Journal of Social History, Fall 1998 v32 n1 p73(27)
Legacy of resistance: uncovering the history of collective action by
black agricultural workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s
to the 1930s. M. Langley Biegert.
Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1998 Peter N. Stearns
During Reconstruction a violent incident occurred between white residents and black
agricultural workers who were trying to unionize in central east Arkansas. In 1891 and
1919 similar incidents occurred in the same area. This paper examines the history of
collective action efforts by black agricultural workers in central east Arkansas to show
that there was a pattern of resistance attempted by black workers in this region between
the 1860s and the 1930s, culminating in the founding of the Southern Tenant Farmers'
Union. The study attempts to show how knowledge about these efforts was suppressed by
local white residents who controlled the official record and was preserved primarily
through the oral history of the local black community. By uncovering the lost history of
this community, scholars can gain a fuller understanding of patterns of resistance to
racism and economic oppression by rural African American residents - a pattern which
may have existed in other communities throughout the South.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1998 Peter N. Stearns
There is a broad, sweeping, lonesome bend in Big Creek only a few miles below Trenton
and known as "The Basin" where the giant alligator gar (sic) flounce lazily and the scaly,
venomous moccasin lay unmolested on partially submerged logs and tops of fallen trees
and where along the shores ancient cypresses standing as silent sentinels rear gaunt and
ghost-like against the sky that Negroes contend is haunted and where it is said that in the
dark stillness of a moonless summer night the ghost of Bryant Singfield can be seen to
emerge from the murky depths and a terrifying voice can be heard pleading vainly for
mercy.
- Legend of a Reconstruction-era black labor organizer in central east Arkansas, as retold
in the 1930s.(1)
Around the same time that a government worker was listening to this former slave
recount the legend of a failed attempt to organize black workers during Reconstruction, a
new resistance movement was emerging. On a hot July night in the tiny town of Tyronza,
in east Arkansas, eighteen tenant farmers - eleven white, seven black - met in a local
schoolhouse to discuss the idea of forming a union for non-landowning farm workers.
The year was 1934. As a result of the New Deal incentives to cut back on farm
production, landowners had been evicting tenants and sharecroppers throughout the
South, with little or no compensation. The non-landowning farmers in east Arkansas
realized that the only way they could protect their interests was by standing together.
That night, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) was born. During the course of
this meeting, African American farmer Isaac "Ike" Shaw recalled how fifteen years
earlier he had sat in on a similar meeting with a group of black sharecroppers who had
formed a union to fight for their rights. That meeting had taken place in a small church in
Hoop Spur, Arkansas, about ninety miles south of Tyronza. That meeting had ended in a
blaze of gunfire as unknown assailants fired upon the church from outside. Young Ike
Shaw and most of the other union members had fled for their lives. Many who had not
were either killed or quickly arrested within a few days. Local white landowners had
called the incident a "race riot." But Ike Shaw knew better. The landowners had once
again used race to suppress class protest. The STFU would be different. As the new union
was launched, Shaw declared to the group in Tyronza, "As long as we stand together,
black and white together in this organization, nothing can tear it down."(2) To fully
appreciate the power of that statement, we must understand the legacy of resistance that
Ike Shaw carried with him to that schoolhouse in 1934.
The STFU became one of the largest and most influential agricultural unions of the early
20th century.(3) It was also one of the first large agricultural unions to be integrated and
one of the first in which women played significant leadership roles.(4) The unique
membership of the STFU was exemplified by the group that originally met to form it.
They were an odd assortment, to say the least: some young, some old; some black, some
white. Some were members of the Socialist party. Others had once belonged to the Ku
Klux Klan. All had grown up observing the rules of racial and class propriety that
governed society in the rural South. All had arrived at this moment in their lives because
they realized that the only way they could break free from the rules that held them in a
state of poverty was to join together. As one of the white founders, Ward Rodgers, put it,
they "learned that both white and Negro sharecroppers are victims of the same system of
exploitation, both ... suffer from the same 'belly hunger.'"(5)
Several historians have studied the STFU as an example of southern radicalism. In doing
so, they have tended to focus on the union's ties to other labor movements and to the
Socialist and Communist parties. By taking this approach, most of this literature has
focused on the union's white leaders, who were the most prominent members nationally,
rather than on the vast majority of the more than 30,000 members, who were poor black
sharecroppers.(6) Such studies tend to use the STFU as an example of how certain
segments of the white population shifted to the left in times of crisis. Such a focus helps
us to understand white STFU founders like H. L. Mitchell and Ward Rodgers, but does
little to help us understand the black sharecroppers like Ike Shaw who flocked to the
STFU.
The STFU was hardly the first attempt to organize black agricultural workers in central
east Arkansas. Indeed, it marked just one of the more successful moments in a long series
of protests by black farm workers against landowners. Much of this history was not
noticed outside of the local community, or even written down in public records. It was
well-known by members of the black community, however. When Ike Shaw told the
story of his experiences as a younger man in Hoop Spur, he was participating in a
tradition of oral history that had been passed down through the generations of his own
family. Ike Shaw grew up in a world filled with stories of local protestors who had come
before him and failed. In Black Culture and Black Consciousness, historian Lawrence
Levine summarizes the important role that resistance legends, specifically slave
resistance legends, have played in the black community:
For an understanding of the post-slave generations, the history of slave resistance is less
important than the legends concerning it, though the two by no means contradict each
other. Looking back upon the past, ex-slaves and their descendants painted a picture not
of a cowed and timorous black mass but of a people who, however circumscribed by
misfortune and oppression, were never without their means of resistance and never
lacked the inner resources to oppose the master class, however extreme the price they had
to pay.(7)
I would extend Levine's analysis to include legends of resistance passed down by the
post-emancipation generations about themselves or other people of their own era. These
legacies of resistance marked the generations of change that followed the slave period
and have continued to build on the past right up until today. The legends of postemancipation resistance were just as important or more important than the stories of slave
resistance, for they showed how the struggle continued after emancipation. With each
generation the price of resistance grew at the same time that the courage and number of
protesters grew. As many had done before him, Ike Shaw recounted his story of the 1919
massacre as a testament to the bravery of those who had stood together and to the
increasingly violent racism that continued to divide black and white farmers in eastern
Arkansas. The story of the 1919 massacre and the story of the STFU have been studied
before in isolation, but each was only a single episode in a larger history of black
organization, resistance, and repression in central east Arkansas during the postemancipation period. Much of this history was ignored by the white population, but it
was preserved by the black community through story-telling. Just as stories of earlier
protests were passed down to him, in 1934 Ike Shaw's story served both as a call for
continued resistance and as an example of why interracial class solidarity and
nonviolence were necessary for farm protests.(8)
Several scholars who have studied the origins of the STFU have commented that it seems
odd that the STFU was born in the tiny town of Tyronza, Arkansas, which is so small that
one can barely find it on a modern road map.(9) But upon closer reflection, it is really not
so odd at all. It is no coincidence that the members of the diverse group that founded the
STFU all had close ties to a specific geographic region with a long history of labor
organizing and activism, especially among the black population. I will argue in this paper
that the STFU emerged where it did and grew so rapidly because it tapped into a black
community in central east Arkansas that had a rich legacy of collective action efforts by
farm laborers. At distinct moments in the community's history, when larger events made
the local power structure seem vulnerable, this black community acted to push the
boundaries for change. While there was linkage among some moments of resistance, such
as in the participation of Ike Shaw in both the 1919 and 1934 movements, the key
argument here is not that there was continuity of actors between events, but that that local
resistance efforts existed in a clear pattern that was related to national events. Many of
these local efforts touched movements throughout the South, such as the STFU and the
Colored Farmers' Alliance.
