Civil WrongsThe Elaine Massacre Once Was Whitewashed From History. Now It Inspires Activism on the Arkansas Delta.

Civil Wrongs Season 4

ELAINE, Ark. – Lisa Hicks Gilbert first learned about her hometown’s horrific open secret by reading a book. As she would discover, this quiet village had been the scene of one of the deadliest race massacres in American history.  

It wasn’t long after finishing “Blood In Their Eyes” by Grif Stockley that she found out she had two family connections to the Elaine Massacre of 1919, when hundreds of Black residents in and around this small Arkansas Delta town were shot, lynched or beaten to death. 

She was confused. Now 56, she’s spent years traversing Elaine’s decaying Main Street, the dividing line between the town’s Black and white neighborhoods. Yet no one had ever mentioned such a major event to her. So, she went to her grandmother for answers.  

“It took me almost a year to get her to start telling me about the stories and she had one condition: That I’m not to talk about or tell anyone else what she told me until after she had left this earth,” said Hicks Gilbert, who became Elaine’s first Black mayor in 2023 despite its long history as a majority-Black town. 

“She was afraid if anyone found out she was talking about this, or if I started talking about it … that someone was going to retaliate against our family. So, it’s that impact of this massacre, this generational trauma, this generational fear.” 

Hicks Gilbert has campaigned on improving the town’s infrastructure and, just as significantly, on working to heal wounds of the past. That includes educating the public about the long-suppressed story of the Elaine Massacre. 

Even now, it’s a challenge complicated by fear, myth and a whitewashed official history that for decades had minimized the devastation of the massacre.  

Some descendants of survivors now share the oral histories passed down by their ancestors that land was stolen from Black people during and after the chaos of 1919 that caused many families to flee for their lives. Hard evidence of those claims has yet to surface, but a local organization is making some gains. 

Awareness of Elaine’s brutal history has encouraged others to speak out in modern affairs, including the relentless spraying of agricultural pesticides that many here believe pose health hazards. 

Yet breaking the silence around the massacre still meets resistance, even from some of her supporters.   

“‘You know you can’t make these white people mad. That’s going to be bad for all of us,’” Hicks Gilbert recalled people telling her.  

“That one hits me right in the gut right there,” she said. 

Elaine Massacre of 1919 

A town of about 500 residents, Elaine is nestled near the Mississippi River as it cuts through the flat Delta floodplain, about an hour and 40 minutes southwest of Memphis. The nearest Walmart is a half-hour away, in West Helena.  

On a recent visit on a Saturday afternoon, not a single building was open. Storefronts are interspersed with grassy, vacant lots. The small public library is open for just a few hours on Mondays and Tuesdays. Down the street is a Dollar General, one of the few places to shop for food. It doesn’t stock produce. The poverty rate here is double that of Arkansas, one of the nation’s poorest states.  

Hicks Gilbert pointed out that most of the Black population lives north of downtown’s main drag; white people are mostly to the south.  

Hicks Gilbert and others partially attribute the continued divide to the Elaine Massacre of 1919. For more than a century the massacre has left a deep scar on its people that has never fully healed. The Elaine Legacy Center, a local nonprofit, has collected oral histories about the massacre. James White, a board member, said before historians started writing books on it, stories of what happened were largely passed down through oral histories.  

“It was like open season on women and children,” he said. “Even when the soldiers came, they still was killing people. People just running around killing people.” 

The Elaine Massacre was one of several attacks on Black communities in 1919 in what would become known as Red Summer — not just because of the blood spilled, but the association with communism. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had a powerful impact on American workers. Labor unions were springing up across the country, demanding better working conditions and preaching equality — a message that resonated with Black farmers, even if they had no direct association with communism.  

In the summer of 1919, farmers in Phillips County established the Hoop Spur Lodge, a local affiliate of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America.  

“What you see happening in Elaine is that people want it. They want higher wages. People across America want better working conditions,” said University of Memphis political science professor David Madlock. “And to do that you have to unionize.” 

Their main objectives were to get fair market price for their cotton, buy land of their own, and hire a lawyer to help settle accounts with landlords.  

But white leaders in Phillips County perceived more nefarious designs. Rumors circulated that the farmers were planning to kill white landowners.  

Stirred by age-old Southern fears of a Black revolt, two law enforcement officers surveilled a meeting of the Hoop Spur Lodge on the night of Sept. 30, 1919.  

County Deputy Charles Pratt would later testify that armed Black men approached their vehicle outside the lodge and fired without provocation. Testimony from meeting attendees reported that the men in the car fired on the church. In the shootout with guards outside the meeting, Pratt was wounded in the knee. Railroad Detective Will Adkins was killed.  

