Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 19, 1920
Phillips County, Arkansas – White Landlords Terrorize Negro Tenants, Part I
From the Appeal to Reason of February 14, 1920:
White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants,
Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror
[Part I of II.]
Headline from Arkansas Gazette of October 3, 1919
Repeated and strenuous strenuous efforts have been made to extradite Robert L Hill, a negro from the state of Kansas to Arkansas, where he is indicted for murder. He has not been delivered up to the Arkansas authorities, and his extradition would be a deep and shameful stain upon the state of Kansas. For Hill’s is no common murder case. The question of his fate is linked with the larger question of economic justice to an exploited race. It isn’t for murder, really, that Hill would be tried if he were sent back to Arkansas; the real charge against him is that he was active in helping to organize the negro tenant farmers of southern Arkansas that they might remove some of the burdens of landlordism and virtual slavery from which they have cruelly suffered.
Hill is the president and organizer of the Farmers’ and Householders’ Progressive Union of America—a union negro tenant farmers. The story this union and of the present effort to extradite Hill into Arkansas cannot be understood without explaining the general situation existing in Arkansas.
First let us recall the lurid excitement that prevailed in Phillips county, Arkansas, of which Helena is the county seat, in October, 1919. It will be recalled that the Associated Press sent out to the rest of the country stories of a formidable negro plot to terrify and exterminate the white race in Arkansas, with the news that negroes in Phillips county had uprisen and wantonly killed 21 white men. For several days Arkansas was crimsonly featured in riot stories, and the patriotic fashion in which the white men of Phillips county suppressed the uprising and upheld law and order was dramatically chronicled.
Federal troops were called to the scene, and the whole affair made the ration gasp in horror and fright for several days. For of course ninety-nine out of one hundred who read this highly colored, melodramatic news implicitly believed every word of it. They saw visions of an immediate race war.
The only truth in the Associated Press reports was that a number of men, both white and black, were killed. Aside from this fact, the whole impression of what happened in Arkansas was deliberately and utterly falsified. The true story of the massacre in Phillips county, and the highly important economic situation out of which it sprang, has never been told to the American people. The facts about this negro massacre in Phillips county, Arkansas, as gathered by an Appeal correspondent, are as follows:
Practically 90 per cent of the farm labor of the rich delta country of Arkansas, in which Phillips county is located, is done by negro labor, and practically all of the land is owned in large plantations by white people, many of whom live in the northern cities and operate their plantations by superintendents and by what is known as “share-croppers.” The owner of the plantation either employs the manager or superintendent on a salary or leases the farm to him for a net price per acre, including teams and implements necessary to work the land, and then the manager or superintendent has the land worked in cotton by the negro farm laborers, on the shares, under an agreement that the manager furnishes the land and teams, implements and a house necessary for the cultivation of the land, and the negro farm laborer furnishes the labor necessary to work the land and makes and gathers the crop for one-half.
Since the poor negro laborer has no money with which to purchase his supplies until he makes and gathers his crop, the manager or superintendent operates a store on the plantation where the negro is forced to purchase the supplies necessary for him and his family to live while they are making their cotton crop. The laws of Arkansas give the landlord a prior lien upon the tenant’s crop for all indebtedness that the tenant owes him, and make it a felony for the tenant to sell or dispose of his own crop before all his accounts to the landlord are paid. Therefore the poor unfortunate negro is not allowed to sell his cotton to anyone but his landlord, and is not permitted to buy supplies from anyone but the landlord, or whom the landlord dictates.
This system has been in operation for years, in fact since the Civil War, and as a result the negro has been kept in a perpetual state of degrading poverty and ignorance. Of late years the younger generation of negroes have, in spite of poverty, learned a few things, and have become more or less unruly. For the past three years these negroes have made unusually good crops and cotton has sold for an unusually high price, and they know that they should receive something more for their share than the bare existence that they have been receiving.
In 1918 most all the negro tenants were advised to hold their cotton for better prices, the managers or superintendents shipped the cotton presumably to some warehouse, but they declined to render any accounting to the negro tenants for the sale of their cotton, nor would they give the negroes a statement of their indebtedness, but gave them such sums as they desired, and in many instances they whipped the negro who had the courage to demand a statement of either his cotton or his account. This condition grew intolerable even to the poor negroes.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on
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