A close examination of the history of this particular community also raises the question
of whether Tyronza was really all that unique, or if patterns of resistance on the local
level have been overlooked precisely because they occurred among the rural black poor,
whose stories of resistance were often surpressed by whites in power as much as the acts
of resistance themselves were surpressed. Stories of resistance by black workers and the
violent supression of such resistance have, for the most part, been kept out of public
records and thus generally have been overlooked by most historians.(10) On the local
level, I would argue, there exists a known history of resistance that, if uncovered
community by community, could change the way in which we examine the entire period
of southern history from the 1870s to the 1930s. Overall, compared to the rapidly
changing Northeast and the West, the South seems to have been quite static, if not
downright regressive, during this period. But to see the South in this way is to miss the
significance of developments that were taking place on the grassroots level. While it is
true that white landowners and politicians tried their best to maintain their hold on power,
they were met with continued and growing resistance from the black communities they
were trying to control. Thus the key to understanding the history of black agricultural
movements in the post-emancipation South lies in understanding the history of individual
communities like the one that fed into the STFU.(11)
The heart of the community in question was in Lee and Phillips counties, part of the
Mississippi River "Black Belt" of central east Arkansas. Many of the original members of
the STFU had either lived in or had some connection to this area. Phillips County was the
site of the Hoop Spur incident Shaw recalled from his youth.(12) In 1860 Phillips County
had been the slave capital of the state. Almost 9,000 slaves lived there in that year, far
more than in any other county. While slaves represented only 26 percent of the state's
population, they accounted for 60 percent of the Phillips County population.(13) Many of
the local plantations were quite large and virtually all relied primarily on cotton
production.(14) Thus in many ways this area was much more like the Deep South than
the rest of Arkansas. Historian Willard B. Gatewood has stated about this area before the
Civil War that "the lifestyles of the wealthiest planters came as near as any in Arkansas to
conforming to the romantic images of the Old South."(15) He also notes that "in no way
did the Arkansas Delta exhibit characteristics associated with the South more than in
matters relating to race."(16) Testimony of former slaves who lived in Phillips County
reveal that their plantation communities were like many found in other parts of the Deep
South. Family and religious ties formed the basis of the slave communities, while
relations between masters and slaves varied. One well-known plantation was owned by
Edmond Turner and his sons Bart and Nat. Their plantation housed more than fifty slaves
including Henry Turner, who described the farm as "a world within itself." On the Turner
plantation, like so many others, slave movement was severely limited. White patrollers
closely monitored the area for runaways.(17)
This area fell to the Union early in the Civil War and was occupied by Union forces as
early as mid-1862. They set up headquarters at the Phillips County seat of Helena. Many
local planters abandoned their plantations, which the union then leased to northern
investors who kept them running as before, with slave labor. The Union occupation and a
shortage of labor led to a situation in which many slaves were able to negotiate for
improved working conditions such as exemptions from particularly difficult work, an end
to corporal punishment, or extra time off to work their own gardens. The slaves on one
plantation even worked out a collective agreement with their overseer to provide them
with a share of the cotton crop at the end of the 1862 harvest season.(18)
The collective bargaining power of black workers only increased after the Emancipation
Proclamation went into effect. Some officials tried to get plantation leasees to switch to a
wage-labor system to keep freed workers on the farms. In many areas the Union army
tried to lease confiscated lands to northern whites who would hire black workers to bring
in the crops. For the black workers these arrangements were often little better than the old
system of slavery. Most freed laborers were hired to work in gangs for a share of the
harvest and meager rations. Many disliked this system, arguing that it was even more
dehumanizing than slavery. At the end of the 1863, Union officials declared the leasee
system a failure. "at the end of the year the Negro has less money than was usual with
him when a slave [along with] the consolation of knowing that he had been worse fed and
worse treated," observed Union general John B. Hawkins.(19) Foreshadowing practices
that would become common in the sharecropping system, white leasees had tried to
maximize profits by docking black workers for time off and supplies used. Hawkins
wanted to implement a system that would allow workers to bargain collectively, to file
legal challenges against unfair labor practices, to choose their own employers, and to
receive wages that reflected the value of the cotton crop harvested. He also supported
breaking up the plantations to provide each freed family with a small tract of land.(20)
Few Union leaders wanted to go as far as Hawkins did. Instead the Army issued a new
series of regulations that kept the plantation system intact but required a minimum
monthly wage much higher than previously offered, as well as other benefits for freed
workers. When planters balked at the new regulations, the Union backed off and allowed
the rules of 1863 to be put back into place. Black workers would not quietly accept the
regulations imposed upon them, however. The former slaves on one Phillips County
plantation refused to work under the new orders, noting that, "We used to work so in
Secesh times."(21) Their northern leasee agreed to the workers' demands and abandoned
the Union regulations in favor of a new contract with the workers. This moment
illustrates how, long before the end of the war, black workers were organizing and
demanding their rights. That same spirit fed into resistance movements organized after
the war.
The last years of the war proved a boom time for organized labor in the fields. By 1864
laborers were in such short supply that some field hands were being offered more than
$50 per month, an incredibly high amount compared to other places at the time. On some
plantations laborers negotiated collectively for as much as half the value of the crop plus
rations. Others worked out contracts that redistributed some land on the plantations by
setting aside substantial amounts of land for independent farming or timber harvesting by
workers. Compared to what would come after the war, these were truly "the good old
days" economically for black workers.(22)
These economic gains did not come without conflict. The period of military occupation
was marked by constant struggles between those who controlled the land and those who
toiled on it. While planters negotiated contracts with laborers, they constantly sought to
reinforce their domination over workers. Corporal punishment continued to be used
against some workers. In these cases workers usually protested by quitting or refusing to
work. Laborers also resisted attempts to regulate their worktime. Most planters required
workers to toil ten hours per day on a regular schedule. Workers argued that such steady
labor was unnecessary to get their jobs done. Many thus showed up late to work, took off
early, and enjoyed long lunch breaks. If their own gardens needed tending many would
simply stay home and see to their own land rather than work the boss's fields. Many of
these forms of resistance were carryovers from the slave period, but they had added
power for freed workers in 1864. As long as laborers were in short supply they were able
to exert greater control over working conditions. By the end of the year, however, a
dismal cotton crop decreased both the need for excess farm hands and the bargaining
power of the workers.
After the war, tensions between landowners and workers increased as many planters who
had fled during the military occupation returned to reclaim their lands. Many of these
planters resented freed people's insistence on negotiating for fair labor contracts.
Plantation owners wanted to maintain the same kind of control over black workers that
they had during slavery. But workers refused to go back to the old ways. Those who had
stayed in the county throughout the war had seen that they could bargain successfully
with landowners to improve their working conditions and earnings. And in the years after
the war there was a tremendous shortage of labor in the area; thus the workers were in a
good position to negotiate. The refusal of many landowners to bargain only increased
workers' resentment and resistance.(23)
Shortly after emancipation, former slave Bryant Singfield tried to organize farm workers
in Phillips County who were trying to negotiate new labor contracts. Singfield was not a
native of the area. He had been purchased in Texas by Bart Turner, who had fled Phillips
County during its military occupation and returned in the final days of the war. Singfield
continued to work for Turner for awhile after the end of the war. Increasingly, however,
he became more outspoken and less obedient towards Turner, who finally banished him
from the plantation. At that point Singfield began to organize former slaves who had
stayed on their plantations as contract laborers. He was apparently quite successful in his
efforts, which stirred up resentment among plantation owners. This resentment increased
after some workers took their protests further than collective bargaining. One group of
workers left their plantations to form an independent farm colony on an abandoned plot
of land. Their complete refusal to participate in the white-controlled plantation economy
was too much for some planters to tolerate. They targeted Singfield as the cause of the
unrest among the workers. He and several other protestors were rounded up by a group of
white planters and never heard from again. According to local legend, "it was the general
opinion that all were killed as none of them were ever seen in Phillips County from that
night." For many years thereafter it was said that Singfield's ghost haunted a local swamp
where he was killed.(24)
The legend of Bryant Singfield offers a prime example of a moment of resistance and
violence that was not recorded in official sources and would have been overlooked
entirely had Henry Turner not told the legend of the Singfield's ghost to a Federal
Writers' Project interviewer in the 1930s. The white people mentioned in the story, such
as Bart Turner, were well known in the area and even interviewed by the same FWP
worker, who wrote down the story in his own words, indicating that it was influenced by
his impression not only of the story, but also of Bart Turner and those implicated in the
alleged murders. Stories of violence such as this one often become part of the common
oral history of a community. Certainly the fact that it was retold seventy years after its
occurrence suggests that the story still had power within the black community.
The legend's focus on Singfield should not obscure the fact that he did not act or die
alone. Although he was targeted as the scapegoat for the labor unrest in the area, the
accounts of collective bargaining during the war undermine the argument that labor
organization was simply the result of "outside agitators." The local population had
learned from the final years of the war that negotiation could be a powerful tool when
there were weaknesses in the local power structure. What they found in the post-war
period, however, was that whites were ready to meet their collective action with
collective violence. This violence was not the only method planters used to suppress
organized labor, however.
For a while after the war black workers maintained a good bargaining position. The
biggest problem facing central east Arkansas during this time was a shortage of labor.
Planters sent recruiters to states in the Deep South to encourage farm hands to move to
Arkansas. Hundreds of workers were recruited to come to Phillips County. Some worked
for wages while others worked as sharecroppers. Planters in Arkansas generally paid
higher wages for field hands than did planters in other southern states. At that time
Arkansas field hands earned about $10 per month. Top hands could earn from $15 to $25
per month.(25) But few local whites had cash money to pay all the workers they needed.
The wartime experiments had shown that black workers enjoyed having their own land
and working independently of white supervision. Thus, as in much of the South, the
sharecropping system soon became the preferred form of labor. White landowners could
get a cotton crop while ceding to workers some control over the plots of land assigned to
them. Sharecropping also helped undermine efforts to organize workers collectively by
breaking up the land and keeping workers divided. Wage labor continued to be important,
however. Sharecropping families often relied on wage labor or side businesses to get by
or to escape the system entirely. Women were often the day laborers in the family, as
planters could pay them to work at a lower rate than most men.(26) Cora Gillam's family
was typical of those who entered sharecropping arrangements after the war. Gillam's
mother and stepfather went into sharecropping in Phillips County for a former
slaveowner. The family was supposed to receive half of the crop at the end of the season,
but when harvest time came they barely broke even. At that point Cora and her mother
went to work as cotton pickers, making $1.50 per hundred pounds picked - a very high
wage at the time. Eventually the family saved enough money to get out of sharecropping
and move to Little Rock.(27)
Cora Gillam's family was typical of post-war black laborers in central east Arkansas.
