy between both of these organizations and a third party. and it's not like fraudulent elections didn't happen anywhere but south. it's kind of unfair times happened in the south but still they were more violent in the south than other parts of the country. and that is 1888 and 1890 there are charges of african-american men in new neighbor strongholds being beaten and whipped. as many as 20 hurt in the 1880 elections in arkansas. a white candidate for congress named john clayton, the brother of the form republican governor powell clayton, with a congressman with a lot of african-american support. when he was counted out he declared election wide election fraud from democrats and tried

to prove the election was stolen from him. and another man was involved and actually wins is l.p. fedorston, he won the federal district election in northeast arkansas, basically the delta area. he too had a final election contest and in his case managed to not get killed and takes a seat. essentially, these stories show the lengths to which white arkansas democrats would go three decades before elaine. they think nothing of whipping and murdering black men to maintain focal power. if a white man was challenging him like john was in the second district, he too might be murdered. all of this comes to head in arkansas in 1891 with two episodes. first of all, the democrats having stole an -- i'm not the first historian to say that. i have the footnotes, but a lot of historians had written by arkansas before i came along and said democrats stole the elections in 1888 and 1890 but they got so much violence they couldn't keep going that way

because it was drawing too much attention. in 1891 the legislature passed the election reform law. and it's in quotation marks because there wasn't much reform. it moved those in the state legislature, democrats of course, and one leader who was the leader of the census bureau and over african-american men so they're all wiped out from voting. and also 1891 that very year, by that point the color farms alliance was spreading across the south, starting to organize mostly black farmers, black sharecroppers, blake tent farmers. and in the fall of 1891 before cotton-picking season, the white president of colored farms alliance, a man named richard humphrey, proposed a regional wide strike of cotton-pickers for $1. and two decades later they were still striking for $1 a day. this strike never really gets off the ground for the most

part. but in lee county, arkansas, not very far from phillips county, it goes back to the groundwork that had already been done. in this part of arkansas the freedoms bureau two decades earlier and knights of labor involved, i have never been able to get the bond but knights of labor stole the county when it happens. this is one of the few places where a strike comes off a national labor organizer from memphis comes in and starts organizing mobile black cotton-pickers. in the rftest south the strike is ignored and press ridicules him. humphrey thought he would beat all of these african-americans on strike. in lee county the strike happens. i will give the short version, but within about two weeks it evolved into a bloodbath that first strikers raiding plantations, and an alliance breaks out and then they kill a

white plantation manager and then the sheriff and posse including 15 leaders are all capturedth murdered in cold blood. not just arrested and taken off, but just murder on the spot. a lot of ways in 1891 you have the twin tragedy of the farmer labor movement, more for african-americans and but for whites and whites too, because it was a biracial movement. after the election reform law, most poor black men are not voting in arkansas anymore and after that, the way the strike was deimagined, there was no organization to come and fill in the void that the clorns farm alliance held. so by 1892 there was racial relations and biracial activists in arkansas. the populist party comes along like it did everywhere else in the south and midwest but it was too late. the labor party was the populist party in arkansas and after the

election form laws, voter turnout dropped more than 20%. there's a case in calhoun county, arkansas, where four black men were shot armed and derled not to vote because they can't pass a literacy test be white officials killed the four on the spot. so in a post civil war era, 1892 comes the leader of biracial farming activism in arkansas. i will finish this by reading the last sentence. nevertheless the leaders of african-american arkansas assert their rights as workers and citizens during reconstruction and two decades that followed should not be considered to have been fruitless or in vain. with the respective of hindsight, the efforts of brian singfield organized newly emancipated farm hands and elsewhere in the state among black farm hands and labors couldn'ten-pickers in lee county all paved the way for black

labor activism in the state. similarly, the progressive of farmers and households in america that continued these legacy of protest movements, the violence of 1818 should not cast fall on these efforts because they helped paved the way for southern plantation union and 15 years later. the black sharecropper that had belonged to the farmers union and became one of the founding members of the stfu. not only the stfu revived the greenback populist efforts at arkansas and elsewhere, although met with violent procession, the violence that followed two decades later, even to the except many younger members of the stfu came on to be leaders in the local civil rights in arkansas. thus the participation of

african-americans from the period of reconstruction to the 1890s should be even as having laid the foundation for the 20th century. that's why i argue the fruits of the labor, good and bad, can be found in the populist reconstruction era. i will sit down. . >> good afternoon. the 1919 elaine massacre was precipitated by rural african-americans assertiveness through their demands for improved economic conditions and human dignity at a time when the south and the nation determined that they were unworthy of both. what has been left out of this

story -- what has been left out of the story, the struggle for human dignity, is women's experiences and activism during and after the elaine massacre. women witnessed and experienced a racial terrorism of the elaine massacre as did their children. even more so than black men, rural black women were impoverished and poorly paid and were almost never granted considerations or protections extended to white women regardless of their socioeconomic background. what has also not been explored it the extent through which women challenged southern racial violence through their individual, and in this case i will be talking about ida b. wells burnett, ivy league lynching crew crusader and collective every ets. they did this through such organizations as arkansas association of colored women, national association of colored women and the national advancement association for the advancement of colored people, also known as the naacp.

so in essence what i'm about to talk about here for just a few minutes are the gendered considerations of the terrorism of the elaine massacre and resistance to rural reform from the perspective of women who lived through the years leading up to, during and following this travesty of justice. next, okay. and these are some of the areas i will be talking about. on september 30th, 1919, when rural blacks gathered at hoops spur church, and this is phillips county, for the meeting of the progressive farmers and household union of america or pfhua to discuss suing their land lords for their fair share of the cotton crop, women were there. so women like -- of course, that's phillips county and then smaller image there of elaine. women were there. so women like vinia mason were

there with her children. also present was a woman named cleo miller, wife of hoops spur large hua president jim miller. so one of the things i want to point out is rural blacks have always been about the business of organizing and engaging in cooperative economics. one of the things that you'll notice on i think it's this slide is that when it says the progressive farmers and household union of america, it also says -- let me fast forward just a little bit here -- it also says the national negro business league. so that's the slide with mason. it also says the national negro business league. so african-americans have been organizing to protect their economic interests at least since the turn of the 20th century when they established the colored businessmen's league of america in 1903.

