Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 4, 1922
Walter F. White on Social Equality and “The Negro Question in America”
From The Liberator of January 1922:
What is Social Equality
Walter F. White
No speech uttered in the past decade on the Negro question in America has created such nation-wide comment as that of President Harding recently at Birmingham in which he declared that there must be complete economic, political, educational and industrial equality between white and colored people in the United States, but there must and can never be any “social equality.” “Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly,” he said, “against every suggestion of social equality.”
There can be no objection raised to many of the utterances of Mr. Harding on that occasion. Much credit is due him for daring to say them in the South. The one point on which intelligent Americans will question his wisdom is the dragging in of that Southern shibboleth which has been used for a half-century to cover countless lynchings, the robbery and exploitation of nine million Negroes through the peonage system, the nullification to all practical intents and purposes of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, and the denial of common justice to Negroes in the South. That weapon which the South has used so effectively, especially in hoodwinking and gulling the North, is the charge that any Negro who attempts to better his own condition or that of his race is seeking to place himself as a social equal with the white people of that community.
But what is this thing called social equality? Herbert J. Seligmann, in his able analysis of the race question, “The Negro Faces America,” says:
What does the white American mean by social equality? To take the words at their face value, one would suppose he meant association of colored and white persons in the home, personal intercourse without regard to race. In practice the denial of social equality is not confined to personal relations, but includes civil procedure. The socially inferior Negro is exploited on the farm because white lawyers will not take his case against white planters. As soon as the bar of social inferiority is broken down the Negro threatens the white man with competition. Every demand for common justice for the Negro, that he be treated as a human being, if not as a United States citizen, can be and is met with the retort that the demand is for social equality. Instantly every chord of jealousy and hatred vibrates among certain classes of whites-and in the resulting atmosphere of unreasoning fury even the most moderate proposals for the betterment of race relations takes on the aspect of impossibilism. By the almost universal admission of white men and white newspapers, denial of social equality does not mean what the words imply. It means that Negroes cannot obtain justice in many Southern courts; it means that they cannot obtain decent education, accommodation in public places and on public carriers; it means that every means is used to force home their helplessness by insult, which, if it is resisted, will be followed by the administration of the torch or the hempen rope or the bullet.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 23, 1919
State of Arkansas Sanctions Legalized Lynching of Twelve Union Men
From The New Solidarity of December 20, 1919:
TWELVE UNION NEGROES SENTENCED TO GALLOWS
A wholesale judicial lynching threatens to be the outcome of the recent situation in Arkansas, where a protest on the part of a group of Negroes known as the Farmers Protective Union [Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America] has resulted in a general charge of conspiracy against all the Negroes of the community. One hundred and twenty-two have been brought to trial. On the flimsiest evidence, sixty have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to twenty-one years. After a trial lasting exactly seven minutes, twelve have been condemned to die. This hideous travesty upon justice has been well called “legalized lynching”
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The New York Age of December 20, 1919:
NEW BRUNSWICK FOLK GIVE TO DEFENCE FUND
NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J.-Acting on the suggestion of THE AGE that a fund ought to be raised for the defense of the colored men convicted and sentenced to be executed in Elaine (Arkansas) riots, the citizens of this, town, through M. J. Preston, have raised and forwarded $68.25 to Miss Mary White Ovington, chairman of the executive committee. N. A. A. C. P.
[There follows a list of person who made donations (from $.25 to $5.00) to the Defence Fund.]
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 9, 1919
Phillips County, Arkansas – White Men Plot Mass Murder in Defense of Peonage
From The Crisis of December 1919:
ARKANSAS
[-The Cause of the “Race Riot,” Part I of II]
While the white men were meeting secretly and discussing means of “nipping the niggers in the bud,” matters came to a head very suddenly in an unexpected way. On Sunday, before the riot, John Clem, a white man, from Helena, came to Elaine loaded up and drunk on “white mule.” He proceeded to bully and terrorize the whole Negro population of over four hundred people by continuous gun play. The Negroes, to avoid trouble, got off the streets, and phoned to the sheriff at Helena. He failed to act. Monday, Clem was still on a rampage. The Negroes avoided trouble, because they feared that his acts were a part of a plan to start a race riot.