Workers were always looking for ways to improve their situation, including moving
around often. This mobility and the continued labor recruitment from other states helps
account for the exponential growth of Phillips County's black population, which peaked
at almost 80 percent of the total county population in 1910. As the black population
increased, any advantages there might have been for them in the sharecropping system
decreased, as they did for sharecroppers throughout the South. Sharecropping came to
dominate southern agriculture for the next half century. It also became one of the many
factors that helped to strangle the southern agricultural economy by driving down cotton
prices through overproduction. As prices plunged, so too did the ability of sharecroppers
to make any profit. Many sank deeper and deeper into debt. At the same time, wages for
day laborers fell as years of in-migration led to a surplus of workers. Thus it became
more difficult for families to get out of sharecropping by saving money from day labor as
Cora Gillam's family had done. Sharecropping began to trap many families in a web of
poverty from which they could not escape. The economic situation of many rural blacks
soon reverted back close to what it had been during slavery. The sharecropping system
worked together with legalized segregation to stifle change in the South. As historian
Pete Daniel describes it, "Peonage infected the South like a cancer, eating away at the
economic freedom of blacks, driving poor whites to work harder in order to compete with
virtual slave labor, and preserving the class structure inherited from slavery days."(28)
By the late 19th century the bleak economy had given rise to numerous protest
organizations throughout the South designed to help poor farmers, both black and white.
Arkansas was a hotbed of populist activism. Indeed, historian Edwards Ayers has noted
that "Arkansas had the deepest and widest tradition of radicalism and organization of all
southern states" during this period.(29) Despite this tradition, agricultural labor
organizations failed to bring about significant change in the state during the 1890s.
Racism contributed to this failure by discouraging white sharecroppers from uniting with
blacks to fight the system that kept them both in a state of peonage. Take, for example,
the experience of the main organizations that led into the populist revolt.
One of the best-known southern agricultural organizations was the Texas-based Southern
Farmers' Alliance, also known as the Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America. The
Southern Farmers' Alliance excluded blacks. In 1886 black farm laborers who had been
barred from the Alliance formed their own organization in Houston County, Texas. By
1890 the Colored Farmers' Alliance claimed some 1,200,000 members nationwide. About
20,000 were Arkansans, many from central east Arkansas. Many of them had once
belonged to an Arkansas movement, the Agricultural Wheel, which was integrated in
1886. When Wheel leaders decided to merge with the Southern Farmers' Alliance in
1888, they excluded their black members. Most of these black Arkansans then joined the
Colored Farmers' Alliance, which operated independently of the Southern Farmers'
Alliance. Although both organizations supported many of the same goals, racial and class
issues divided the two groups. The Colored Farmers' Alliance was made up almost
entirely of sharecroppers and field hands; thus it focused much of its attention on turning
sharecroppers into landowners and on increasing wages for field hands. The Southern
Farmers' Alliance included many small landowners who saw the members of the Colored
Farmers' Alliance as competitors for land and potential employees to whom they did not
wish to pay higher wages.(30)
A failed strike in central east Arkansas by the black laborers of central east Arkansas
illustrated how the divisions between Alliances hampered black protest efforts. In 1891,
national Colored Farmers' Alliance leader R. M. Humphrey issued a call for a massive
strike by cotton pickers during the fall harvest. Humphrey wanted workers to stage a
walkout and refuse to pick any cotton until landowners agreed to pay them $1.00 per
every hundred pounds picked. The average rate had fallen to about 50 or 60 cents per
hundred pounds. Humphrey's plan was to force landowners into a quick settlement lest
they lose all of their crops. This strategy was daring, but it held potential for success.
With over a million members, a massive strike by the Colored Farmers' Alliance could
have crippled the cotton industry. Despite travelling far and wide to drum up support for
the strike, Humphrey could find few takers. This was primarily because landowners also
heard about the strike and took steps to head off any support for it. These steps ranged
from intimidation tactics, such as increasing police surveillance of workers, to agreeing to
slight raises that might appease workers for the current season. Fearing violent reprisals,
most Alliance members begged off and took what few concessions they could get from
worried plantation owners.
When the date of the proposed strike, September 12, came and went with no large scale
walkout, Humphrey looked like a laughingstock. One group of workers near Palestine,
Texas, struck, but the owner simply fired all those involved and within a week things
were back to status quo. In central east Arkansas, however, things were not resolved so
easily. In Lee County, which borders Phillips County on the north, an African American
labor organizer from Memphis named Ben Patterson arrived in early September to
organize cotton pickers for a strike. Unlike the very public Humphrey, Patterson avoided
tipping his hand by quietly organizing throughout the county. As with other local
movements, it is unclear how much organizing Patterson did himself and how much was
done by local workers. Once the strike began, most of the organizing was carried out by
local people. At least twenty-five local pickers agreed to strike. They waited until an
opportune moment arose.
A visiting absentee landowner, J. F. Frank, appears to have set off the strike during a
discussion with his plantation manager, Tom Miller. According to one report, within
earshot of a group of black workers, Miller complained that his pickers were working too
slow for his satisfaction. Frank then proposed that Miller solve the problem by increasing
the workers' wages, at which point Miller informed his boss that all the local plantation
owners had agreed that none of them would pay more than 50 cents per hundred pounds
of cotton picked. Frank expressed his dissatisfaction with such an agreement, telling
Miller that "the only way to get a thing done was to pay for it."(31) He then declared that
he was willing to raise wages as high as $1.00 per hundred pounds if that was what it
took to get the job done. When the eavesdropping workers reported this statement to the
others in the movement, they agreed that the time was right to strike, as there was
obviously some dissension within the planter ranks.(32)
According to Frank, his pickers soon went on strike. Rather than let the cotton rot in the
fields, Miller authorized a raise to 60 cents per hundred pounds. Soon afterward, Frank
received an ominous letter warning that "50c is the price and we are not going to pay any
more, neither are we going to permit any more here to be paid in this neighborhood."(33)
On September 20, a group of workers on the nearby Rodgers plantation (no relation to
Ward Rodgers) demanded a pay increase to 75 cents per 100 pounds picked. The
landowner promptly fired the workers and banished them from the plantation. The fired
workers returned, however, and proceeded to travel throughout the county trying to get
others to join them. Their degree of success in recruiting other active strikers is uncertain,
however it does seem that many workers left the fields. According to one newspaper, a
white observer reported that "all the fields, covering several thousand acres, were white
with cotton. In a long ride of thirty miles or more he did not see but two men at work
picking the staple."(34) Many white planters expressed concern that their crop would
indeed rot in the field if the strikers were not stopped. The local sheriff was called in to
organize a posse to break the strike and halt further recruitment. On September 25
violence broke out between some strikers and non-strikers. Two of the black non-strikers
were killed. Three days later Tom Miller was murdered. Most reports blamed the murder
on the strikers, some directly on Ben Patterson and others on brothers Mit and Early
Jones, who had worked for Miller. J. F. Frank believed Miller may have been killed by
local whites angry over his raising of wages above 50 cents.(35)
Regardless of who actually killed Miller, his death transformed what had been strikebreaking posses into lynch mobs. With the murder of a white man, the local white
population became intent on hunting down the strike leaders. Many members of the black
community openly opposed the strike and some even helped in the search for union
leaders, but other members of the local community showed support for the strikers by
offering them protection. For example, at one point a group of strikers burned down a
cotton gin on one plantation. The plantation owner figured out from the direction they
were headed which town the strikers were probably escaping to. He rode ahead to that
town to prepare an ambush. A black preacher found out about the ambush and sent a
warning to the strikers, who changed course and escaped into the Mississippi canebrakes.
The actions of the minister are significant, for they illustrate that although the number of
strikers was small, they had some support in the larger community. That a minister
helped them is even more significant. The church, and particularly ministers, played an
important role in the local black community. By protecting these men, the minister was to
some extent sanctioning their efforts.
Most of the strikers made their way to a small island on the Mississippi River, where they
hoped to catch a steamboat out of the area. A white posse was tipped off to their location
and stormed the hideout. Many of those not immediately killed (including Ben Patterson)
were taken up by a lynch mob and hung. In the end the official tally counted fifteen
strikers killed and six arrested. The black press reported that the number killed might
actually have been much higher, but no conclusive evidence was uncovered. The violence
ended the strike that year, and made further efforts at organizing more difficult. By
October 3, one local newspaper reported, "The Negroes have again gone to work and it is
supposed that all further trouble is at an end." On a larger level, the failed strike
decreased support for the Colored Farmers' Alliance, as African American workers
throughout the South viewed it as an example of how segregated efforts at collective
action were continually undermined by racist violence.(36)
The deaths of the 1891 strikers followed much the same pattern as the failed effort of
Byrant Singfield in the 1860s. In both cases the majority of participants were poor
agricultural workers who saw weaknesses in the local power structure brought about in
part by events on a national level. They seized this opportunity to try to change their
situation on a local level. In both cases the white power structure rallied together, fought
back with violence, and successfully squelched the protest while laying all the blame for
the incident on outsiders. Part of the reassertion of white authority came in justifying
their actions and suppressing any retribution for the lynchings from outside forces. Part of
their success came also in controlling the narrative of the event. Although the strike
affected the history of the Colored Farmers' Alliance, we still know very little about the
crisis. Unlike the story of Bryant Singfield, the event was covered by some media, which
provided some sketchy information. In the end, however, the white version of the events
was accepted as fact. A thorough public investigation that revealed the protesters' side of
the story never materialized. Only the local black community remembered their stories.
For almost thirty years after the failed strike of 1891 the economic situation in the area
got even bleaker. Over the years white landowners tightened their grip on black
sharecroppers as cotton prices dropped. Little changed from year to year except for the
amount of debt each family held. By 1919 it was virtually impossible for any black
sharecropper to escape from the system, which local landowners dominated as never
before. The system was riddled with corruption. The standard practice in this area was for
sharecroppers and landowners to split the crop at harvest time, 50-50. The landowners
provided the sharecroppers with all of their supplies, the price of which was deducted
from the tenants' shares at the end of the season. The landowners took the crops to be
sold and gave the sharecroppers what the landowners said were the tenants' shares of the
crops, minus expenses. At no time were sharecroppers provided with written receipts for
the cotton or a list of what they owed to the landowners. Sharecroppers had to trust the
word of landowners. In virtually all cases the sharecroppers wound up owing more than
they made. Tenants could not legally leave the plantations until all their debts were paid.