this kind of action was not unusual and in fact was critical at a time when black people deemed it necessary and even crucial to protect themselves from those who sought to undermine their accomplishments. so the idea, as mauj yea hild as already said, the phua was not new and neither was female membership. so trying to forward here to -- this is an image of cleoia miller, but her involvement in the organization. and this is what i was saying about the progressive farmers and household union of america but also a business aspect to all of this. what i want to show you next, i will just move ahead here to this slide, this is cleoa's membership card. if you can see it, and i apologize if you can't, she was approximately 24 when she joined the organization and she was already the mother of three children. as you can see from her responses to the questions and, in fact, the questions

themselves, there was very little that was radical about this organization except for the fact african-americans dared to advocate for themselves in jim crow america. again, if you can see this, you will notice she was asked about the state of her health and she answered, unhealthy, which was a common occurrence among rural black women who lacked access to health care and suffered insecurity. and attendance included lulu ware, born in 1878. she and her husband ed were fairly well off compared to other members of the organization. this is important because it disrupts what we had originally thought and taught to believe about rural black folks, and that is they possess nothing. that's not true. the wares owned their own land. they farmed 120 acres and hired other african-americans to labor for them. their relative independence was one of the things that made them particularly dangerous. black financial independents

angered whites and on the night of september 30th, ed did not actually want to attend the meeting but his wife lulu insists. of so she like many rural black women were often the force behind their husbands. when the violence ensued at hoops spur church in 1919, most accounts focus on the shootout between men and not on the fact that women were there and they were a source of concern as well. white people lived in fear of armed black people, men and women alive. i think you should be able to see what i mean in this article. so when people like vina mason, when the shootout occurs, she's shot in the arm and she quite literally has to run for her life. another woman who had to run for her life was named sally giles. she was particularly concerned after her son albert giles was arrested for the murder of james tappan of phillips county, plantation owner. they further overlook the fact that black people had long

engaged in armed self-defense. as in the case of ed ware, who actually left and returned home to grab his weapon. they underestimate the extent to which women were willing to go to protect their homes and their families. for example, when lulu ware, when men came to her house to arrest her husband, she asked, what are you going to do with us women? and so the risk they assumed when they were arrested, lulu was arrested as well, so was her husband when he went on the run. i just want you to know that they had some fairly terrible experiences in this day. so when lulu was arrested, she was there for four weeks. she was in prison for four weeks with other black women, forced to perform hard labor and sleep on concrete floors. when she returned home, what she discovered is white people ransacked her home and stolen all of her family's worldly possessions. so it's clear it was never just about black people allegedly

rioting. it was more about the fact they had defied stereotypes and challenged white supremacy. and in this ad here, if you can see it. once again, i apologize if you can't, it talks about how they found women who had weapons stored in their skirts or stockings or what you have. they're concerned about women carrying weapons as well, no the just black men. another black woman, mary moore, was driven from the farm on which she and her husband worked and placed in jail with other black women where she said, quote, we were whipped as well as men. you see black women could not expect their gender to protect them from violence. when she's finally able to return home after her release to collector had family's belongings, she found her house had been vandalized and in fact the people who stole the goods from her house threatened to kill her. but we should never allow black women's victimization to hide their strength and tenacity.

in another example, lulu black, the mother of four children, she was dragged outside of her home and she was asked -- physically asked outside of her home and asked if she was a phfua member. she answered in the affirmative and defily told the mob it would help the colored people get what they worked. they didn't like what they worked for. they didn't like her answer so as a result they beat her within an inch of her life and carried her off to jail. in a final example -- in a final example, when hundreds of african-americans were arrested in the aftermath of all of this and 500 troops dispatched to put down the insurrection as it was called, among other things, a woman mentioned in this add molly simmons was among them. she was from parks dale in arkansas county. she was about 22 and attended arkansas college and told officers she had, quote, been

composing and lecturing for the uplift of her race, end quote. this was a popular refrain among black women leaders at the time. when asked, she denied advocating social equality because she, quote, knew better. i don't have any way to substantiate this. but it is likely that simmons said this to avoid physical and sexual violence. rape and sexual vulnerability, along with economic oppression, were very real in black women's lives. this reality was most often informed by stereotypes about black women's hyper sexuality as an excuse for sexual assault. in laymen's terms for many people during this pefriod of history, it was very difficult for most to imagine blackwomen were rapable. this concern was shared by a number of african-american leaders, like this gentleman for starters, reverend elias camp morris or e.c. morris as he was known. at one point he was president of the national baptist convention

and also a leader in the arkansas republican party and member of the commission on race relates. and he lambasted soldiers who had raped and sexually assaulted black women during and after the massacre. they're not just randomly and murdering people they're raping and sexually assaulting black women. i also said i would talk a little bit about ida b. wells-barnett. i want to say a few things about her role in the aftermath of the elaine massacre. so as you can imagine, what happened in elaine -- by the way, it's elaine, no elane, made news around the country. so women activists, individually or through their organizational affiliations wrote letters demanding justice for the men sentenced to death and those who received long sentences. in at least one organization, known as the national equal rights league, a human rights organization found in 1864, members of this organization, which included people like ida

b. wells-barnett actually wrote the governor of arkansas, governor brough, and asked for a stay of execution. as i said ida b. wells-burnett is very much involved and in fact the former vice president. i also want to point out ida barnett and other well heeled, educated black women were members of the organizations like the negro fellowship league. and this organization, again, had been founded to help african-americans who had been imprisoned as a result of other racial melees that happened around the same time. in fact even before elaine. just a little bit about ida wells-burnett, she was born in 1862 to mississippi and no stranger to racial injustice and violent. she challenged segregated seating on the chesapeake and ohio railroad 71 years before

