Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919

Abstract

Book Reviews Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919. By Grif Stockley. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2001. Pp. xxxii, 264. Acknowledgments, preface, introduction, maps, illustrations, chronology of events, notes, note on sources, index. $29.95.) Arkansas history has no story more troubling than that of the violent confrontations between black laborers, white mobs, and the U.S. Army near the Phillips County town of Elaine in 1919. Black people and white people were killed, the Army was called in, and twelve black men were sentenced to death. The state's already well established negative image got another unwelcome boost-the governor of Kansas went so far as to refuse an extradition request. No Arkansas event has been more assiduously avoided, so variously interpreted, or so hotly contested. The initial official version, put forward by white business leaders and politicians and published in Arkansas newspapers, claimed that blacks, duped by outside labor agitators, had plotted a murderous insurrection aimed at killing white landowners. Acting prudently, local authorities and Gov. Charles Hillman Brough averted more widespread loss of life by speedy deployment of U.S. Army troops. Five white men died as heroes, while approximately twenty-five black troublemakers were killed and hundreds of others were arrested. Order was restored; there were no lynchings. Following fair trials, twelve ringleaders were sentenced to death. This version was immediately contested. Both a 1919 article by NAACP officer Walter White and a 1920 booklet by antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett described the event as a violent response by whites to peaceful attempts by blacks to organize a union. Armed white mobs from surrounding Arkansas and Mississippi towns terrorized the black population. Innocent men and women were shot down. Army troops, when they arrived, also participated in the slaughter. Hundreds of black citizens were killed. Jailed blacks were tortured to coerce confessions, and trials were a mockery of justice, with court-appointed defense attorneys conducting no cross-examinations and calling no witnesses. And so the controversy began-words flying almost as soon as the bullets stopped. Many books and articles have since appeared, but consensus has proved elusive. Grif Stockley's Blood In Their Eyes arrives, then, as a conscious participant in an enduring dialogue. Deeply read in the prior scholarship, Stockley makes clear his own position in his choice of subtitle-for him the Elaine conflict was a race massacre where for two horrific days area blacks were murdered by the hundreds, first by roving bands of white vigilantes on October 1, and then by U.S. Army troops on October 2. The successes of the official version resulted from the skillful manipulation of Governor Brough and utilization of local and media by the Phillips County planter elite: As early as the second day of the Elaine massacres, the white power structure in the Delta, including the media, began to formulate an explanation of the events that was psychologically irresistible to almost everyone, including the governor and the black elite of the state (p. xv). Blood In Their Eyes is a passionately argued book based on years of diligent research. It possesses many strengths. Stockley is himself an attorney, and his discussion of the various trials and legal maneuverings is especially effective. His portrayal of Scipio Jones, the black Little Rock attorney who successfully pursued legal appeals to overturn the death sentences, is particularly persuasive, and one of the book's high points. Jones was patronized by northern NAACP officials in his own day, and is sometimes dismissed as a class-conscious Uncle Tom by more recent historians. But Stockley's careful portrait reveals a brave and tenacious man who labored long and acted adroitly to save men's lives-and succeeded, against odds. The story has other moments of intelligent and/or courageous behavior-by white defense attorneys George Murphy and Edgar McHaney, Pulaski County chancellor John E. …