Some owners would drag out the settlements for as long as possible. Some sharecroppers
did not receive their settlements on the fall harvest of 1918 until as late as July of 1919.
Most sharecroppers found little receptivity when they tried to press the landowners for
written records of their accounts or for a speedier settlement. Many owners swiftly
threatened into submission any sharecroppers who complained about the system.(37)
Given this situation, the sharecroppers of central east Arkansas tried once again to
organize in 1919. It had been almost thirty years since the last major strike attempt in the
area. But the ghosts of Bryant Singfield, Ben Patterson, and their fellow protestors
remained in the collective memories of the black population, serving as both a warning of
what would happen if they continued to protest and as a reminder that some people would
and could stand up to the system, even if it meant paying with their lives. Just as they had
done during 1891, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, national events
were undermining the strength of the local white power structure. World War I had a
profound effect on the southern black community. A shortage of labor during the war
caused numerous labor agents to recruit black workers to go north. Agents descended on
the labor-rich Phillips and Lee Counties to lure workers -an ironic occurrence considering
that the surplus of labor was due in part to earlier efforts by labor recruiters to entice
workers up from the Deep South. It was clear that economic benefits were the main
attraction for most black Arkansans who moved north. Black minister Dr. E.C. Morris, of
Helena, stated bluntly that, "The Negroes who are going North are [not] doing so because
they love the clime better than they love this, but because they are offered better wages."
White landowners greatly feared this loss of black labor. They put forth considerable
effort to discourage "outsiders" from luring laborers away. At one point, for example, two
labor recruiters for a northern railroad company were arrested in Helena, fined $500, and
sentenced to a one-year jail term for labor agitation.(38)
A second important effect of the war was how it changed the perspective of those who
fought in it. It is unclear how many of the soldiers who served in the war actually
participated in the post-war unionization efforts, but their experiences touched the entire
black community through letters and stories. The chance to see the world outside of
central east Arkansas boosted the self esteem of many young inductees, who shared these
feelings with the folks back home. Private William Brown came from a cotton-growing
family in Phillips County. He served in France during the war, where he wrote to his
grandmother, "I am awful proud that I came over to France to fight for my country for
now that we have gone over the top we can go back home with our chest's (sic) stuck out
like a peacock's about it."(39) This pride in having fought for one's country was shared by
many back home and continued after the war. After feeling this pride it would be difficult
for members of this generation to revert back to the status quo of racial oppression that
had guided life before. Thus in the fall of 1919 the black community stuck out its
collective chest and stood up against the system once more.
This group of activists included future STFU leaders Ike Shaw and the Reverend C.H.
Smith.(40) A man named Robert L. Hill has generally been credited as the leader of the
1919 movement. White authorities claimed Hill was a shyster who duped the black
community into planning a violent overthrow of the white population. Hill claimed he
merely came to Phillips County to help the union organize. He was affiliated with a union
headquartered in Drew County, south of Phillips. The Drew County union circulated
pamphlets throughout eastern Arkansas encouraging participation in the Farmers' and
Laborers' Household Union of America. Hill may have been drawn to Phillips County by
his mother, who lived in the small community of Ratio. Several branches of the union
sprang up in the area, making it one of the largest local union efforts up to that time.
Robert Hill worked primarily with the branches in Ratio and in the town of Elaine, whose
leaders included Ed Hicks and Joe Knox, another local minister. The black church played
an important role in this union effort. There were apparently several ministers in the
union leadership. Union literature included many references to scripture, and meetings
often took place in churches, such as the one at Hoop Spur. The involvement of the black
church may have accounted in part for the unusually high levels of support this union
received in a short amount of time.(41) The response to the union also indicates a high
level of local dissatisfaction with the system. Even E.M. Allen, one of the most vocal
supporters of the "outside agitator" theory admitted with astonishment that, "some of the
ringleaders were found to be the oldest and most reliable of the negroes whom we have
known for the past fifteen years." Given this statement, it is possible that the movement
may have included some supporters, or their descendents, involved in the 1891 strike.(42)
The immediate goal of the union members was to negotiate a written, legally binding
contract with plantation owners that would ensure a fair profit for the sharecroppers and
provide written statements of their accounts. Many also wanted to increase wages for
cotton pickers. They were contemplating waging a strike if the landowners would not
negotiate. Hill was put in charge of obtaining legal counsel for the union. The Little Rock
law firm of Bratton, Bratton, and Casey had an office in Phillips County. The senior
partner of the firm, U.S. Bratton, was known for his opposition to the sharecropping
system. Hill contacted Bratton to see if his firm would represent sixty-five members of
the Ratio branch. Soon white landowners began to hear rumors of the union activities.
Some wage-earning cotton pickers, especially women, stopped working in anticipation of
new contract negotiations. In early September white merchant Sebastian Straub hired a
black detective from Chicago to investigate the union activities. The detective reported
the strike plans. As tensions mounted, some plantation owners confronted their workers
directly and warned them what would happen if they joined the union. After the union
had been destroyed, one plantation owner swore to another that none of his workers
belonged to the union. "How in the hell do you know they don't?" the other asked. The
planter responded, "I told my negroes about two weeks ago that if they joined that
blankety blank (sic) union that I would kill every one of them."(43)
Despite such threats the union continued to gain momentum, though its members became
ever more secretive. U.S. Bratton agreed to send his son, O.S., to Ratio to collect
information and a retainer from the union members. On the night of September 30, as
O.S. Bratton rode a train to east Arkansas, Ike Shaw and several other union members
met in a small church at Hoop Spur to decide if they were going to join the members of
the Ratio branch in retaining the Brattons. That same evening two white law enforcement
officials and a black trusty, Kidd Collins, were scouring the area looking for a wanted
bootlegger. At some point they stopped their car near the Hoop Spur church. What
happened next is uncertain. What is clear is that gunfire was exchanged. Both the church
and the car were marked by bullet holes. When the smoke cleared one of the officers lay
dead, the other wounded. Collins escaped by crawling on his stomach through the
canebrakes. The union members tied the church as fast as they could.(44)
A white man lay dead, another wounded. As in the past, that was more than enough to
break the union. The next morning a posse set out to arrest union leaders for complicity
in the murder. This time they were met with armed resistance from sharecroppers who
refused to turn the union leaders over to white authorities. More gunfire was exchanged.
This time two more white men and an unknown number of blacks lay dead. The
remaining posse members retreated to Elaine and sent a distress message to the sheriff of
Helena, claiming that an armed band of 1,000 to 1,500 blacks were descending on Elaine
to start a race war.(45)
Oddly enough, O.S. Bratton arrived in Ratio and proceeded to conduct his business with
union members, oblivious to the chaos reigning in other parts of the county. He and
Robert Hill met with about thirty union members to discuss the contract negotiations.
During the meeting a posse arrived to take Bratton and Hill into custody. Bratton was
captured, but the union members managed to sneak Hill safely out of the county. Unlike
Singfield and Patterson, Hill was spared any violence. But for the next four days white
posses engaged in a campaign of terror against the local black population. The governor
sent 500 federal troops stationed in Arkansas into the county. At some point the church at
Hoop Spur was burned down. Groups of armed whites patrolled the area like big game
hunters. They were ordered to arrest or shoot on sight any black person caught on the
streets without a pass. All those arrested had to remain in jail until a white person
vouched for their character. Many black residents fled with their whole families into the
cover of the thick delta canebrakes. Troops swept the brakes and surrounding woods
shooting all blacks they encountered.(46) H.F. Smiddy, a white coworker of the officer
killed in the initial shootout, later testified about a typical scene during those days:
We began firing into the thicket from both sides thinking possibly there were negroes in
the thicket and we could run them out and kill them. As we marched down the thicket to
the southwest I saw about five or six negroes come out unarmed, holding up their hands,
and some of them running and trying to get away. They were shot down and killed by the
posse members.(47)
Smiddy admitted killing some unarmed blacks himself. Long after the event a white
reporter recounted this testimony that was not published in his newspaper at the time:
A prominent white citizen of Miller county, who, at the time of the Elaine riot, was
teaching school in Phillips county, near the scene of the trouble, is authority for the
statement that 29 negroes in one bunch were killed and their bodies thrown into a pit and
burned. He says one of the shocking acts of the "peacemakers" sent there to protect the
lives and property of both whites and blacks was the hanging of sixteen negroes on a
bridge four miles from Helena.(48)
No one knows for sure how many people were killed in the Phillips County massacre. A
white committee consisting of many of the men who had tried to break up the union
before the violence, including Sebastian Straub, issued a report blaming the incident on
the Brattons and Robert Hill, "socialists" who along with a few bad apples in the local
population had led the good blacks astray. The committee based its finding on
confessions acquired from hundreds of people who had been arrested during the crisis.