rosa parks challenged segregated seating on the buses in alabama. she also challenged racism and sexual violence through her memphis-based newspaper, the free speech and headlight, and in doing so led to her newspaper being destroyed and her being banned from returning to the south. they threatened to kill her if she came back but she did return to the south. she in 1920 came to arkansas disguised as a little old women to meet with the men and their families. and after this shivisit she published at her own expense a pamphlet called arkansas race riot. this is an example of some of her connections around the country and talking about this case and soliciting support for the men down in arkansas. this is another example, so as i said this is a des moines, iowa newspaper. this news really does -- this news really makes it around the country. and here a final example from a newspaper in seattle,

washington. so as i said, she publishes a pamphlet after meeting with these folks down in arkansas. and, again, i apologize if you can't see any of this but i will highlight a couple of things. one of the things she noted in this document is that black women had to pay the jailer $1, money that most of them did not possess, in order to see their loved ones but she was impressed by the fact they were all bolstered by their christian faith and often, as she said, sang and prayed to alleviate their suffering as much as possible. as i said before, when she returned to chicago, she continues to use her many organizational affiliations to assist the men and the families that she had met in arkansas. and so i just put a few images of this pamphlet up here because what hasn't really been talked about, hasn't been talked about at all, is how much she talked to these women and how much these women told her about their

experiences during all of this. the fact they have lost everything they own. but also the fact that they had the tenacity to go back and see what they could reclaim under the threat -- often under the threat of death. and this is available online if anybody wants to take a look at it. and this is the last page where you see here she published this on her own dime, and it came out in 1920. so efforts to aid what became known as the elaine 12 also came from black club women, particularly those who were members of the arkansas association of colored women, also known as the aacw. the aacw was established in 1905 and affiliated with the national association of colored women, which still exists. both of these organizations still exist as a matter of fact. but the nacw was founded in

1836. so the nacw rallied just like organizations nationwide and they challenged rare violence during and after world war i. so for example in 1919 in 1919, when black ar can sanz, the organizations raised a lot of money to aid the elaine 12. approximately $1,000 came from little rock-based club women. black club women also discussed what had happened at elaine at the acw's meeting in 1920. let me flip to this slide here quickly. that's where they talk about the money they had raised, the $10,000, and black club women had contributed to that. when they go there by the biennial meetings, they're talking about it here as well. you've got people there

representing arkansas, black women's clubs from all over the country, the ywca. in one example a woman named mary e. jackson, she visits the men down in arkansas, and she too requests that a letter be sent to african-mile-an-hour attorney mr. jones who has taken over the case to support the efforts to have the men released. in another example here, we know that african-american women members of the aacw are at this meeting. this is molly spate here. this is my left, your right. she's the first president of the arkansas association of colored women. women like henrietta carolina. there's another woman, lady o'brien, from pine bluff, arkansas. she headed up the naacp, the

arkansas chapter, of the antilynching crusaders. this is to raise money to support an antilynching bill. when she speaks at this meeting as a representative, she advocates a quote very strong and heart appealing plea for the condemned men awaiting execution for rioting in elaine, arkansas. they urge all of these women around the country who are members of these clubs to write to the governor asking them to commute the sentence today's life in prison. in a final example, each state had its own representative, and lady o'brien was a representative from arkansas. this is just another example again of women's collaborative efforts around the country. black woman who was president of

the kansas city naacp and she's writing to the sark governor as well. in this final example, black women and leaders communicated with each other as part of their activism to end racial violence. in particular they corresponded with a white suffragist and naacp co-founder. also a board member and former secretary. she adamantly supported efforts to secure justice for the elaine 12. in 1921 she sent $250 i believe of her own personal money to little rock to aid the arkansas work. she used her nationwide personal connection today's raise money for the cause. she further cornered directly with mr. jones, who by 1921 who became the counsel for moore versus dempsey. they wrote to each other. she wrote to him and said,

remarkable work, which you have done in these arkansas cases. this has been one of the most important cases relating to the negro in the history of the united states. and i am very sure we must feel very happy to have been able to take a part in it. so as you can see here, sippio africana jones does respond to her, am cabably and tells her that her ongoing support gave the imprisononed men's cause new hope and inspiration. this was settled and the imprisoned men were released between 1924 and 1925. but what did this cost them and their families? with few exceptions, they lost all of their worldly possession today's white people who stole them, placed them in their own homes. they saw their possessions in other people's homes. in the end, they received nothing for their crops.

but which mustn't overlook rural black women's resilience and resistance despite the atrocities. they engaged in advocacy even in the face of extreme violence. they refused to be silenced. their engagement in political and exnonch efficacy through their membership in org zblaiks like the pfha is important. black organizations garnered national support for the elaine 12 through the leadership and generosity of national women leaders like ida b. wells barnett. this rural rights activists demonstrated morality does not equal ignorance or passivity. they've always been more knew anced and complex than their

conditions suggested. their activism chipped away and allowed them to lay the foundation for the next generation of women activists. thank you. [ applause ] >> hello. i came to my study of the elaine massacre during hurricane katrina. i was quite literally tem pest tossed, so i came to arkansas as a knew orleanian flying the

hurricane. i read griff stoply's blood in their eyes. it left me with a number of questions. as many of you likely do, i began trying to fill out or figure out why there were these holes in the research. i started by assessing what we knew, and then i began looking for the things that were absent. and in looking for those things that were absent, i did find a number of new documents. and these new documents shed new light on what happened at the massacre. so there are certain things that we know now that we did not know prior to this research. and one of the things that we know now is that the plantation owners, the planters, were keenly aware of the share croppers union before the hoops

spur shooting. the reason why that is important is newspaper accounts will maintain that the police officers that arrive at the hoops spur church did so by accident. and that they were having car problems. and they conveniently stopped just a few hundred yards away from a well-hidden church on the side of the road. needing car assistance, they maintained that they walked to the church where they were fired upon. and we also know that the business elite were getting reports from the membership, from spies within the membership, about what was going on, who was attending the meetings, and where these meetings were being held. we know that the american legion

beca became, the local american legion, became the first poscy to take down. we now know who was arrested, so who was at the hoops spur legion, how they were charged, and how the american legion wads organized. i'm sorry. much of what we know comes from a series of letters found in the collection or the archives of governor henry justin allen of kansas. those who have read blood in their eyes or on the laps of god will remember that governor allen gives sankry to robert lee hill, the founder of the union. and in a drawn-out dispute that will end up in federal court, allen will take the stand that he will not send robert lee hill back to arkansas just to be

executed. allen maintains that debt pienitch is a general in the south and believes that the case was totally unfair. i knew that we'd have a lot of light here, so i knew it would be very difficult to read the newspaper -- the documents themselves. so i made transcriptions of what i thought was important in the documents. if anybody would like to see the entirety of the documents, i'd be happy to send them copies of them. but what i wanted to show you about some of these letters that go back and forth between governor allen and eam allen, president of the businessman's association, is discussion and revelation that occurs within these letters.

