Tulsa, Okla, Wednesday, June1.-Governor Robertson, in a message received here at noon proclaimed all of Tulsa county under martial law, as a result of rioting which is reported to have caused the deaths of a least seventy-five persons, mostly Negroes, and the wounding of many more.
Nearly ten square blocks of the Negro section of the city, where an armed battled has been in progress since last night, in in flames……
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 18, 1921 Arkansas State Supreme Court Reverses Death Sentences for “Massacre Plot”
From The Crisis of January 1921:
ANOTHER VICTORY IN ARKANSAS
THE Supreme Court of Arkansas has held that discrimination against Negroes in the selection of both grand and petit juries is in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment and of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and it has consequently reversed the decision of the lower court in condemning to death for the Elaine riots Ed Ware, Will Wordlow, Albert Giles, John [Joe] Fox, John Martin and Alfred Banks. This is the second time that the court has reversed the sentences of death passed on these Negroes.
Death sentences on six other Negroes which have been affirmed by the State Supreme Court will now probably be held up by the Governor until the present cases are decided.
Governor Brough has made every effort to hang these Negroes, even attempting to influence the court by newspaper articles in which he cited the various Arkansas organizations which were demanding their death.
[Photograph and emphasis added. Italic type removed.]
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 – 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.
How can America hold up its hands
in hypocritical horror at foreign barbarism
while the red blood of the Negro
is clinging to those hands?
-Hubert H. Harrison
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 9, 1918
“One law for the white man…and another for the black man.”
From The Messenger of January 1918:
THE HANGING OF THE NEGRO SOLDIERS
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Court Martial of 64 members of 24th Infantry at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio
The hanging of thirteen Negro soldiers for the shooting up in Houston, Texas, a few months ago marks the acme of national indiscretion, on the one hand, and the triumph of Southern race prejudice, on the other. THE MESSENGER is not prepared to pass upon the guilt or innocence of the colored men, but, for the sake of argument, we shall assume their guilt. We shall next proceed to compare the punishment of the Negro soldiers with other soldiers guilty of similar or greater offenses. And if we find that the punishment of the black soldiers has been harsher, sterner and more merciless than that meted out to the other races, we shall seek to find out what the cause of the difference was.
Briefly to compare. On the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of July in East St. Louis, white troops from Illinois in broad daylight, under the eyes of tens of thousands of people, shot, wounded and killed over one hundred Negroes without any reasonable or apparent provocation from the Negroes of East St. Louis. It was the most disgraceful and unabashed exhibition of mob violence ever known in the United States. Evidence against the soldiers was not circumstantial, but direct. It was also overwhelming and abundant. Yet in spite of the brazen, unmitigated contempt for the law, no white soldier was even apprehended or tried.
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