Some of these witnesses testified in court against twelve union leaders who received the
death sentence for their part in the plot. Most of these witnesses later recanted their
testimony, claiming that it had been obtained through the use of torture. H.F. Smiddy and
his supervisor, T.K. Jones, later admitted that they themselves had helped torture
prisoners. Some prisoners merely had to witness the torture of others before they agreed
to support the white account of events. The torture took three forms - insertion of
formaldehyde up the nostrils of prisoners, which caused them to strangle; electric shock;
and the oldest of punishments used on African Americans, whipping. Walter Ward
experienced all three. He later described how he was compelled to testify against union
leaders in the original trials:
they stripped me and whipped me with a rubber strap that had lead or copper placed on it
that cut me. Every lick he would hit me would cut the blood out. I do not know how
many licks I was hit, but I do know that they nearly killed me. I was also put in an
electric chair, stripped naked and the current turned on to shock and frighten me. They
also put up my nose some kind of strangling drugs to further torture and frighten me. So
the third time they took me out I agreed to testify to anything they wanted me to say.(49)
In mid-October some 200 black citizens still languished in jail. With harvest time
approaching, the landowners began pushing for the release of field workers so that they
could harvest their cotton. All those not charged with a serious crime were released. The
sheriff issued a proclamation ordering all blacks to remain peaceable and return to work.
Other white authorities urged the local black community to forget about the union and
return to being the good workers they had been before union "hucksters" led them astray.
The editor of the Helena World wrote an open letter to the black community urging them
to "go back to work and let no man - black or white - persuade you to take part in any
movement which might result in disorder." Most heeded this advice, though many others
left the county for places like Tyronza.(50)
The union movement of 1919 may have been dead, but it was hardly forgotten. A
fledgling civil rights organization, the NAACP, received one of its first victories before
the Supreme Court when it took up the defense of the twelve union leaders sentence to
die. All eventually won their freedom. Their ultimate victory in the legal system proved
to many observers that theirs had truly been a just cause. Those who had lived through
the ordeal, such as Ike Shaw and C.H. Smith, carried the memories of those days
throughout their lives. But rather than frighten them away from union activity, the
experience only taught them that better tactics were needed for unionization to succeed.
The legacies of the past taught them that as long as unions were segregated, any attempt
at organizing black labor would be viewed as a race issue rather than a class issue and
would thus be vulnerable to destruction by the powerful forces of racial violence. When
Ike Shaw retold the story of the failed union of 1919 to his brethren in the Southern
Tenant Farmers Union, he had no doubts that the new union might face the same kind of
violence. The black men who helped found the STFU were willing to face the
consequences of such violence, only this time they would have white brethren standing
beside them.(51)
Between 1934 and 1938, membership in the STFU rose to a peak of over 35,000, the
majority in Arkansas. Although the STFU was an interracial organization, it grew much
faster among the black population than the white. By 1937 its membership was about 70
percent black.(52) Many observers credited the rapid response by the black community to
its previous organizing experience. Ward Rodgers acknowledged that most of the black
members of the union were much more savvy about how to run a union than the bulk of
the white members. Wrote Rodgers:
Because of his long experience in other organizations, such as churches, burial, fraternal
organizations and the like, the Negro generally knows how to run meetings as they
should be run. Practically the only organization that the white sharecroppers have had
experience with outside of the churches is the Klu (sic) Klux Klan, therefore they have
not had training in correct procedures at meetings.(53)
Once again, national events, in this case a major economic depression, made the white
power structure vulnerable. At that moment, the black community was ready to act. The
black experience at organizing continued even as the STFU began to decline. Although
most scholars argue the STFU effectively died as a national movement with the rise of
internal conflicts in the late 1930s, the movement continued to affect the local black
population that rallied behind it. Just as many older members of the STFU had been part
of the movement of 1919, many younger members of the STFU went on to become
leaders in the local civil rights movement in Arkansas. For example, a young black
woman named Carrie Dilworth served as secretary for her STFU local. Thirty years later
Dilworth turned her home into a center and haven for young civil rights workers in the
Arkansas Delta. Like the generations that had come before her, Dilworth carried on a
long legacy of resistance.(54)
The civil rights movement is well known to many of us, as is the existence of the STFU
and, to a lesser extent, the Phillips County massacre - though the only reason we know
anything at all about the Phillips County massacre is because the NAACP took the case
and won a major Supreme Court victory with it. Yet during the same period that the
NAACP leaders were struggling to win this case, they were bombarded with similar
stories on an almost daily basis. The NAACP did not take the Phillips County case
because black people had been murdered or tortured. There were many such cases going
on throughout the country. They took the case because they correctly assessed that they
could win on a constitutional technicality.(55) Had they not taken the case, the story of
the 1919 massacre might have completely disappeared from public history, just as many
other cases that involved poor rural African Americans vanished from the public record.
Likewise, had some outside newspapers not covered the 1891 cotton pickers' strike, it too
might have been completely ignored. As it was, the story was severely suppressed. The
story of Bryant Singfield did disappear from the public record. Had Henry Turner not
told his story to that Federal Writers' Project interviewer we might never have known
about it. Ironically, Henry Turner told his story around the same time that Ike Shaw
recalled the 1919 massacre to the STFU. Both were taking part in an oral history tradition
that sought to preserve and use the stories of previous heroes to educate and inspire the
next generation that would fight against the system. Whether it was civil war, a populist
revolt, a world war, a major economic depression, or a civil rights movement, there was
in the Arkansas Delta a continuous, organized black community ready to act when the
opportunity arose. This area was not unique. If we could, on a case-by-case basis,
uncover the history of other black communities throughout the South a history that has
been largely hidden from the public record - we might find that there was a pattern of
resistance just like the one that existed in central east Arkansas. The history of southern
black resistance is the story of many rural areas like this one and of the people who
inhabitated those areas. It is a story that continues still today throughout the Delta and the
backwoods.
Department of History Austin, TX 78712
ENDNOTES
Special Thanks to Sharmian L. White for obtaining all the documents on Moore v.
Dempsey 261 U.S. 86 (1923) from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Janet
Katz for creating the maps that accompany this manuscript, and most of all, to Dr. James
Sidbury for his invaluable help and guidance on this project.
1. George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, supp. series 2,
vol. 1 (Westport, CT, 1979), 133-134.
2. H.L. Mitchell, "The Founding and Early History of the Southern Tenant Farmers
Union," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 32 (1973): 342-369 (quote, 351). For more
complete histories of the STFU and its ideology, see H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happen
in this Land (Montclair, NJ, 1979); Jerold Auerbach, "STFU: Socialist Critics of the New
Deal," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 27 (1968): 113-131; Anthony P. Dunbar, Against
the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville, VA, 1981);
Donald Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union and the New
Deal (Chapel Hill, NC, 1971); David Ellery Rison, "Arkansas During the Great
Depression" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1974); David Eugene
Conrad, The Forgotton Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal (Urbana,
1965); U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture (Washington
D.C., 1945); John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil
Rights Movement (New York, 1994).
3. Scholars are divided on whether the STFU was a success story. Most tend to accept the
notion that the STFU did little to achieve immediate gains for the bulk of its members, in
that it failed to achieve the goals that are normally associated with successful labor
movements. That is, its large scale strikes made few gains (and in some cases failed
outright) and it never achieved the goal of standardizing labor contracts for southern
sharecroppers. As I note in this paper, however, no one has really tried to examine the
STFU from the viewpoint of its base membership. Thus it is unclear to what extent the
union members felt it changed their daily lives. That being said, most scholars tend to
concur with Dewey Grantham's observation that "although the STFU failed as a labor
union, it was important as a critic, not only of the discrimination against poor farmers in
the South, but also of the inadequacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt's agricultural reforms."
(Foreward to Grubbs, ix.) By the late 1930s even many critics of the STFU admitted that
its efforts had helped to shape U.S. agricultural policy and to help pull the South out of its
70-year economic downturn. See Oren Stephens, "Revolt on the Delta," Harpers
Magazine 183 (1941): 656-664. Labor Unionism, 325.
4. The role of women in the STFU is another aspect of the union that has yet to be fully
explored, although its membership rolls include thousands of women. In addition to
numerous all-women's locals, there were many locals made up of both women and men.
Black women played a particularly prominent role in the locals. Membership surveys in
the Papers of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Southern Historical Collection. Chapel
Hill, NC (hereafter cited as the STFU Papers).
Elizabeth Anne Payne has recently begun to examine the role of women in the STFU.
She argues that women were called into action by the union because they were often
"more literate than the males in their families. She also argues that the STFU became a
training ground for future activism by women, especially in the civil rights movement.
Payne, "'What Ain't I Been Doing?' Women and the Delta," in The Arkansas Delta: Land
of Paradox, Jeannie Whayne and Willard B. Gatewood, eds. (Fayetteville, AR, 1993),
146. For more on southern women and rural labor during this period, see Jacqueline
Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from
Slaved to the Present (New York, 1985); Ruth Alice Allen, The Labor of Women in the
Production of Cotton (New York, 1975. orig. 1931); Margaret Jarmon Hagood, Mothers
of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman (New York, 1977. orig.
1939).
5. Ward Rodgers, "Sharecroppers Drop the Color Line," The Crisis 42 (June 1935): 168.
6. Labor Unionism, 317; Dunbar, 165. Most secondary literature is not in agreement over
how many members the union actually had, although the union did conduct several
censuses which the labor department accepted. These surveys show a peak membership
of over 35,000 in 1938.