The gunfight signaled to white citizens that rumors of a revolt were true, said University of Arkansas historian Jeannie Whayne.  

“When you engage in a kind of racist diatribes and language and sort of get a crowd whipped up into a frenzy you’re not in control of that crowd when it turns away from you,” she said. “You’ve just created a monster you can’t control and that’s what they created: a monster.” 

As panic and disinformation spread throughout the area, the mayors of Elaine and nearby Helena called for assistance. By morning, hundreds of armed white men from Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee poured into the county. 

According to one account, the Mississippi posse arrived with “blood in their eyes.” They weren’t just looking for the men who shot the two white men. Hundreds had come to “hunt negros,” according to an affidavit by railroad detective H. F. Smiddy. 

Political and business leaders also sent word to Arkansas Gov. Charles Hillman Brough requesting military support. U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker dispatched 400 soldiers from the Army’s Third Division, and 150 more from the Fifth Infantry Division in Little Rock. They arrived the next day with six trucks, two ambulances, 12 machine guns, and plenty of ammunition. Governor Brough came to observe.   

Colonel Isaac Jenks then declared martial law and sent troops to look for the “Negro insurrectionists.” Many Black people fled to the forests west of town and were hunted by soldiers who had been ordered to shoot anyone who did not surrender promptly. 

Even with their hands in the air, many Black men were shot dead, witnesses reported. Sensing the troops were there to support the white mob, some Black men fought back.  

Black casualties rose quickly: Men, women, and children. White reporters described Black corpses being shot multiple times. Others are hanged from a bridge. 

More than 400 Black men and women were taken into custody. No white person was ever charged with a crime. 

The shooting went on for three days.   

The final death toll?  

That number begins the erasure of the Elaine Massacre. The army reported 20 people died, all killed by soldiers. 

Historians, however, would later put the total figure at around 200. The NAACP’s James Weldon Johnson estimated up to 400. But even that falls far short of the 800 estimated by a white newspaper delivery man or the thousands of deaths reported in some oral histories that told of mass graves scattered throughout the county. UofM professor Madlock said the truth is hard to pinpoint.  

“A lot of lives were lost. I think that’s what we should know more than anything,” he said. “But the second thing is that people fought back, and the third thing is the reasoning for the whole massacre taking place…. There was nothing concrete about it, why whites decided to do this. They just put a scare in their own mind.” 

The trial of 12 Black men arrested during the massacre led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case known as Moore v. Dempsey. (Learn about this case and its implications in season 4, episode 2 of Civil Wrongs.)

Search for evidence of land theft 

For one group of descendants and advocates, telling the story of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 is not just about recovering history. 

It’s about land and money.  

If a case can be made that land was stolen from the victims of the Elaine Massacre, financial reparations could be in order.  

At the heart of these concerns are questions of ownership and murky details about what happened to the land after so many Black residents were either killed or terrorized by the violence in Elaine.  

That’s why Jennifer Hadlock, an attorney, researcher, and community organizer from New York, moved to Phillips County last year on behalf of Fund for Reparations Now, an organization founded in 2019 to raise money from white people to funnel into Black-led reparations projects.  

Her task is straightforward, but tedious: find evidence of the land theft reported in oral histories and report her findings to the Elaine Legacy Center. Day after day, she has been in and out of courthouses, libraries, and other places looking for land records and information about previous landowners to trace what happened to them before and after the massacre. She was immediately met with pushback.  

“I have received letters from lawyers saying don’t say certain things. I have had poop put on the handle of the car that I was driving. I had a tire punctured,” she said. “And then just mainly people saying ‘Oh, no, there’s nothing. No, there’s nothing, you won’t find anything. There’s nothing, that’s not real.’”  

The theory is that after lands were taken and sold, the new owners weren’t necessarily aware of the theft. Evidence that land was stolen around the time of the massacre has been hard to come by, she said. But she has found some compelling leads. Her research has pinpointed nearly 50 Black families in Phillips County who owned land in 1910 but not in 1920. Hadlock is working to figure out what happened to them.  

Some records, she says, appear to have been tampered with: missing pages, pages that appear to have been removed and put back in upside down, record books with missing page numbers, books with binding that appears to have been re-stitched and some records that are missing altogether.  

“I can’t prove when those tamperings happened, but it seems like that kind of goes along with the oral history,” of a cover up, she said. 

Black farmland ownership nationwide was increasing — and in fact peaked — just before the Elaine Massacre, despite the difficulty to acquire land. But because of discriminatory lending practices, forced sales, and other factors, Black farmers lost about $326 billion worth of land between 1920 and 1997, according to a 2022 study of U.S. Department of Agriculture data. By the late 1990s, Black farmers had collectively lost 90% of the land they once owned.  

