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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 8, 1919
Phillips County, Arkansas – Southern Debt Peonage and the “Riot”
From The Crisis of December 1919:
ARKANSAS
[-The Cause of the “Race Riot,” Part I of II]THE Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has never been enforced thoroughly. This means that involuntary servitude is still wide spread in the southern United States. There are even vestiges of the slave trade in the convict lease system and the arrangements for trading tenants. On the whole, however, the slavery that remains is a wide spread system of debt peonage and a map of the farms operated by colored tenants shows approximately the extent of this peonage.
The Arkansas riot originated in the attempt of the black peons of the so-called Delta region, (that is the lowlands between Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana) to raise their income. The center, Phillips County, Ark., has 692,000 square miles of land and its chief city is Helena. In 1910 there were 33,535 inhabitants in the country, of whom 26,354 or 78.6% were Negroes. The county is predominately a farming community with $9,000,000 worth of farm property, and two-thirds of the value of all the crops is represented by the cotton crop. Of the 9,835 males of voting age, 7,479 are Negroes, and of these 5,510 could read and write; nevertheless, all the political power is in the hands of the 4,000 white voters, Negroes having no representation even on juries.
The Negroes are the cotton raisers. Of the 30,000 bales of cotton raised in 1909, they raised 25,000. Most of the Negro farmers are tenants. In the whole county there were, in 1910, 587 colored owners and 1,598 colored tenants. These tenants farmed 81,000 acres of land and raised 21,000 bales of cotton. For the most part the method of dealing with these tenants is described by a local reporter, as follows:
All the white plantation owners had a system whereby the Negro tenants and sharecroppers are “furnished” their supplies. They get all their food, clothing, and supplies from the “commissary” or store operated by the planter, or else they get them from some store designated by him. The commissary or store charges from twenty-five to fifty per cent. interest on the value of the money and supplies advanced or furnished. If any one doubts this statement, let him ask any planter or storekeeper. As a whole, they admit it. They boast that the commissary is the safest and best paying department of the plantation.
A northern white man bought a big farm in Mississippi. Of course, he had a “commissary.” When the season was over, he complained that he had made but little money. His southern neighbors asked him questions as to his methods etc., and found that he had charged the cost price for his supplies and had added ten per cent. for profit, and had settled with his hands at the actual market value of the cotton at the time it was sold. They said, “Hell, man, you haven’t got the right system. You don’t make money down here on your cotton except in good years. You make your money off your commissary. Besides, never give your niggers a statement of their accounts. If you do, you will ruin every nigger in the country. Just tell them what they’ve got coming and pay them off and don’t let ‘em argue or ask any questions.”
That is only part of the “system.” The landlord takes the cotton, gins it, sells it at the highest market price, and settles with his tenants at the lowest market price for their “share” of the crop. They play both ends against the middle and get the Negro going and coming. If a Negro objects, he is classed as “an insolent nigger” or a “bad nigger.” He is beaten by the “agent” or “boss man” and either driven off the place, or else he admits he is wrong, becomes thoroughly cowed, and then is allowed to remain.
Several years ago the United States Government started to investigate alleged peonage among Italian laborers in the South. To their surprise and chagrin they ran across very little Italian peonage, but a great deal of Negro peonage. In Phillips County a white lawyer, named Bratton, prosecuted a number of cases for the government and convicted a half-dozen planters.
Recently the price of cotton has, as you know, greatly increased. It was about nine cents a pound in 1904, eleven cents in 1915, twenty cents in 1916, and twenty-eight cents in 1917. The price at present is forty cents. This rise in price has made it difficult to keep the Negroes in debt, and, therefore, they have become restive in their demands for itemized settlements.
That was the situation in 1918. Many Negroes had their cotton taken by the planter in October, 1918, but did not get a settlement until July, 1919. They had never been able to get a statement of their accounts from month to month, hence when July came, how could a man dispute an account made the year before? How could he say that he did not get certain supplies in June, 1918, when he did not know until July, 1919, what he was charged with?
The Negroes got tired of it. Sixty-eight of them got together and decided to hire a lawyer and get statements of their accounts and a settlement at the right figures. They decided not to hire a Negro lawyer, because they knew that it meant mobbing and death to any Negro lawyer who would have the presumption to take one of these white planters to court. They were afraid to trust any white lawyer in Phillips County for fear their attorney would lay down on them and fail to get results after getting their money. They canvassed the situation and found that the firm of Bratton and Bratton, white, of Little Rock, was a good, reliable firm, and would fight for a Negro client to the last. They made contracts with this firm to handle all the sixty-eight cases at fifty dollars each in cash and a percentage of the moneys collected from the white planters.
Also some of these Negroes and their friends planned to go before the Federal Grand Jury and charge certain white planters with peonage. These men had meetings from time to time for the purpose of collecting the moneys which were to be paid in advance and to place the same in the treasury; also to collect evidence and gather facts which would enable them to successfully prosecute these cases. These meetings had to be secret to prevent harm and danger to the men concerned and to their families.
Meanwhile another organization sprang up. The Negro cotton pickers organized a union to raise the wages of cotton-pickers and refused to pick cotton until they received higher wages for their work. These meetings were secret. Also, at Elaine were a great many Negroes who worked in the saw-mills and who received fair wages, and who refused to allow their wives and daughters to pick cotton or to work for a white man at any price. They did this as a measure of protection to their wives and daughters, who were subject to the advances and insults of white men on the cotton farms.
All these movements [including the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America] became known to the white planters and they resolved to break up the whole business and put the Negroes “in their place.” It is the unwritten law of the cotton planter that his Negro tenants “must not take the boss man to law.” Woe be unto the “insolent nigger” who attempts it. The white men also learned that Negroes were buying guns and plenty of ammunition. The merchants at Helena reported large sales and the express offices also reported shipments of rifles and shell to Negroes. The Negroes had read and heard all about the East St. Louis, Washington, and Chicago riots, and knew of the secret Ku Klux Klan movements among the white people in the South. They knew that race hatred on the part of white people was increasing by leaps and bounds and that riots were liable to break out in that section at any time. They were simply preparing to defend their homes and lives, for experience had taught them that Negroes have no protection at the hands of the law. The police and deputy sheriffs either refuse to check the mobs, or else they join hands with the mobs. The assembling of arms was for purely defensive purposes. No Negro was fool enough to think of an “insurrection” against white people.
[Paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c2904887&view=2up&seq=270
The Crisis
(New York, New York)
-Dec 1919
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/1200-crisis-v19n02-w110.pdf
See also:
The Arkansas Race Riot
-by Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Chg, 1920
https://archive.org/details/TheArkansasRaceRiot
Blood in Their Eyes
The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919
-by Grif Stockley
University of Arkansas Press, Jul 1, 2004
https://books.google.com/books?id=3rQmSmC89H8C
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Aretha Franklin – Mary, Don’t You Weep