The night the STFU was formed, several other men joined Ike Shaw in recounting their
memories of racial and class oppression. White sharecropper Bert Williams, a former
member of the KKK, recalled how as a young boy he had witnessed Klan nightrides that
put an end to the gains of Reconstruction for Arkansas blacks. Now Williams was joining
ranks with black sharecroppers and advising that they should form an new integrated
Klan that would terrorize the planters with their own nightrides. Other white
sharecroppers rejected Williams's call to violence, but agreed that the time had come for
racial unity. Alvin Nunnally noted that in order for the union to succeed, "we have got to
have the Negro with us otherwise the big planters will play him off against us and us
against him and we will both be kept down in the ditch." According to H.L. Mitchell,
"Everybody said Amen to that." H.L. Mitchell, "Early Days, Southern Tenant Farmers
Union," first draft, STFU Papers, 4.
Another topic that deserves further study is whether the poor white members of the
STFU, who appear to have had their views on race changed, continued to work for
interfacial goals after the union fell apart. It is clear from many of the narratives that
during the 1930s some white members of the union, such as those who had once
belonged to the KKK, radically altered their views on race. One of the most often
repeated examples of such shifting attitudes occurred when Ward Rodgers was arrested
on multiple charges related to a speech he had made at a public meeting. At one point
during the trial, to prove that the accused had intended to start a riot, the prosecutor noted
that Rodgers had introduced one of the black union leaders by title "Mister" - a hostile
breech of southern racial etiquette. At that point a white sharecropper observing the trial
shouted at the prosecutor, "I'd ruther call a nigger Mister than you." Rodgers, 170. Some
have argued that it was the shift by poor whites finally to choose class solidarity over
racial solidarity that made the STFU truly dangerous to southern landowners. For this
reason it seems worth asking if such shifts in attitude by white STFU members continued
after 1940 or whether this was just a temporary change created out of the unusual
economic times of the 1930s.
7. Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York, 1977), 389.
8. For a similar example of this linkage between resistance and past experience, see
Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers (New York, 1974), an oral history of a black
sharecropper who joined the Alabama Sharecroppers' Union.
9. George Brown Tindall, for example, once noted that "Tyronza was an improbable
place for a Socialist party local." George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New
South: 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 417. A closer examination of the history of
Arkansas, however, makes it clear that many radical organizations sprang up in small,
seemingly isolated communities. The most famous example is that of Commonwealth
College, in the small mountain town of Mena, in western Arkansas. Commonwealth had
ties to the STFU as well as to both the Socialist and Communist parties. For more on
Commonwealth College and its links to the STFU, see Dunbar; Grubbs; Raymond and
Charlotte Koch, Educational Commune: The Story of Commonwealth College (New
York, 1972). William Henry Cobb, "Commonwealth College: A History" (Master's
Thesis, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 1963).
10. The problem of reconstructing the history of black resistance that has been suppressed
from the public record is one which plagues all historians of this topic. The lack of
written records is one reason why no one has previously examined the links between the
events of 1919 and 1934 to resistance movements before 1900. Winthrop D. Jordan
examined this problem of lost information in his book Tumult and Silence at Second
Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (Baton Rouge, 1993), 1-28.
11. Mark D. Naison made a similar claim for the legacy of black resistance in "Black
Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition," Journal
of Ethnic Studies 1, (Fall 1973): 46-65.
12. In addition to Isaac Shaw, STFU co-founder and black minister C.H. Smith had also
been a member of the destroyed union of 1919, along with others, unnamed. Though not
directly connected to the 1919 union, the young H.L. Mitchell was living in the vicinity
of Hoop Spur when the union was destroyed. Most first-hand accounts of the creation of
the STFU note that the outcome of the 1919 union greatly influenced the mindset and the
tactics of the STFU founders. Mitchell, "Early Days," 4; Trodall, 417; Kester, 56-57. For
a general overview of the agricultural economy of this area and the developments that
influenced the founding of the STFU, see Jeannie M. Whayne, A New Plantation South:
Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas (Charlottesville, 1996).
13. 8th U.S. Census (1860). During the Reconstruction era most of the county lines in
Arkansas were redrawn and many new counties were created. Lee County was created in
1873. It was carved out of the northern one-third of Phillips County and parts of three
other counties.
For more on the status of slavery in Arkansas, see Robert B. Walz, "Slaveholdings and
Slavery in Arkansas in 1850," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 12 (Spring 1953): 38-73.
14. For a general description of agriculture in Phillips County during the postemancipation period, see Agricultural Census of the United States (1880), 588.
15. Willard B. Gatewood, "The Arkansas Delta: Deepest of the Deep South," in Whayne
and Gatewood, 15.
16. Gatewood, "The Arkansas Delta," in Whayne and Gatewood, 14.
17. Rawick, vol. 10, part 6, 366. Of the more than 2,000 interviews of former slaves
conducted by the Federal Writers' Project, more than 700 were conducted in Arkansas.
Most of these were people who had moved to Arkansas after emancipation. For examples
of testimony relating to slavery in central east Arkansas, see full interviews with Josie
Martin (vol. 10, part 5, 51-52), James Gill (vol. 9, part 3, 19-25), Ella Johnson (vol. 9,
part 4, 77-81), Betty Myers (supp. series 2, vol. 1,107-108), Henry Turner (vol. 1, part
6,363-368 and supp. series 2, vol. 1,132-134), and Shepherd Rhone (vol. 10, part 6, 33).
18. Ira Berlin, et al., eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867
(Cambridge, 1985-1990), 621-650. Bobby Roberts, "Desolation Itself: The Impact of the
Civil War," in Whayne and Gatewood, 81. For a local view of the lease system, see Dale
P. Kirkman, "The Leased Plantations Below Helena," Phillips County Historical
Quarterly (September 1966): 8-15.
19. Berlin, 635 (quote), 643-647. Another aspect of the lease system that was
unappealing for the black workers was that it did not help them create and support
communities for themselves. The workers were often assigned at random to work on
farms, thus there were few previous ties among workers. Non-working freed people who
might have been cared for by the community on the plantations, such as the disabled or
elderly, were shut out of the lease system since renters preferred only young and healthy
workers. Those not desired as workers were assigned to "infirm farms" run by the Union
Army.
20. Berlin, 639, 641.
21. Berlin, 643.
22. Berlin, 643-647. Some former slaves in the Phillips County area protested the
plantation system by becoming tenant farmers. About thirty former slaves leased small
tracts of land on the plantation that had formerly belonged to Confederate General
Gideon J. Pillow. The farmers on the Pillow plantation grew cotton, but also invested
heavily in consumable crops. By the end of 1864 the tenant farmers of the Pillow
plantation had far more to show for their efforts than did the wage laborers who worked
for white planters. They had made plenty of money to help finance the next year's crop.
Many army officials took this experiment as a sign that redistribution of land was the best
way to reorganize southern agriculture. Their views were not supported after the war. For
another general overview of experiments with land in eastern Arkansas during the war,
see Maude Carmichael, Federal Experiments with Negro Labor on Abandoned
Plantations in Arkansas: 1862-1865," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 6 (June 1942): 101106.
23. Horace D. Nash, "Blacks in Arkansas During Reconstruction: The Ex-Slave
Narratives," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48 (Autumn 1989): 243-259; Rawick, vol. 9,
part 3, 98-99; vol. 10, part 6, 74.
24. Rawick, supp. series 2, vol. 1, 132-134 (quote, 133). This is the only mention of
Singfield I have found in any source so far, though many such events from this period are
only preserved in oral histories like this one.
Singfield may have been working in conjunction with U.S. Army officials stationed in
Helena. Watt McKinney, the WPA interviewer who recounted Henry Turner's version of
the Singfield story, says that Singfield "was in large measure encouraged and assisted by
the commanders of the Federal soldiers who were garrisoned at Helena for many months
after the war." (132) Since the army was at that time actively encouraging former slaves
to work out contracts with plantation owners, this support would make sense. It is also
possible that Singfield may havebeen working with the army directly as an organizer of
contract laborers.
25. Horace D. Nash, "Blacks in Arkansas During Reconstruction: The Ex-Slave
Narratives," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48 (Autumn 1989): 243-259; Leon Litwack,
Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 411; Rawick,
vol. 9, part 3, 98-99 and vol. 10, part 6, 74. For more general information on this period,
see George E Thompson, Arkansas and Reconstruction: The Influence of Geography,
Economics, and Personality (Port Washington, NY, 1976).
26. Payne, 143. For an overview of the gendered nature of the sharecropping system, see
Susan A. Mann, "Slavery, Sharecropping, and Sexual Inequality, Signs 14 (Summer
1989): 774-798.
27. Rawick, vol. 9, part 3, 30.
28. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 (Urbana,
1972), 11; thirteenth U.S. Census (1910). Donald Holley provides an excellent summary
and bibliography on the recent debate over the origins of sharecropping in "The
Plantation Heritage: Agriculture in the Arkansas Delta,' in Whayne and Gatewood, 238277, see especially footnote # 29 on p. 308.
29. Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York,
1992), 244.
30. Arkansas farmers and laborers flirted with integration thoughout the 1880s. In 1882
two Grange-like organizations were formed in Arkansas to unite farmers - the
Agricultural Wheel and the Brothers of Freedom. The two organizations merged in 1885
as the Wheel, by which time they claimed over 1,100 chapters spread across four states.