the first thing that eam allen, the president of the businessman's association, will do is maintain that pianitch does not exist in philips county, and that the share croppers in philips county live a life that the without worry, and prosperous. so he paints a narrative that is fictional, it does not exist. when did the whites learn of the union? eam allen will also confess that there were good negros within the union who reported back to the people of elaine what was going on and when and who was attending the meetings. okay.

that's a transcription of -- and let me back up one. one of the big questions that i walked away with when i came across these letters is, okay, would it be possible to figure out who the spies were? i mean, could we backtrack and find some historical evidence that would point out who were some of these possible spies? rand there we and there were a number of clues that allen left in his letters. and he identifies -- and we'll go forward -- that there was a small cadre of friendly negros not in sympathy with the movement forced in as he says by threats from the union members that reported back to him everything that was going on. i initially thought it was going

to be impossible to isolate any individual spy, because this would have been something that they would have tried to hide. and then i came across a newspaper article about an informer. and his name was isaiah murphy, and he does the impossible. if you've read the federal reports in the reports of the officers, particularly colonel jinx, the commanding officer, the town was filled with mobs of white men all carrying guns, but somehow isaiah murphy isn't shot by all of these individuals. in fact when the train arrives with soldiers, he greets the train and turns himself in identifying himself as a good negro. he's not taken to a stockade. instead he's taken right before the business elite and the

governor of the state. and it's in that appearance that he makes before them that the press is brought out. and instead of telling them that he was in hoops spur and had been shot at by police officers, he maintains that there was a revolution afoot. and he identifies the members of the union as participants in this revolution. now, that's interesting, but what happens to him is more interesting than that. he's allowed to go out and smoke a cigarette. and while smoking this cigarette, he is shot in the back by one of the soldiers. he could not take the stand again. he could not recant. he cannot be cross-examined. yet his account becomes the basis for this idea of a revolution being afoot.

is there an ultimate theory to what happened at hoops spur? and yes, there is. this ultimate theory was discovered in a letter in james walledon johnston's collection at yale. and as you note, it says, dear mr. jones, that's sip rio africanus jones. and it goes on to say that there is a witness in kansas. and keep in mind kansas is where sanctuary had been offered to robert lee hill, there's a witness in kansas that maintains that plantation owners sent out agents that surrounded the church and began firing in. the police officers that were killed at hoops spur, they maintain, arrived late, and their car was mistaken by the

men at the church and was fired upon by the other white plantation agents. to me this makes a lot more sense than the notion of a car breaking down conveniently hundreds of yards away from -- hundreds of yards away from a secret meeting. the american legion involvement as been puzzling, because for a long time people knew that the american leenlon was involved, but did not know how the american legion became involved with the event. i began tracing the american legion involvement after discovering a deputy by the name of a.f. james. and a.f. james is important because there were be two leaders that flee and are not immediately captured after hoops spur. these two gentlemen, one being

ed ware and a sharecropper, mcfarland, will flee to new orleans and live under a li as before being turned in. the man sent to arrest him is a.f. james. and he appears in the 1910 census. and he appears as a jailer in the 1910 census. but what's important about a.f. james is when he goes to new orleans he is interviewed. and in that he provides an account of how the men in the american legion came to participate in massacre. and he maintains that he and another officer went out immediately after the shooting and discovered that they were far too many union members for them to arrest alone. they made their way back to

helena, and in the courthouse at helena, they will dep ewtize 75 american legion members. the 75 will then go to the armo armory and be provisioned with weapons and go back out to where the hoops spur shooting occurred, and arrest the union members that are still there. quite by surprise, and i guess there's -- all of us have hobbies. one of my hobbies is to dig in attics and dirty places for old records. and when i began working on the elaine massacre, i spent a lot of time in old buildings around helena and elaine, looking in attics and looking in closets.

and one of the things that we discovered very recently was the minute book, the original minute book, of the american legion post. and in it, it describes the post in action. and the post in action matches the story of a.f. james. so they maintained that they were called by the sheriff and that they were dep ewtized in the courthouse, and from that point on they went out to elaine and captured the men who were involved. but that's not the ending of the post involvement. in other minutes, in other points in the minutes, i find out that the committee of seven, the men who are in charge of investigating the massacre, are members of the post. and when the sheriff dies, the

post maintains that only -- they put pressure on the people forming the committee, the governor, that only men from the post be allowed to replace him. so they investigate themselves. if this weren't enough, following the massacre, the state will convene its first american legion state conference for the american legion between october 8th and 9th of 1919. it is at this meeting that they will restrict african-americans from participating in the american legion out of fear that they can use this as a base of organization for future violence. what do we know about the union members? for the better part of a century, we had only known the

numbers of union members that were arrested, because they ran in the gazette and local newspaper. but they ran in the gazette local newspaper without names. another discovery that was made in the last couple years were the indictment books, the original indictment books, of those arrested immediately following the hoops spur shooting. and this will give us the names of all of the union members who were arrested. from that point, we turn to prison records, and there were a series of different types of prison records. this first prison record is called a descriptive record. and it tells a great deal about who were the members from their height and weight to physical scars, tattoos, whether they were smokers or nonsmokers. and this allowed us to create a demographic of what the average

