Hellraisers Journal: “Voice of the Negro” by Kerlin: How Systematic Robbery of Tenant Farmers Led Up to Arkansas Riot of 1919

28th November 202128th November 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ed Ware, Song fr AR Prison, Fall 1919, Elaine Massacre, Ida B p6 ———————-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 28, 1921
Excerpt from The Voice of the Negro by Robert T. Kerlin

from Hathi Cover, NY 1920

Note: On Saturday we featured a review of Kerlin’s “Voice of the Negro,” which includes a section on the so-called “riot” at Elaine, Arkansas. This deadly event, which we refer to as the Elaine Massacre, was a bloody rampage led by the plantation class, initially against the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (sharecropper’s union) and later against the entire Afro-American community of Phillips County, Arkansas.

Yesterday we published an excerpt from Kerlin’s book which described how the Johnston Brothers were murdered during the Elaine Massacre. Today’s excerpt sets forth how systematic robbery of tenant farmers and sharecroppers led up to the Arkansas Riot.

From The Savannah Tribune of October 23, 1919:

SYSTEMATIC ROBBERY CAUSE OF RIOTS

ARKANSAS NEGROES HAD NOT PLANNED MASSACRE

The cause of the disturbances in Arkansas was systematic robbery of Negro tenant farmers and share croppers. For years Negroes have been working the farms of white owners on shares and when the time came for a settlement, owners have refused to give them itemized statements of their accounts. Negro tenant farmers and share croppers must buy their supplies during the year from the plantation store or some designated store. The system kept the Negro continually in debt and it is an unwritten law in Arkansas as in many parts of the South that the Negro may not leave the plantation until the debt is paid.

“The Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America” was formed by Negro share croppers and the dues paid were to go into a common fund to employ a lawyer. The lawyer was to make a test case in court of one tenant farmer’s inability to obtain an itemized statement of his account.

On October 6 tenant farmers on 21 plantations were to ask the owners for a settlement. It appears that, failing a settlement, the Negroes were going to refuse to pick the cotton then in the field or to sell cotton belonging to them for less than the market price. Trouble, however, was precipitated when W. A. Adkins, a special agent for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, Charles Pratt, a deputy sheriff and a Negro “trusty” were fired upon, so it is claimed, by Negroes in a church at Hoop Spur [where Union members were gathered]. Adkins was killed and Pratt severely wounded. A statement of one of the persons in the church at the time, however, shows that Adkins and Pratt fired into the church without provocation and that their fire was returned with the above-mentioned results. That precipitated the trouble.

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Hellraisers Journal: “White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants, Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror” -Part II

20th February 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 20, 1920
Phillips County, Arkansas – White Landlords Terrorize Negro Tenants, Part II

From the Appeal to Reason of February 14, 1920:

White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants,
Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror

[Part II of II.]

Early in 1919, some of the young negroes who had returned from the army began an organization of the negro share croppers, under the name of “Farmers’ and Householders’ Progressive Union of America,” for the purpose of getting relief from the abuses their people were made to suffer. The charter and constitution of the organization was drawn up by two prominent white lawyers at Winchester, Ark. The organization was looked upon with much disfavor from the start by the land owners. So the plans of the organization had to be carried on in secret, but it met with instantaneous approval of the negro laborers. The organization arranged that friendly and trustworthy counsel was furnished the negroes who would bring suit and force the land owners to make a settlement with the negroes and in many instances they were forced to pay back to them hundreds, and some instances, thousands of dollars that they were stealing from their tenants.

These negroes had grown a bumper crop this season, some families making as much as fifty bales of cotton, twenty-five of which was theirs. Cotton this season in this locality was selling at from fifty to seventy-five cents per pound, or $250 to $300 per five hundred pound bale, or over $5,000 for the tenant’s share of the crop, while everything they purchased at the land owner’s store was sold at 50 to 100 per cent higher than at cash stores in nearby towns. These negro tenants were due to have several thousand dollars as their share of the crop for their work. This the land owners could not allow for various reasons. If the negroes got out of debt, they might leave the farm, then they would not trade at their stores if they had the cash to buy from mail order houses or the cash stores in the towns.

The land owners began to make arrangements to again ship the negro’s cotton without asking his consent or rendering him a statement of his store account. The negroes went to their organization for aid and counsel. A representative of their organization went to a prominent white attorney for counsel [Ulysses S. Bratton], who they knew was a friend to all labor organizations. This attorney was not in his office at the time the delegation called, but his son [O. S. Bratton], who was in charge of the office in his father’s absence, advised the delegation to get their members together and he would come out and meet them, and investigate their claims. The representatives of the negroes returned and called a meeting in one of their churches, to advise their members.

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Hellraisers Journal: “White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants, Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror” -Part I

19th February 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919 ———-

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants, Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror” -Part I” →