CIVIL WRONGS: The Elaine Massacre, Part 2
Deep in the heart of the Arkansas Delta, a long stretch of abandoned railroad tracks has been turned into a gravel bike path. It’s a route that “transports you through time,” says the Arkansas Parks Service.
“Yeah, this is the Delta Heritage Bike Trail,” says Lisa Hicks Gilbert at a trailhead, about 20 miles south of Helena. “This is where the old train depot was.”
There’s a bathroom, water fountain, and an informational kiosk.
“And this is about the only place you’re gonna have any history of Elaine,” she adds.
As the mayor of Elaine, an isolated town of about 500 people, Hicks Gilbert says this state-funded display is good for bikers.
But it does little to right a historic wrong that, she says, hasn’t been fully healed. A century ago, after 200 Black residents here were killed in a mob attack joined by federal troops, the incident was all but wiped from history: Victims silenced. Atrocities erased.
She and other descendants are speaking up. The slogan of her effort is on her t-shirt.
“It is called ‘Silent No More,’ she says. “I’m not gonna sit and wait on someone to tell me I can teach my black history or not.”
Days after the bodies were hauled away in boxcars, officials posted warnings to Black residents, like this one: “All you have to do is remain at work just as if nothing had happened. Stop talking, Stay at home, go to work, don’t worry.”
The Elaine Massacre of 1919, one of the deadliest racial attacks in American history, would be largely forgotten. Phillips County would finally honor the dead five years ago with the dedication of a memorial.
But it’s in Helena. Mayor Lisa Hicks Gilbert says the town where the massacre happened is still without its own monument or museum. She says residents still need to have that conversation.
“And it’s something that’s painful, but we can’t get away from it,” she says. “It is what it is.”
While Hicks Gilbert works to educate, a separate nonprofit has broader goals. The Elaine Legacy Center, led by Rev. Mary Olson, a white Methodist minister, is working with descendants to build a museum. Olson says the group’s mission is to answer a question once posed by Richard Wright, the famous Black author who lived briefly in Elaine as a child. Why wasn’t anything done about the systemic violence against Black communities?
“And we think we’re answering that question for him so that we can say: we are doing something about it today,” she says.
They believe some justice should come in the form of reparations to descendants. Jennifer Hadlock is an attorney and community researcher with a group called opens in a new windowFund for Reparations Now. She is working with the center to find evidence of land theft that many residents believe occurred after the massacre. While the historical documents haven’t proven outright theft, she says some land transfers look “suspicious.”
“There are many examples. At least in the dozens of examples of people losing land,” Hadlock says.
Evidence does show a sudden decline in Black land ownership in Phillips County between 1910 and 1920. The Elaine Legacy Center hopes to connect the racial terror of 1919 to the racial disparities in Elaine today.
At a community meeting earlier this year, residents gathered to discuss a novel approach to restorative justice involving a major landowner in Phillips County.
Some of the biggest stakeholders in local agriculture are not farmers at all, but teachers and college professors. Their retirement portfolios are managed by one of the biggest corporate landowners in the country, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA, which purchased large tracts of farmland in recent years around Elaine.
(Full disclosure: the University of Memphis and WKNO both have TIAA plans.)
“There needs to be a conversation about how to return land to local control and make reparations,” says Abigayle Reese, a community organizer for TIAA Divest, a group of climate activists and professors pushing for changes in the company. “They can’t just divest, they need to actually do the right thing.”
They’re asking TIAA to convey about 33,000 acres of land to minority-owned food farms, fund billions in community repair, and curb pesticide usage that many in Phillips County believe is causing environmental harm.
“Have you felt any value added to your community since TIAA has purchased land here?” Reese asks the crowd. “No.”
Some supporters say it’s a longshot. But with more than a trillion dollars in assets, TIAA could also be a powerful catalyst for change.
We reached out to TIAA for comment. In an emailed statement, the company noted it complies with all laws and regulations with regard to pesticide use. An annual sustainability report outlines the company’s climate and community initiatives. Phillips County is not among them.
Victor Zachary is one of the few Black farmers left near Elaine.
“All they can do is give us a good eulogy because Black farmers are practically gone,” he says.
His family’s 700 acres is small in comparison to other landowners. Collectively, Black farmers today own less than one percent of the nation’s farmland. Many see that as a long-term effect of the racial terror that prompted Black families to flee the south.
For those who stayed, despite lynchings and massacres, farming remains a matter of pride. Zachary’s mother, 93-year-old opens in a new windowAnnie Zachary Pike, is so dedicated to this land, she put it in a trust.
“I do not plan to make my will out and leave it for my grandchildren to dance off of and probably wouldn’t even put a flower on my grave,” Pike says. “So, I have it fixed so that cannot sell it.”
For her, there’s still a lot of healing to be done. But it will take hard work — and faith — to realize a better future.
