Hello and welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 30th, 1919, the start of what came to be known as the Elaine Massacre,

by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history,

and perhaps the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States. This all took

place in Phillips County, Arkansas, a part of the south where black residents outnumbered white

residents by 10 to 1, but most black farmers worked as sharecroppers on white-owned plantations.

Now, in the wake of World War I, many black men who had fought were returning from war,

and in general there was a rise of unions and ideology in a conversation that was asking

tough questions about labor practices in this country. Black farmers, as a result, were looking

to organize. This led to the story we're

marking today when black workers met in a hall outside the town of Elaine, Arkansas, to discuss

organizing. The meeting was disrupted by some local white residents. A shootout occurred, and then,

in the following days, white mobs descended on the town of Elaine. Looting, burning, and as I mentioned, what resulted was possibly the bloodiest racial

conflict of its kind.

The numbers are extremely contested.

We'll get into it, but hundreds and maybe even closer to a thousand black residents

of Phillips County were killed in the wake of all of this.

We'll get into the TikTok of it all and the trials and the press

coverage and the legacy and so forth here to discuss the Elaine Massacre of 1919 are, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody.

Hey there. Let's paint the bigger context and then start to zoom slowly in towards Phillips County, Arkansas.

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