union participant was like. we also were able to pull up the prison records from where they were housed. and this gave us even more information about where they were from, the religion that they were practicing or not, whether they were a smoker or nonsmoker, whether they had family, where their family was from, their children's names. and like i said, this would allow us to figure out what the composition of the union was, who was more likely to be in the union, someone from arkansas or someone that had possibly just moved into the region from somewhere else. after figuring out the names of the union members, i decided in the fall that my class should do a series of public history projects. and one of these public history

projects was to try to fill in the gaps between in the lives of the elaine 12, what happened to the elaine 12 after they were released from prison? the narratives that were created were submitted to the encyclopedia of arkansas, and money -- we began raising money to try to put markers out at the burial sites of all of the 12. the moore versus dempsey case is named after frankly moore. we found quite literally under our noses that he was buried at the national cemetery in little rock arkansas. following the -- his release from prison, he went to chicago, where he worked as a security guard for a real estate company. and when he died, he was shipped

back and buried at the national cemetery in little rock. this is j.e. knox, and he is another member of the 12 that is also buried in little rock at haven of rest, the same cemetery that sippio jones is buried in. dr. jones branch spoke about ed ware and lulu ware. we were able to find ed and lulu ware in st. louis. they're buried in a cemetery there. and hopefully the spring we'll be placing a marker at that cemetery. now, the biggest question i get when i speak is, what happened to the dead? are you able to put an accurate estimate to how many dead there were? and have you identified any names of the dead? and that took us to another

class project. and one of the things that has been missing in arkansas for philips county are death certificates. they had been missing for at least 50 years. no one knew what happened to them. the practice had been, when a coroner retired, he took his records with him. so there was this gaping hole. and when you go to the owe bit wary index, you discover that for 60 years there had not been a black death because the helena world did not record the deaths or take black obituaries. so there was a gaping hole in regard to black deaths in philips county. working over the summer, i discovered the death certificates were mainly innad vertentally cased in the coroner's family's funeral home records. and my students created a

digital database that allows for the viewing and analysis of some of these records. although i do not believe that these records accurately depict the number of people who died in the elaine massacre. we were able to identify a few new names of individuals. and some of these names are corroborated by other documentary sources. calvin miller would be one of the millers that is described by ida b. wells when she says the miller family was killed. you see that calvin miller was a 32-year-old laborer, and it merely says that he died of hemorrhage. doesn't give any other details. and that was a good one. that was one with a lot of information on it. this was one of the famous johnston brothers, the four

brothers that are massacred after the elaine massacre. this one has even less information, identifying that they died of gunshot wounds and their bodies were shipped to pine bluff, and nothing more. another question i get quite often is, where do we go from here? and i always like to leave researchers with a list of questions that they might take up in their research or that they might work on with their students. and one of the resources that was discovered was the fact that there was a motion picture taken during the massacre. a man by the name of c.m. brew cher's, a photographer, drove down from little rock. he was intrigued that there was this massacre taking place. he recorded this footage. he then sold it to path ai and

we haven't found it. out there there could possibly be footage of the elaine massacre. lee roy johnston was a returning world war i veteran, he had served in the 369th infantry. many of you will identify that as the harlem hell fighters. one of the things we discovered was an anomaly. if you look down where it says wounded, you'll see his record was changed from severely wounded to slightly wounded. this anomaly puzzled me a great deal. and going back and looking at a service record, i realized that no medals were awarded to lee roy johnston. so over that summer, i worked on post hummously, having those med

olz post hummously awarded to the family. and with the assistance of congressman french hill, i was able to not only get the record -- the awards awarded to the family, but french hill started a house resolution. and that house resolution eventually became law. and there will be a commission established in the coming year to evaluate all the records for nonwhites that participated in in world war i in hopes of identifying people who earned awards but were not effectively awarded the awards. okay. this is probably one of the more interesting discoveries. and it came from a newspaper called the to pooeka plains dealer. and i've often been asked, why the number of dead vary so widely for the elaine massacre?

conservative, the most conservative numbers are 15. the most liberal assessments are over 800. and i've often been asked, is there some explanation, some logical explanation, that might account for this vast chasm between these two numbers. and there is one possible scenario that very few people have looked at, and that is that when blacks were placed under curfews, that many of them possibly snuck away and left, and were thereby counted as dead when they actually fled. and this article comes from the to pooeka plains dealer and identifies a large people who have fled from philips county following the massacre that have arrived there indigent with nothing but the clothes on their

backs. and the group is some 200 individuals. i'm hoping that a future class or possibly one of your classes might take a look at this population via their -- the records that exist there and the family members that may still be in topeka and look at the oral histories, how they got there, why they decided on topeka, and whether they brought any records back with them. i always praise my students that work on these projects, and this is a class, one of my graduate classes that worked on public history projects relating to the elaine massacre. on the bottom you see robert whitaker, on the far -- on my left, your right. griff stockily, and sheila

walker, who is the great niece of the milli can brothers, milli can giles and robert giles. these are the students that created the digital index for the arkansas state archives. and i'll leave it there. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> when i consider the work of my colleagues here on this topic, i, like you, probably am struck by the deep roots of what happened at elaine and the breadth of those roots as well, affecting not only during a long timeline in the past but involving lots of different types of people, and some of

whom aren't usually brought forward in the records. and i think that those deep roots, we should think of those both in terms of the resistance to oppression but in that oppression itself, right? and that's one of the sort of striking things that comes to my mind, concepts of morality, economic interests, financial independence. and i also think that the legacy of what happened at elaine is also going to continue to be a long-running one, and it will also be a broad one as well. those are some of the things that i consider when i think about the work that these scholars are doing. what i'd like to do is open the room for questions for our panelists. and because we're recording, we prefer that you use the microphone, correct? even if you think you don't need

it, we prefer the microphone since we're recording the settings. and if you could please you know give your name before you ask your with he so that way our panelists are able to engage you fully. go ahead. >> this was just wonderful. thank you all so much. sara wilkerson freeman, arkansas state university. brian, i'm sorry that a catastrophe brought you to arkansas, but you're much welcomed. and perhaps there was a reason. it is wonderful to see these new documents emerging. about 20 years ago i worked with my under grads to create elaine website which you might have run into with all sorts of articles especially from jonesbrough papers. i dij tiesed the race riot. i've used it for under grads. i want to make sure you are aware of that website. we've been using it for 20

