Blood in their eyes

Description

"In late September 1919, black sharecroppers met in Elaine, Arkansas, to protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. Local law enforcement broke up their meeting, and the next day a thousand white men from the Delta - and troops of the U. S. Army - converged on the area.". "The result was a massacre. Contemporary estimates of African American deaths ranged from 20 to an even more horrifying 856. And white officials jailed hundreds of black workers, torturing some of them. Yet it was twelve black men who were charged with first-degree murder. The official story was that only blacks who had resisted lawful authority were killed, that white defenders had to "put down" the black sharecroppers' "insurrection."". "Grif Stockley tells the full story of this incident for the first time. Also a lawyer, he weighs the evidence in letters, interviews, newspapers, and trial transcripts. He makes a clear and powerful case that white mobs and federal soldiers murdered black citizens of Elaine."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

When Democratic governor Charles Hillman Brough received the initial telegram from the mayor of Elaine, Sid Stokes, one of his earliest political allies in the Delta, requesting troops to quell "race riots in Elaine" on October 1, 1919, he was at the end of a special session of the Arkansas legislature.

Subjects

Links

• Book review (H-Net)
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Other Editions

• Blood in their eyes: the Elaine race massacres of 1919University of Arkansas Press2001-01-01
• Blood in Their EyesPaperbackUniversity of Arkansas Press2004-02-01