Mound Bayou has its own Negro cotton buyers, who give a fair price for the cotton. But it is with the greatest difficulty that a Negro planter can obtain from a white buyer the true market price, and it is rare that a landlord who receives cotton bales as rent will take into consideration the enhanced price of cotton, even though the enhancement is supposed to be primarily due to the smallness of the harvest. Where the white man is in control it is true the Negro produces more because he has to in order to live, but he is nevertheless the victim of a systematized swindling, and he knows it. It is causing a growing discontent among the black peasantry, and I was continually told about it.
One of the worst riots of 1919 took place on the other side of the river—in the State of Arkansas, at Elaine. It is also in this so-called Delta region. The origin of the riot was rooted in the economic problem. The white buyers and landlords had been consistently defrauding the Negro countryside by overlooking the enhanced value of cotton. Cotton had risen in price from a pre-war average of ten cents a pound to twenty-eight cents in 1917 and actually to forty cents in the current year. Formerly it was generally represented to the Negro that he was always deep in debt for his “rations” or his rent. The white policy was to keep the Negro in debt. It was never the custom to render him accounts or to argue with him when he claimed more than was handed him.
“You had a fine crop—you’re just about straight,” was a common greeting in the fall of 1919.
But with the prolific Delta crop of cotton and a quadruple price, the discontent of the Negro can be imagined. It was intense, and was growing.
There are two versions of the outcome of it. One is that a firm of white lawyers approached some of the Negro planters with an idea of taking the matter to court and seeing what could be obtained in redress. The other is that the Negroes “got together,” organized a body called “The Farmers’ Progressive Union,” which then approached the firm of lawyers on its own account. I incline to think that the former is the more probable. The white firm thought there was money to be made from fighting Negro claims. Some of the Negroes were actually agreed to take the matter to a Federal Grand Jury, and charge the Whites with frustration of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Negroes were undoubtedly daring, and held public meetings and used sufficient bravado to alarm the local white population. The rumor flew from farm to farm that the Negroes were plotting an insurrection. Someone discovered a heap of rifles stacked where they had been left and forgotten when the Armistice had interrupted drilling. This gave the necessary color to the idea. Besides the rusty rifles, the Negroes were seen to be not without firearms of one kind or another. The Negro loves weapons, as an Oriental loves jewelry. Shotguns and revolvers in plenty are to be found in the cabins of the colored country folk. The Whites put up a provocateur as before a pogrom in Russia. He started firing on Negroes at random in the Elaine streets. Then two white officials attempted to break into a Negro meeting, resorted to arms, and were met by firing in return. One of the Whites was killed, the other wounded. This started the three days of destruction in Phillips County. The whole Negro population was rounded up by white troops and farmers with rifles. Machine guns were even brought into play against an imaginary black army. A great number of Negroes were put in a stockade under military arrest, many were killed, many wounded. And three hundred were placed in jail and charged with riot and murder. No Whites were arrested. The governor, a Mr. Brough, was largely responsible for this method of investigating the alleged conspiracy of the Negroes to make an insurrection. The whole occurrence was astonishingly ugly, and it was followed by ten-minute trials before exclusively white juries, and swift sentences to electrocution for some Negro prisoners, and to long terms of penal servitude for others. The riot and the trials so exasperated Negroes throughout the United States that there is no doubt a Federal Commission of impartial men might well have been appointed to investigate the whole affair, both as regards its inception and as regards its military culmination and its aftermath of trial and punishment. As it is, though Governor Brough says to the Negroes, “You did plan an insurrection,” and though the Whites of Elaine may feel happier and more secure, it is an obvious truism that the white population of other States cannot be feeling more secure because of it, and that the Negroes in other districts feel less secure—they feel the need to arm. It has caused a great increase in public insecurity. Perhaps because of this the riot has been more discussed than other riots. Somewhat shocked and fretful, the governor, who is probably a brisk business man, and in no way like one of those more neurotic governors of Russian provinces which occur in Aùdreyev’s tales, called a meeting. Some four hundred Whites and tamed Negroes were brought together to see what could be done to improve race relationship. This was a month after these events.
The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reports the governor’s remarks:
“This meeting has been called for the purpose of a heart-to-heart discussion of the relations between the white people and the Negroes of the State. These relations have become strained, especially by the recent rebellion in Phillips County. I say ‘rebellion’ advisedly and without qualifications, for it was an insurrection, and a damnable one.
“And I want to say in the beginning that Arkansas is going to handle her own problems. I do not intend to go to New York City or to Topeka, Kansas. When I want advice from Negroes I shall ask it from Arkansas Negroes, and when I want similar advice from white people, I shall get it from the white people of Arkansas.