years, and now i can add your website to what my students are using as their cap stone papers as my 18-year-olds use this paper. this idea that these railroad agents were pursuing clem, the bootlegger, and that's how they fell upon the hoops spur gathering and firing and all that. and so there are two things that i've wondered about in terms of where other records might be. the early bureau of investigation, because it was supposed to be really involved at that point, was the issue of prohibition of bootlegging and obviously of course the railroad agent. but the american legion was also essentially in many ways a kkk, and there was cross, huge crossover in membership between the american legion and the kkk and in mississippi and especially in arkansas, and we never really hear much about the

kkk, particularly involved in elaine. instead we hear more about the soldiers from camp pike and all of that. so i was wondering, a, if you ever was able to figure out what was going on with clem, the bootlegger, and if you've considered looking at those earlier federal papers that might be of interest, in addition to what was going on in the kkk in mississippi and arkansas? >> i'm assuming that one is directly for me? okay. all right. or is it for everyone? >> did anyone else here come as a result of a catastrophe? >> i don't think so. i think i'm the only one. yes, i've seen your database, and i know that arkansas studies institute, i did a second website with them. but i've collected over 100,000 and digitized over 100,000 pages of documents, many of them haven't been used in any of the

existing research. and we were still trying to decide what to do with it. we need to figure out, get grant money to design something to house it. i really liked the digital archive that the university of chicago did for the red summer. i would like to do something like that with those records and provide them. and the federal records, the military intelligence records and the precursor of the fbi sort of records are there. i also most recently found out that there was a congressional investigation that i don't have the records for, that i will actually have to take a trip back to d.c. and see if i can find. >> but kkk connections, that seems to be kind of an odd -- >> the kkk sort of appears after. when governor bruf isn't able to

successfully execute the men, the kkk endorsed his opponent, mccray. and mccray becomes governor. and quite ironically, they had elected mccray to kill -- you know, to make sure that the executions happened. but mccray is the person that ends up releasing the men. so the kkk does appear, but they don't appear as an active force within the -- i haven't seen them mentioned as an active force within the actual massacre itself. now, what's -- what you might find fascinating are the minute books. and the minute books shed a lot of light on recreation in helena. and i had no idea how -- you're always told that minstrel shows were very popular in the american south. but they had a standing

committee just for like minstrel shows. and they made lots of money. they made thousands of dollars from their minstrel shows. so it gave me an idea about what was going on and what they thought was funny and what they thought was amusing, what they did in their past times. so i think that might be another project that's quite interesting for students, is to take a look at the minute books. and the very same people that are participating in the massacre also bring the first boy scout troop, just, like, months later to helena. so this idea of good and bad and morally good versus evil sort of go back and forth. it's like a pendulum there. they see themselves as a kind and benevolent association. but at the same time, they're committing these atrocities.

>> more questions? >> wonderful work, all three of you. it's been -- i'm mark schultz from luis university. we've been hearing for years on how difficult it is to find access to find materials, everything is hushed up, communities are scattered, and all three of you found wonderful cache's of information. i'd like to hear how you found this, how you find what attics to search, what means of hypnotism you use to get access to them. >> sure. >> would you like each panelist to talk about -- >> sure. >> so we can go -- >> do you want to start? >> sure. i'll go first. for me, since we were talking about rural people and rural spaces, that's pretty much the research i do these days.

and so i just -- i kept seeing and hearing the name elaine, right? and so i wanted to just know more about it and how people were talking about it. and i knew that it came up a lot in african-american newspapers in one way and in mainstream newspapers. and i remember seeing it when i was doing some research for something else about the arkansas association of colored women and the national association of colored women. there's a whole lot of discussion about it in those papers. so i didn't have to go to anybody's attic or anything to find it. i just had to go and look at the micro fim. but i started doing this because as we all know when people talk about this story, it's about what black men and white men do. and if you're talking about poor black people in the rural south, you can't have a true and full discussion unless you factor women into the equation. so i wanted to tell a different story and in terms of my

research i'm very intentional about locating black women because they're almost always there, but people don't think to include them in the story. and so once i knew that that's the story i was going to write, it wasn't really difficult to find the information. usually they mention them, but people haven't written about them as if they have mattered. and i just thought it was time to do that. thank you. >> i didn't do any attic digging either, but a lot of these reports were written down by people involved in them, lots of times in master collections or not published in the arkansas gazette but certainly a lot of these third peats and organizations, have their own newspapers, not posted in arkansas or sometimes not even in the south, in washington, d.c. or philadelphiaia. so you have pretty straight forward accounts, they're published in philadelphiaia or

in washington, d.c. so a lot of what i wrote about in my recent arkansas book was kind of not sketching about but looking primary arkansas-based primary sources. and you're not going to find these things in arkansas. some you had to look in newspapers being published in new york and philadelphia and washington and letters in places like washington, d.c. or nashville, tennessee. the stories were there, just not arkansas sources. i had to go through and ask in arkansas, it wouldn't have happened. >> i always begin my research with the secondary, the existing secondary writings. what i tell my students to do is when you read a book, make a list of questions, like gaping holes that exist. if you're going to do something, if you're thinking about doing a

project. >> [ inaudible ]. >> i'm sorry. and there were a lot of gaping holes in this project. i started looking at the committee of seven in its composition. i started identifying people we know were in posies and looking at those records and seeing if there were collections that were in those families. i went to the helena museum which had been a bastion of the elite, maintained by people who would have been the heads of the union or the heads of the business association. and initially i was told there is nothing here about them. but a fortunate happenstance took place. we had a former graduate student that became the curator there. and we went out for -- he went to a symposium, and i was speaking. and we went out for beers afterward, a whole group of scholars with them.

