Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 Book

After the Elaine Massacre, a white guardsman witness admitted, "they were shooting them down like rabbits." To counter such unsavory truths, the white Arkansas Gazette lied to its readers that one thousand to fifteen hundred "negroes had assembled in the vicinity of Elaine and were armed with high-powered rifles". Elaine was never attacked by blacks, but it was reported that it was; in fact, not a single white was attacked on his property. The canebrakes that sheltered most of the local blacks that survived the massacre was "two hundred yards deep and extended for two miles." Whites pretended there was no massacre because they didn't want blacks upset leaving the area (especially during harvest time) and they feared blacks would retaliate through violence. So, either the massacre didn't happen, or if it did then it was somehow justified. The American Cletus simply cannot handle cognitive dissonance. To 1919 racist logic, "Whites didn't murder blacks, they defended themselves against blacks. Whites didn't cheat blacks, blacks were natural thieves" and black resistance equaled black revolt. After the massacre, the names of the black dead were not mentioned because those of color were, without evidence, considered "the enemy".

Walter White, wrote that being black "marked me as a person to be hunted, hanged, abused, discriminated against, kept in poverty and ignorance, in order that those whose skin was white could have proof of their superiority." The lawyer Bratton working on the Elaine case thought he was representing blacks who had merely joined a labor union but soon realized what he was doing was radical because what he really was doing was challenging white supremacy. How will a court sentence so many blacks to death when there is not a single white witness to the murder of the three white Phillips county residents that sparked off the massacre? After the massacre, many whites weren't done and wanted to put to death those blacks now in custody; the white power structure then had to appease the more extreme elements to keep such racist anger and threat of violence in check. As a result, you will be repelled to know, not a single white person was "charged with so much as a misdemeanor." Here's a taste of true Southern Hospitality: one planter recalled in an affidavit, "One of them said to the other, 'My negroes don't belong to that blankety blank union'. The other said, 'How in the hell do you know they don't?' He answered and said, 'I told my negroes about it two weeks ago that if they joined that blankety blank union I would kill every one of them'." Blacks wrongly jailed after the massacre were tortured to extract confessions against each other. They were whipped multiple times and even put in the electric chair and threatening with flipping the switch - they also had formaldehyde shoved up their noses and were stripped naked - all to make them falsely testify. Ah, real un-varnished American history.

Lynchings were considered "reminders" that death could come to any black at any time, even in police custody. By 1922, the still incarcerated Elaine Twelve felt the beginning of the Klan in Arkansas that year. Of the nine books I've now read on this subject, this one concentrates most on the post-Massacre legal (because the author is a lawyer) nightmare that led freeing of the Elaine Twelve and landmark Moore v. Dempsey case which led the NAACP to pursue a policy of litigation for racial justice.