As Hadlock and others have learned, evidence of land theft doesn’t always show up in court documents. So, the Elaine Legacy Center has turned to oral history.  

Hadlock says it’s a natural tactic when records appear incomplete.  

“Most of the deeds don’t show the race of the people,” she said. “So, figuring out who is this person by looking at the census or listening to some of the oral histories is how I figure it out.” 

James White, a board member of the Elaine Legacy Center, said he feels an obligation to make sure the stories of land theft that his grandparents passed down are told, even if documentation remains elusive.  

“My grandmother and grandpa, I saw the struggles and stuff that they went through to try to make it better for me and my siblings. So, my connection with them is to make sure they story get told and people get the real truth about this,” he said. “People did own land. My people owned land.”  

Oral history is the primary source for Elaine Legacy Center board member Rev. Mary Olson, who sees one role of the center as getting restitution for theft. She says that in a small and isolated place like Elaine, a lot of grievances go unrecorded.  

“We have to learn that oral history is truer than written history. To me, the oral history is what matters,” she said. “So yes, documentation is important. But ultimately, it’s the oral stories that live on. Now, if we find something that connects with the oral stories, then we have to really look at it, but we’re not really finding anything that disconnects.” 

Historian Rhondalyn Peairs says oral history unfairly gets a bum rap when held up against a 21st century bias toward the written word. 

Our reliance on oral sources is way older and more vast. We have more things that were spoken of but never written down. We’ve only been writing for, you know, several thousand years.

Rhondalyn Peairs

She does have one caveat, though. When it comes to land records and allegations of theft, “you got to have some documentation on it. So even when somebody steals land, they still have to account for that land in taxes, or they have to get a deed on that property, or even if they steal it, if they try to pass it on, it’s got to be legally documented.”  

For Mayor Hicks Gilbert, a descendant of massacre survivors, relying on oral histories of land theft without documentation could hurt the cause to educate people about it — especially people who are already primed to be skeptical.  

“I think our work should be the truth whether we like it or not, whether it’s harmful, painful,” Hicks Gilbert said. “Lord, I would love to say that [my ancestors] Ed and Frank Hicks and Joseph Knox owned their land. I would love to say that. I would love to be able to prove that. I have not.” 

Celebrated journalist Ida B. Wells only mentioned one Black landowner who might have been affected. Her reporting, however, focused on the financial losses of 12 men who were put on trial, most of whom were sharecroppers who didn’t own the land they worked. She estimated they lost an average of $125,000 per person in today’s money — collectively, a total of $1.5 million — because of the violence. She points to theft, but not land theft. 

One historian who takes issue with the oral histories is Brian Mitchell, who co-authored an updated edition of the book “Blood in Their Eyes,” about the massacre. In an op-ed for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he wrote that it was possible that the children of survivors who would later pass along these stories might not have been able to distinguish whether their parents were sharecroppers or landowners. Either way, he wrote, they would have observed them working the land, living on the land, and taking pride in it. He emphasized that isn’t to say descendants aren’t owed anything. Just that land theft has yet to be proven.  

Rev. Olson said reparations should be paid to massacre descendants, whether or not their ancestors’ land was stolen. But the prospect of finally documenting the long-suspected land theft poses an even greater threat that the white status quo is not accepting, she said.

“You expect to have backlash. You expect to have those who profit from the old story to not want to see it change,” she said. If the main narrative of the Elaine Massacre is about sharecroppers who worked the land but did not own it, “then you can’t possibly have to give your land back. Because they never owned it.” 

It’s possible Hadlock’s research could still produce proof of land theft. But considering the silencing campaign that followed the massacre, Madlock said it’s questionable whether there will ever be a sure-fire answer. 

“I think we have to try to balance what we know with what we don’t know,” he said. “And what we don’t know is what happened to the land ownership in Arkansas.” 

Concerns about pesticide use 

On a Saturday afternoon in February, dozens of residents gathered at the Elaine Legacy Center. Local youth led the music with gospel selections. In the back kitchen, volunteers prepared lunch as young children played and chased each other around the facility and adults found their seats. 

A poster near the stage read, “Before Tulsa, there was Elaine.” 

It’s a reference to a relatively well-known massacre of a thriving Black community in Oklahoma in 1921, two years after the lesser-known Elaine Massacre. 

Residents gathered here to discuss another pressing concern: pesticide use and crop dusting by local farming operations. 

Much of the land around Elaine is sprawling farmland owned by large corporations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2022 agricultural census found that the most common type of farm in Phillips County was more than 1,000 acres, grew soybeans, and was owned by white men with more than $100,000 in annual sales.  

Larger farms are more likely to use small crop-dusting airplanes to drop pesticides on fields. Controversially, the method poses more risks of drifting and affecting people off the farm.  