and he said, wow, that's really interesting. we have a lot of stuff in those families. and i said, would you have a minute book? and he said, no, but we've got a lot of junk in the attic. if you want to come out one saturday and go through it with me, i've been trying to organize things, i'd love help. about three of us loaded up in the car, drove from little rock to helena, and just dug all day, and found all sorts of things that they thought they had lost or didn't know they had, and among those things was the minute book. with the indictment book found in the clerk of courts office, and that's swamped like many under funded, and i went to the office to see if there were any court records about the 12. and they said, we have no idea what we have but you're welcome to go dig around in our closet. and they were just stacks of

dust-covered books. and among them is the indictment book. and this indictment book went all the way back to the territorial period. and it's just sitting there on a shelf covered in dust. so we were able to take photographs of the pages that had all of the union members on it. the kansas work, once we found out where robert lee hill had fled, and we began rereading newspaper articles about the governor's reluctance to send them back, i wanted to see what we could find in his collection and whether or not robert lee hill's attorney had a collection. and we were able to find five letters written by hill in his lawyer's collection. and hundreds of letters that were sent in to governor allen, some praising him for defending

the 12 -- or defending robert lee hill. and others admonishing him for not sending him back. so yeah, i mean, everywhere, i've been to mo missouri looking for the world war i records for black soldiers' participation in the union. so once we had that list of people who were in the union that opened up a lot of possibilities for other records. so a lot of times you just need that one record or a series of key records, and then you can start piecing the puzzle back together. >> i'm becky howard from windsor college in texas. two questions for brian. sorry, guys. did you get a sense that johnston's record was targeted for alteration or maybe it was something that is being done for

most black veterans? >> there were a number of type-overs that i saw in other records. and french hill and i talked about this particular record. when i went to his office for assistance, his veterans affairs individual in his office, sergeant mcnab, and he said, well, do you see this a lot? i said i've seen one or two others, but most of the records, service records, many of the service records from world war i burned in a fire, so they're missing. and what we had to do to figure out his participation in the war was go to the unit records which are in college park, and find out the college -- you know, what the unit is doing at that time, who the officers are identifying as wounded, where they sent them to, when they rejoined the unit. so it took a lot of investigative work, and more than one archive to sort of piece together these identities in it.

it will be really interesting once they form this commission and they go and they actually spend time to look at these records, to see how much that happened. >> i know with -- i've looked at some for italian veterans in arkansas and that record group is messy. >> yeah. >> i've seen it in others. but none were that blatant. my other question is out of curiosity, that group that goes to to pooeka, did you maybe look to see if the brown case from 1954 had a connection? >> no. there's only so much i can do. the last three years have been extremely busy for me with -- >> when you said topeka, i wondered about that. >> but i keep a running list of projects that my students will do or that we'll work on collectively. and that's -- it's on the list. it's on the list.

>> hi. this is really fascinating. gayle murray from roads college, memphis. if you've been in elaine this year, i know they've had a number of events, and i'd like a little insight into how the planning for those events has gone and how complicated and fracturous that might have been, how the memories are there and how many people don't want stories told and any light you might have on how things are now? >> i can talk about it, but you worked on a lot of the projects too, so -- >> yes, i participated in a number of projects, and i went down to elaine, not for the marker dedication. did you go to that? >> yes. >> you went, so he'll talk about that. but what i saw by and large, you

know, african-americans of course are very much, you know, onboard with this. some of them are, you know, still a little skeptical because they have to live in philips county and elaine. and this is a climate where there are some people have had students, white students, from elaine, who have just told me point-blank that the people, they hadn't heard about it or the people they know have said, why are we still talking about this? it isn't relevant. there was also a big kerfuffle about the fact that the memorial is in helena rather than elaine, and i know of a couple of people, one of whom is my colleague at arkansas state, who have written a number of editorials about, you know, how problematic this is. so i really think it depends on who you talk to. but i know the events i have attended down in elaine have been extremely well-attended. right? but i remember one -- >> black and white?

>> both black and white. although i don't know how many of these white people are actually from philips county, which is another thing, because i know quite a few of these people are coming from -- come from somewhere else. so i think it really depends on how you talk to, because i do know that there are people who wish this would just, you know, disappear, it's ancient history, why is it relevant, so on and so forth. i don't know how you can alive at that conclusion considering most people didn't know anything about this at all. but yeah, so people are of mixed minds about it. >> i'm convinced that the planning of this event will become a case study in shared memory and public space. because of the way it was handled. there were largely three groups. there was elaine legacy group, which is elaine and its -- elaine is one of the poorer

communities in the united states. then there was the memorial foundation, which was in helena, and it was largely funded by a very wealthy plantation-owning family. the emphasis that each group took was very different. the helena group wanted reconciliation without actually talking very much about the individuals and their roles that people played in the event. so that everyone wanted to -- they wanted healing, but without sort of identifying, you know, who had participated. then there were the elaine people who wanted reparations, but without being able to identify who was harmed. so without bodies, it becomes very, very hard to do reparations. are we repairing you for being

left -- we have to be able to prove that you are a descendent of one of these families. since nobody has been recovered, that became difficult. the third group was largely centered out of little rock, and it was mainly scholars and writers and stakeholders there, that wanted the two groups to get together so we could all work as a unit, since we were coming up on the centennial. at some points, there were some points that we could all sit around the table and talk about, but there were these huge breaches quite often, and it revolved around reparations and

the idea that the elaine group felt as though they should have more control over the event itself. >> and i also want to say, this is just something that i just remembered, when i went to the last event i attended down there, there was also this air of -- they don't trust each other. one of the things i heard was, and i remember this but i didn't think anything about it when i was driving down there from jonesbrough and got to philips county, a road was blocked off. you had to take a detour. i heard people say at the event this was intentional to confuse people so they would get lost, turn around, go home. so there were people there who were very suspicious of that. i don't know that that had anything to do with anything, but i heard a lot about it when i was down there. i managed to make it down there so i don't know. >> southern hospitality. >> they've been very interesting

discussions about, where do we go from here, in regards to, now we have these memorials that were up, but what happens to elaine? what happens to the story? and we've been asking the governor of arkansas whether he will establish a commission something like they've done in t tulsa or maryland that will actively go out and try to put in names and find the remains. there hasn't been an answer on that. however the governor's office said that they are willing to work with us on the commemoration of a number of other racially violent incidents and make sure that markers, state markers, are placed on those sites. but i think it's really important that we do form a commission and that that commission is empowered and funded in such a way that it can do a proper investigation. okay.