Tuesday, some Negroes were holding a meeting [of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America] in a church at Hoop Spur. A deputy sheriff and a “special agent,” white, and a Negro trusty came by in an auto. The white men stopped and proceeded to “investigate” the meeting. They were refused admittance. They attempted to break in and fired into the building. Some Negroes returned the fire, killing the special agent and wounding the deputy sheriff, so it is said. However, when the Negro trusty reported the shooting, he said that they had been fired upon from ambush by two white men and a Negro. The wounded deputy also first reported that the party had been fired upon from ambush by two white men and he was quite sure he saw a Negro running from the scene. Later all mention of the white men was carefully avoided and suppressed, and the entire blame was laid upon the Negroes at the church and it was charged that all of them were armed, that the white men were proceeding peaceably on the road and only got out to fix their car, which just happened to break down right in front of this particular church, and that the Negroes fired on them without any provocation whatever. Later another white man was fired on, and it was claimed that he just happened to be coming along the road an hour later and was shot by Negroes who were at the same church.
It never seemed for a moment unreasonable to the white men to believe that the Negroes would kill and wound white men at the church and then deliberately stay there for an hour or two longer for the purpose of killing another white man. Every sane man knows that those Negroes would have fled from the scene after the first shooting, if they had been guilty.
Anyhow, the hue and cry was raised. “Negro uprising,” “Negro insurrection,” etc., was sent broadcast.The white planters called their gangs together and a big “nigger hunt” began. They rushed their women and children to Helena by auto and train. Train loads and auto loads of white men, armed to the teeth, came from Marianna and Forrest City, Ark., Memphis, Tenn., and Clarksdale, Miss. Rifles and ammunition were rushed in. The woods were scoured, Negro homes shot into, Negroes who did not know any trouble was brewing were shot and killed on the highways.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 7, 1919
New York, New York – Equity Congress to Fight for Condemned Union Men
From The New York Age of December 6, 1919:
TO AID FIGHT FOR NEGRO RIOT MARTYRS.
Defamatory Headline from Arkansas Gazette of October 3, 1919
To raise funds to assist in the fight for the lives of the twelve men sentenced to death on account of the Elaine, Ark., riots, the Equity Congress of New York City is arranging to hold a mass meeting on Sunday, December 7, at the 15th Regiment Armory, 132nd street and Seventh avenue, at 5 o’clock.
A number of prominent citizens will speak and good music will be given. The people are urged to be present and give tangible aid in this important matter.
Of the twelve men convicted and sentenced to death, six were to be executed on December 26 and six on January 2, but Governor Brough of Arkansas has announced that he would postpone the executions to make it possible for appeals to be filed in behalf of the condemned men.
Counsel must be secured to take the appeals lo the Arkansas Supreme Court and funds must be provided with which to pay the counsel fees. The Equity Congress hopes to make a substantial start in this direction on Sunday afternoon.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
From the Kansas Trades Unionist of November 21, 1919:
ARKANSAS RACE RIOTS COME WHEN NEGROS ASK
JUSTICE IN LAND LEASES FROM COURT
Not Insurrection But Attempt to
Bring Test Case Into Court.
(By A. B. Gilbert)
St. Paul, Minn.-Investigation of the Elaine (Ark.) race riots by a correspondent of the Chicago Daily News brings out facts more noteworthy than the severity of punishment meted out to the alleged negro revolutionists.
Back of the outbreak is the report that two white men opened fire on a peaceable negro meeting. Back of the meeting is an attempt of some negroes to organize and collect funds to bring a lease-testing case into the courts. Back of this desire to bring a court case is the plantation store system [debt peonage system] found in many parts of the South.
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