The new Wheel prohibited membership by non-whites. As a result, black farm laborers
were forced to organize in other ways. In some cases they started their own similar
societies, such as the Sons of the Agricultural Star, formed in Monroe County. Few of
those organizations had much success, so some agricultural laborers joined national
unions that would accept blacks, including the Knights of Labor. In 1886 the Wheel
finally agreed to allow black chapters to be formed. Within two years the Wheel counted
some 200 black chapters among its total of 1,947 (Ayers, 215 and 244). John William
Graves, Town and Country: Race Relations in an Urban-Rural Context, Arkansas, 18651905 (Fayetteville, 1990), 138-41,203-5. For more on the early history of the Wheel, see
E Clark Elkins, "Arkansas Farmers Organize for Action: 1882-1884," Arkansas
Historical Quarterly 13 (Autumn 1954): 231-248 and "The Agricultural Wheel: County
Politics and Consolidation, 1884-1885, Arkansas Historical Quarterly 29 (Summer 1970):
152-175. For an interesting examination of the black agricultural Knights of Labor in
Arkansas, see William Warren Rogers, "Negro Knights of Labor in Arkansas: A Case
Study of the 'Miscellaneous' Strike," Labor History (Summer 1969): 498-505. For more
on black populists, see Girard Thompson Bryant, The Colored Brother: A History of the
Negro and the Populist Movement (Kansas City, 1981).
31. William E Holmes, "The Arkansas Cotton Pickers Strike of 1891 and the Demise of
the Colored Farmers' Alliance," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 32 (Summer 1973): 107119 (quote, 114-115). Holmes's article is the most complete study of this strike attempt.
However, most of the details of the story are taken from news reports outside of Lee
County immediately after the event. Since such reports are often sketchy and
contradictory, it is difficult to judge the accuracy of Holmes's account of the events. A
more complete study utilizing local sources would greatly enhance our understanding of
this event. For this study I utilized the local newspaper The Lee County Courier to find
some information that Holmes overlooked. So far I have been unable to find information
from local black newspapers that may have covered the story, either because old volumes
have been destroyed or are in private collections unknown to most of the major archivists
who are familiar with black newspaper records.
32. Holmes, 107-119. It is unclear whether Patterson was an official representative of the
Colored Farmers' Alliance, but he was probably associated with it in some way.
See footnote #13. Note that a substantial part of Lee County was in Phillips County
before 1873. Thus it is likely that some of the plantations (and thus possibly residents
thereof) involved in the 1891 strike were the same as those involved in collective action
efforts that occurred in Phillips County before 1873.
33. Letter from J.F. Frank in the Lee County Courier (October 24, 1891). After the strike
Frank was highly criticized for his role in encouraging demands for better wages. Several
local whites pointed to Frank as an example of the troubles that could be caused by
"outsiders," such as absentee landowners. One writer for the Lee County Courier
complained that "Non-residents who own land in Arkansas have no other interests in the
well-being of the state than such as grow directly out of the profits of any farms so owned
by them. The 'social fabric' gets neither support nor encouragement from non-resident
land owners." Lee County Courier (October 3, 1891).
34. Holmes, 107-119. Memphis Commercial Appeal (September 29, 1891).
35. Holmes, 107-119. Lee County Courier (October 3, 1891), (October 10, 1891),
(October 17, 1891), (October 24, 1891); Memphis Commercial Appeal (September 29,
1891).
36. Holmes, 107-119. Graves, Town and Country, 205; Memphis Commercial Appeal
(October 2, 1891), (quote: October 3, 1891). The Commercial Appeal reported that the
man who tipped off the strikers about the ambush was Peter Jones, the father of Mit and
Early Jones.
37. Walter F. White, "Race Conflict in Arkansas," Survey, 43 (December 13, 1919): 233234; Scipio Jones, "The Arkansas Peons," The Crisis 23 (December 1921): 72-76 and 23
(January 1922): 115-117.
38. Randy Finley, "Black Arkansans and World War One," Arkansas Historical Quarterly
49 (Autumn 1990): 249-277 (quote, 254). For more on the connection between black
migration and violence in the South, see Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, "Racial
Violence and Black Migration in the American South, 1910-1930," American
Sociological Review 57 (February 1992): 103-116; William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge:
Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton
Rouge, 1991); Neil Fligstein, Going North: Migration of Blacks and Whites from the
South, 1900-1950 (New York, 1981); Henri Florette, Black Migration: Movement North,
1900-1920 (Garden City, NJ, 1975).
39. Finley, 264.
40. More has been written about this union effort than the other two because of its place
in the general racial violence of 1919, and because a U.S. Supreme Court case grew out
of it. The violence that followed has generally been referred to as the Elaine race riots"
but relatively little has been written about the local union leaders themselves. Back in
1972 Pete Daniel commented in a footnote, "Though the Elaine riots occurred allegedly
because of peonage, the cases quickly became an effort to defend victims against
injustice. Unfortunately, the conditions that led to the original complaints and
organization of a union remained uninvestigated and uncorrected." Daniel, 119, n. 27.
Twenty-six years later that is still the case, as no one has attempted to examine the
incident from the perspective of the local black community. The incident is mentioned in
passing by numerous studies of African American history, but it is generally within the
context of the Red Scare and the post-war lynching crisis. For examples, see William
Tuttle's Race Riot (New York, 1970) and Lee E. Williams and Lee E. Williams II,
Anatomy of Four Race Riots (Jackson, 1972). For a typical treatment of it in the context
of Arkansas racial history, see Fon Louise Gordon, Caste & Class: The Black Experience
in Arkansas, 1880-1920 (Athens, 1995). Much of the historiography has been plagued by
the problem of selectivity of sources. The primary sources are quite contradictory and
confusing. By exclusively citing either official "white" or "black" sources, scholars have
been able to simplify their narrative, but they tend to leave a skewed impression of the
events. In 1960, O.A. Rogers, president of the historically black Arkansas Baptist
College, wrote a fairly balanced summary of the events in "The Elaine Race Riots of
1919," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 19 (Summer 1960): 142-150. Rogers based most of
his research on NAACP records, newspaper accounts, and trial transcripts. In the spring
of 1961 two white Phillips County residents, J.W. Butts and Dorothy James, published a
rebuttal article entitled "The Underlying Causes of the Elaine Race Riot of 1919,"
Arkansas Historical Quarterly 10 (Spring 1961): 95-104, which supported the official
"white" version of the story. Their account was based heavily upon interviews with local
whites and local sources. In 1970 a student at Memphis State University, B. Boren
McCool, produced a Master's Thesis on the case, Union, Reaction, and Riot: Biography
of a Rural Race Riot (Memphis State University: Bureau of Social Research, June 1970),
which purported to analyze the event as an example of organized black violence against
whites in the rural south. Although McCool provides some useful information about the
union itself, he relies almost solely on white sources - primarily on those collected by
J.W. Butts and Dorothy James, including testimony that was later recanted. He does not
cite the NAACP s records or Supreme Court documents at all. The balance of his
portrayal is seriously undermined by his exclusive use of local white sources and
compounded by his poor footnoting. Much of the information in the thesis is
undocumented, especially that dealing with union members. The most thoroughly
researched and well-balanced work involving this incident is Richard Cortner's A Mob
Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases (Middletown, CT, 1988). In
an excellent work of legal history, Cortner traces the series of court cases that grew out of
the incident. He presents a wealth of evidence from all sides of the case, but his focus is
primarily on how the case influenced criminal law. The union leaders themselves are
minor characters in his tale of NAACP lawyers battling against Arkansas prosecutors.
41. Cortner, 56. McCool, 18, 61-65; Graves, 204; Walter White, "'Massacring Whites' in
Arkansas," The Nation 109 (December 6, 1919), 715; Arkansas Democrat (October 4,
1919); Statement of E.M. Allen, records of Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86 (1923),
hereafter cited as Moore v. Dempsey records. Hill was apparently a farmer in Winchester,
Arkansas, home of the original union. He had also taken a correspondence course in
detective work from a firm in St. Louis. He apparently considered himself primarily a
detective from that time on. Of course, jobs for black detectives were hard to come by in
rural Arkansas, so Hill used his training to help the union organize. The articles of
incorporation for the Drew County union list Hill as serving in the position of "Grand
Counsellor," whose primary duties were to gather information for the officers and other
branches of the union and to help them obtain any legal guidance that might be necessary.
E.M. Allen states that Hill started organizing in the county in April and that the Ratio
lodge was founded in May. Allen's statement may be questionable, since he was one of
the primary architects of the "official" white version of the events. However, other
evidence supports his claim that the union was organizing workers before August. A
questionnaire sent out to prospective union members mentions that an upcoming congress
of the union would be called in August. It was probably at this congress that the articles
of incorporation were drawn up. The questionnaire is signed by Dr. V.E. Powell, one of
the founding members of the Drew County branch.
The union is called by many different names in the primary documents. The petition for
incorporation for the parent union, filed on August 4, 1919, lists the official name as "the
Farmers' and Laborers' Household Union of America," similar to the official name of the
Southern Farmers' Alliance. Many of the leaders of the union commonly referred to it as
the Progressive Farmers' and Laborers' Household Union of America. At other times it
was referred to as the Progressive Farmers' Association, the Farmers' Household and
Progressive Union, and other variations on the official title. It may be that the union
leaders did not decide on the official name until the August congress met or that local
branches went by different variations. Because most branches of the union were
secretive, it is unknown how many members or even how many chapters of the union
existed. One union leader claimed that at one point it had spread to twenty-five to thirty
counties. Another witness stated that total membership was somewhere between 250 and
500. The Drew County articles of incorporation list only eleven founding members.
42. Statement of E.M. Allen, Moore v. Dempsey records.
43. Arkansas Gazette (October 2, 1919), (October 3, 1919); Cortner, 7, 9; Rogers, 147.
Quote, see affidavit of T.K. Jones in Moore v. Dempsey records. Jones used the words
"blankety blank" in his testimony recounting the conversation he overheard.
