The Elaine, Arkansas Massacre, Remembered

This message came from my friend David L. Evans, a senior admissions officer at Harvard University whose work has had such an impact on that institution that he has an official portrait and a well-endowed scholarship in his honor. I am posting it with his permission; the links are mine.

Kim,

I've just finished On the Laps of Gods by Robert Whitaker (Crown Publishers), the most detailed account of the "Elaine Riot" in 1919. There are photographs and many of the last names will be familiar to all persons knowledgeable of Phillips County, Arkansas. All black Phillips Countians (such as I) with a modicum of religious upbringing, will want to pray after reading what our ancestors endured in the face of a brutal massacre.

My mother was a little girl and lived within three miles of the epicenter of the massacre which began at Hoop Spur, Ark. (between Wabash and Elaine). Even so, neither she, her siblings nor our grandmother ever wanted to discuss it in any detail. I now understand better why they were reluctant--after reading the book. Some of the perpetrators and/or their kinfolk were still alive and powerful in Phillips County during my childhood. In fact, I used to caddy for one of the men whose testimony helped convict the twelve men, but I had no way of knowing his evil history. Moreover, one of the powerful men who supported the brutality was from St. Louis who founded Lambrook, Arkansas west of Elaine. His father founded Lambert Pharmaceuticals and invented Listerine in St. Louis.

The book also offers detail biographic coverage of Scipio Africanus Jones, one of he most remarkable attorneys ever to enter a courtroom. And to think, he rose from birth into slavery in Arkansas to become a civil rights lawyer that ranks along side Thurgood Marshall, et al. He shepherded the twelve black men who were sentenced to death in the kangaroo trials in Helena all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court where Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the majority opinion (Moore vs. Dempsey, 1923) invoking the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution affirming that they were convicted in kangaroo trials and denied due process of law. This decision saved their lives and eventually gained their freedom.

Here are links to some of the book reviews:

12 Innocent Men

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307339829

http://www.amazon.com/Laps-Gods-Summer-Struggle-Justice/dp/0307339823 (scroll down page for review)

http://booksofsoul.com/2008/06/on-the-laps-of-gods/

"Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come..."



Best regards,



David