>> i'm in middleton, state. brian, thank you for justifying my decision to always say yes to beers in research. brian brought this up, but this can go for anyone. i work on a lot of digital history projects i try i to bring to the classroom with very varying degrooes of success. i'm wondering how you organize it and go about it to do these things. >> it's all primary. it's sort of a trick. i'll tell you what the catch is. the catch is, you don't want them to have a project where they don't find anything, right? so this makes my summers very interesting. that means i have to do all the research and find stuff and then pretend like i don't know where it's at and have leads where i have them go find the same

stuff. so yes, my summers are spent doing research like every summer. i am on the road with my family, on the road with my kids, or on the road on the weekends by myself, searching out this primary research so we will have projects for the fall. and yes, it is time consuming, painstaking. but it has been very rewarding for the students because at the end of the class there is some fulfillment of the students of saying yes, i've had a con tribution or made a very substantive contribution to a field of study. it does allow us to showcase our department in a positive light, so that's a big plus. and i'm very proud of my students and i think they do great work.

>> rebecca sharp from tc. my question is for matthew. why arkansas? this -- i didn't know it was such a hot bed of radicalism, and so first question, why arkansas? and is this arkansas exceptionlism or do you see this other places? >> i think in some way it's a good distillation of southern populism because again the populist party they never really amounted to anything but the reason was because in arkansas the game was over in 1881 after the election of formed law and the massacre of cotton picking county. but arkansas had all the ingredients to bare extent, southern states, you had native poor whites, native poor african-americans, railroads coming in, bringing with them immigrants who came to the united states from outside the united states. other cases immigrants to the south from somewhere in the

north, with union experience as railroad unions, coal mining comes to western arkansas and that brings german and irish arkansas and some states. the tradition of radical traditions. like most, you have these groups coming in, up parting of the united states and upside of the united states bring with them. i think it happens in arkansas, one is little rock and sebastian county and fort smith that part of state. that's one thing, if you look at the litany of it -- every

generation has an episode of this. 1865 and 1991, of course, arkansas were essentially white minors driving out all the after americans. kind of a time in history and so little rock and sebastian county and delta, it is more indigenous yo and you got nice people coming in who are not have arkansas, they're coming with national

ideas. often the sensitivity, some states have distinct radicals union based activities and they don't always coalesce and what's going on in fort smith. still there is a statewide movement that kind of a roller coaster. arkansas, the end of civil war in the 1930s, it keeps on getting beaten down and coming back with small tradition protests. >> my name is lauren thompson. i teach outside st. louis, missouri. i wanted to talk to y'all on experts of race riots on how do you feel of the term race riots. the reason i ask is because i have students of color from st. louis and chicago and when we talk about these events,

students of color say oh, i didn't know it was the white people. we always learn race riot like ferguson and they equate how the shift is i guess modern day protesting, they think african-americans are killed here or a black on black community of people when they learn the actual facts, wow, we didn't know this. my question with that for those of us who teach us, could we change the conversation and how reapproach the ra we approach the race riots and what else can we call it so maybe our students in the general public would see it what it is. >> massacre. >> we no longer refer it to elaine as a race riot.

wi discussing nomenclature, we shifted to the word massacre to describe it. >> i also like to say among the same line, i go a long way, way out of my way to make sure the discussion is no about just about black festivities. they may be passive individuals. one of the things that i emphasize, black people were armed, real black people in the south were always armed. they have to be. >> mayor passive to be in the massacre. >> exactly. i need people to understand that they're not sitting there and taking. they may be out manned or out gunned, they are resisting. they're always resisting and it is important to emphasize that. >> if i could just pop in, i would add to this discussion about language of riot verses

massacre, i have been advocating that we also phase out discussion about race relations because it is not about people getting along or not, right? this is about systems of suppression and people reacting and if there is passive, this is not about people getting along. >> arkansas is not always, some of these episodes in arkansas is being way of life. being white, there is no guarantee of personal safety. >> native of arkansas, now

living in louisville. i want to thank you for your in-depth presentation. i can relate of several levels of what you are saying. anyone who wants to locate elaine, i brought an arkansas ma map, little rock and jonesburg that's mentioned. my question is do you know similar stories from arkansas that had not yet been fully exposed as you have done with the elaine massacre? >> of violence or resistance?

>> engage either/or. >> right now we are looking at a linked village story that's a post reconstruction resistance african-americans sent to place there. we are just starting to look at the primary source references for that and trying to see if there is any records that have not been mined yet. i am hoping that something pans out with that narrative and that may be a project in the year or two. that seems like it is going to take a little more fleshing out than the elaine narrative. >> in the case of arkansas, a letter win in the new york times, and it was exposing of

the county in arkansas committing violence against black and white. the arkansas published it, men were either whipped or killed and the 20 towns were listed. if you want get graduate students, you can go to this county, the county is there. the details are there.

the stories are there. you have to know how to read and interpret in the newspapers in the south especially but the basic stories are there. >> and it is hard to find those sto stori stories, imagine how hard it is to find stories about this kind of violence being enacted on women. i was thinking as they were talking about the southern farming union and that was in the 1930s. at least one black woman who written a little bit about very active in the organization and she was taken to jail by some of the planters and beaten and she later dies in memphis of that beating and there was another white woman who was a shoesocia worker from memphis, she lived

and the black women endorsed the worst of punishment. talking of the southerniintegrat of these people endured violence because of their involvement and that. >> well, let's thank our presenters one more time and feel free to come and engage with them. [ applause ] you are watching "american history tv." all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. the film "green book" won the 2019 academy award for best picture and brought attention to issues faced by african-americans when traveling during the jim crow area. next a panel of