44. Helena World (October 1, 1919). White; "'Massacring Whites,'" 715; Cortner, 168173. Statement of E.M. Allen, affidavits of T.K. Jones and H.F. Smiddy, Moore v.
Dempsey records. Report of the Secretary, April 1922, NAACP Papers; Mitchell, Means
Things, 29; Mitchell, "The Founding," 352. We will never know what happened that
night because the testimony is so conflicting. Initial reports suggested that the white
bootleggers may have ambushed the three men. Shaw's retelling of the story merely says
there was an "exchange of gunfire" that began from outside the church. The most
compelling evidence is the statements provided by T.K. Jones and H.F. Smiddy, two
white outsiders who inadvertently became swept up in the Phillips County violence. They
became key witnesses in the NAACP's case before the Supreme Court. Jones, Smiddy,
and W.A. Adkins were all special agents with the Missouri-Pacific Railroad. Jones
supervised Smiddy and Adkins. Central east Arkansas was in their area of jurisdiction.
They came to the county in late September looking for a suspect who had been stealing
from railroad cars. After searching all day on September 30, they had not found their man
and retired to a local hotel. That evening Deputy Sheriff Charles Pratt requested their
help in hunting down a wanted bootlegger. Jones and Smiddy declined and went to bed.
Adkins agreed. Before Adkins and Pratt left with Kidd Collins, they mentioned that they
might stop off at another man's house to get some whiskey. It is possible that the three
drank too much and decided to practice target shooting on the Hoop Spur Church.
Whatever the case, Adkins was the one who wound up dead at the scene. The affidavits
of Jones and Smiddy suggest that there might also have been another car involved in the
shooting. Both men testified that they were told by other whites that another carload of
men fired upon the church. Smiddy said that he walked around the church after the
incident and observed bullet holes that appeared to have been caused by shots being fired
into the church. In a letter to NAACP officials, black Little Rock attorney Scipio Jones
said that Jones and Smiddy had actually been in the other car that fired upon the church,
In their affidavits Smiddy and Jones make no such claim. In November, 1919, Smiddy
quit his job with the railroad and went to work first for the Helena police, then for the
Phillips County Sheriff's Department. Smiddy said that he was ordered by his new bosses
not to give any testimony during the initial trials of the union leaders that might be
favorable to the defendants. After agreeing to testify for the defense in the appeal,
Smiddy lost his job and had various charges filed against him. Jones also lost his job with
the railroad as a result of his decision to testify on behalf of the union members. Their
statements are compelling primarily because they seemingly had nothing to gain and a lot
to lose by testifying. The NAACP gave both men some financial support, but it was not
enough to offset the losses of their jobs and reputations among whites in the area. Plus, it
was their colleague who had been killed in the initial incident. Their participation in the
violence afterwards seems motivated in part by personal anger over Adkins's death. This
makes their eventual support of the defendants all the more compelling.
45. Arkansas Gazette (October 2, 1919); Affidavits of T. K. Jones and H.F. Smiddy,
Moore v. Dempsey records. According to the testimony of Jones and Smiddy, one of the
white posse members killed in the confrontation with union members appeared to have
died from his own gun when he accidentally shot himself.
46. Helena World (October 1-2, 1919); Arkansas Gazette (October 3, 1919); McCool, 6165; Arkansas Democrat (October 4, 1919); Cortner, 55-56; Affidavit of H. F. Smiddy,
Moore v. Dempsey records. The 500 U.S. troops ordered into the country were stationed
at Camp Pike, in Arkansas. According to Smiddy, the Hoop Spur church was burned
down to cover up the evidence that the church had been fired upon. For more on the
perspective of the federal officials who worked on the case, see Ralph H. Demarias, ed.,
"Military Intelligence Reports on the Arkansas Riots: 1919-1920, Arkansas Historical
Quarterly 33 (Summer 1974): 175-191.
Hill's behavior in the aftermath of the violence does not reflect that of the dubious
criminal the white narrative makes him out to be. He escaped from Phillips County
during the violence and remained in hiding for several months before being arrested in
Kansas. During his time on the run he wrote several letters to U.S. Bratton, black Little
Rock attorney Thomas Price, members of the NAACP, and even Arkansas governor
Charles Brough to plead his case. While Hill admitted to participating in union activities,
he stressed that he was merely fulfilling the duties of the role he was assigned to as Grand
Counsellor, based on his detective training. White authorities used evidence that Hill
collected money from local blacks to support the claim that he was a fraud, yet Hill
claimed these fees were collected as a downpayment to the Brattons for legal services. A
contract drawn up between some union members and the Brattons for legal services did
require the union members to pay the Brattons a retainer of $50, with a percentage of a
final settlement to come later should they obtain a better deal from the landowners.
47. Affidavit of H.F. Smiddy, Moore v. Dempsey records.
48. L.S. Dunaway, What a Preacher Saw Through a Key-Hole in Arkansas (Little Rock,
1925), 103-104.
49. Affidavit of Walter Ward (quote), George Green, John Jefferson, T.K. Jones and H.F.
Smiddy, Moore v. Dempsey records. Cortner, 207-208, n. 24. Dunaway, 101-121.
NAACP Papers. Estimates of the number killed range anywhere from 15 to over 850. The
NAACP generally stuck with the figure of 200-250. George Washington Davis, the grand
secretary for a black Masonic lodge in Pine City, Arkansas, reported to the NAACP that
he had paid the death benefits for 103 black Masons killed in the incident. Davis also
reported that he had heard of 73 other blacks who were not Masons who had been killed.
These rumors may be suspect, however, since Davis also testified that he heard at least
250 whites were killed, a figure not supported by any other source. Had such a white
death count taken place, the white press would certainly have widely reported it at the
time. Numerous other sources, however, do lend credence to his claims of a high black
death count. Smiddy testified that he personally witnessed the killing of 200-300 blacks.
In 1925 white Arkansas Gazette reporter L.S. Dunaway published a collection of essays
on various events in Arkansas during his lifetime. Dunaway claimed that it was
commonly acknowledged around Phillips County that some 850 (856 to be exact), blacks
had been killed during the crisis. Dunaway's claim is compelling for several reasons. First
of all it is clear from his language that he is a white supremacist. His employer, the
Arkansas Gazette, was also a staunch supporter of the official version of events, which
denied that any large-scale indiscriminate killings of blacks had taken place during the
crisis. Dunaway s stated reason for writing the essay was not to deny that mass killings
had taken place, but to place the blame for the killings on the federal troops called in by
the governor. This defense puts a new spin on the outside agitator" narrative, but it is
significant in that it is an admission by a prominent local white person that mass killings
did take place and that the whites of the area readily acknowledged that fact. Taken
together with the testimony of Smiddy, Jones, and the local black population, the
evidence supporting a high body count is strong.
50. Arkansas Gazette (October 4, 1919); Helena World (October 6, 1919).
51. Mitchell, Means Things, 29; Mitchell, "The Founding," 352; Cortner, 82, 196-197,
214 n. 114; Alfreda M. Dunster, ed., The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago,
1970), 404. The other branches of the union were also broken up in the aftermath of the
Phillips County incident by intimidation or arrest of union leaders. For technical reasons
the cases of six of the defendants were separated from the other cases. Their fate was the
issue in the Supreme Court case of Moore v. Dempsey. The Justices ordered a new trial,
which indicated to some that they might eventually do so for the other six. In a
complicated series of events, the other six were set free by prison officials in 1923. The
NAACP feared that they might not be able to win an acquittal in a new trial of the Moore
group because the organization's financial assistance to the unemployed Smiddy and
Jones might taint their testimony in the eyes of a new jury. Instead the NAACP attorneys
convinced Moore, et al., to agree to plead guilty to lesser charges if prosecutors would
drop the murder charges. They remained in prison until 1925, when the governor granted
them indefinite furloughs. We do not know what became of the twelve men. In 1936
NAACP leaders asked Scipio Jones to check on their whereabouts. Without naming
names, he reported that three had died, one was living in Little Rock, one in Crittenden
County and two in Chicago. He could not track down the others. In her autobiography,
Ida Wells-Barnett said that she was visited by one of the men who had moved to Chicago
after he was released from prison. The governor of Kansas refused to extradite Robert
Hill to face charges in Arkansas for fear that a white lynch mob might harm him. Hill
stayed in Topeka for many years after that.
For more on this area during the 1920s, see Joey McCarty, "The Red Scare in Arkansas:
A Southern State and National Hysteria," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 37 (1978): 264277; Todd E. Lewis, "Mob Justice in the 'American Congo': 'Judge Lynch' in Arkansas in
the Decade After World War I," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 52 (Summer 1993): 156184.
52. See footnote #6.
53. Rodgers, 168.
54. Payne, 146; Mitchell, Mean Things. See also sources cited in footnote #2. This link
between the early union movements and the civil rights movement in Arkansas deserves
further study. It is also worth examining whether any of the local white members of the
STFU aided the civil rights movement. Several national leaders of the STFU continued to
be involved in radical causes. H.L. Mitchell soon abandoned his work in Arkansas to
work closely with national groups such as what eventually became the United Farm
Workers. The civil rights work of the local leaders who remained in Arkansas has yet to
be explored.
55. NAACP papers, numerous documents during 1920s and 1930s.
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