White sees a connection between the Elaine Massacre and the spread of pesticide use in his community. In addition to the stories his grandparents passed down about the massacre and stolen land, they often talked about the lack of opportunity for Black people in Elaine to have a say in how their community is run. 

And now his house is a block away from one of the airstrips for crop dusters. He said he’s watched the gradual demise of his loved ones, his community, and the environment.  

“For the last five years, I watched a lot of my friends pass away,” he said. “And no, they didn’t get into a car wreck, or got shot. They died from cancer, some form of cancer.” 

opens in a new windowWhile many studies have suggested that pesticide exposure creates a higher risk of cancer and chronic diseases for farmers and their families, research is limited on how it affects surrounding residents because it’s hard to isolate it as the primary cause. Elaine residents say they’ve contacted medical experts in hopes of getting a local cancer cluster study, but nothing has come of it yet. 

Courts are split on the dangers of pesticide application. The National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas found that courts in 20 states have considered whether crop dusting is an “inherently dangerous activity.” Sixteen of them said it is. In recent years Arkansas courts have said it is not – a reversal of previous rulings. 

Katherine Holmstrom, executive director of the Arkansas Agricultural Aviation Association, which represents thousands of crop duster pilots and managers in the state, said her organization follows safe practices. 

“While our membership views the Elaine massacre as a horrible tragedy, we find it hard to see the connection between such a terrible event and safe, effective aerial applications that are used in agriculture all across the globe,’’ Holmstrom said in an email. “Pesticides and the methods in which they are applied are robustly tested for safety to people and the environment by the EPA.” 

Arkansas tries to go beyond federal regulations in how it trains crop duster operators and the farmers who hire them, said Ples Spradley with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, who teaches safe application of pesticides, including methods to avoid drift. 

“Every applicator wants to avoid drift because they want the product to go where they put it for efficacy,” he said. “And if it’s not hitting the crops, then it’s not doing them good, and they may not get to control it. So, they buy into that.” 

Residents who attended the town hall at the Elaine Legacy Center remain unconvinced. 

Their attention focused on one of the largest farmland owners in Phillips County, who, ironically, is not known to the larger public for farming. Rather, it’s a firm known for managing retirement investments for many universities, including the University of Memphis.   

The New York-based Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA, is a financial services giant whose holdings include about 33,000 acres of farmland in Phillips County. While aerial application of pesticide is not exclusive to TIAA, its outsized presence in the county has attracted attention. 

Residents have issued a list of demands, including that TIAA discontinue pesticide use. They acknowledge their demands would require a monumental effort to realize despite TIAA’s $1.3 trillion in assets. 

To help amplify the community’s demands, the Elaine Legacy Center invited an advocacy organization called TIAA Divest. It is a coalition of climate activists and professors whose universities use TIAA to manage their retirements. Abigayle Reese, a community organizer for the group, has visited Elaine a few times to collect stories of environmental harm related to TIAA-owned lands. 

“There needs to be a conversation about how to return land to local control and make reparations,” Reese said during the town hall meeting. “They can’t just divest, they need to actually do the right thing.” 

A spokesperson for TIAA would not agree to an interview for this story but said in an emailed statement that its land manager subsidiary, Nuveen Natural Capital, “partners with local farmers and crop managers who abide by all laws and regulations, including with respect to fertilizer and chemical use. In their agreements with Nuveen Natural Capital, local farmers – including those responsible for land in Phillips County – commit to conserving and preserving the quality of soil and water.” 

The statement went on to say that TIAA “made its first land purchase in the Delta region in 2007, following its standard strict due-diligence processes,” pointing to the firm’s annual sustainability report that outlines its climate and community initiatives. Phillips County is not among TIAA’s community initiatives, but Nuveen is a sponsor of the National Black Growers Council. 

A TIAA spokesperson said he was unable to provide more specific information about the pesticides used on the farmland.  

The controversy aside, one Phillips County resident who is a landowner said real estate is critical to building wealth and improving the lives of Black residents. 

The issue is so important to 93-year-old Annie Zachary Pike that she’s made plans to put her farm in a trust for the benefit of her survivors. 

“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. So, I have it fixed so they cannot sell it,” she said. 

She said she is thankful for each day her family has been able to hold onto their land, though she couldn’t say why they could when so many others couldn’t.  

“Only God could answer that.”  

Correction, Oct. 9, 2024: This story has been corrected to reflect that the landowner Ida B. Wells referenced in her report co-owned the land with his brother, who was one of the 12 men put on trial after the massacre.

Clarification, Oct. 9, 2024: This story has been updated to clarify the Elaine Legacy Center’s stance on reparations for massacre descendants.

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