Elaine Bloodbath descendants name for backing up repentance with sources

Last year Lisa Hicks Gilbert ran a Facebook page and hosted Zoom events for those who, like her, were descended from victims of the Elaine massacre in 1919, when a mob of white people instigated by white planters killed, arrested and evicted hundreds of blacks in Phillips County, Arkansas, after an attempt to organize black tenants. Back then she had hoped create a space where the victims’ descendants could heal together and take the lead in restorative justice in Elaine, a rural town in the Arkansas Delta with a population of just over 500 and 71% black.

Today Gilbert is the founder of the Descendants of the 1919 Elaine massacre, is about to move back home to Elaine, where she will help program the Lee Street Community Center and work to achieve the vision she and other descendants spoke about last year.

Part of that vision is the annual Elaine Unity Festival, which took place for the first time last weekend on the 102nd anniversary of the massacre. Although this year’s festival was virtual, Gilbert and her co-organizers plan to host it at the old Elaine High School in the future. The high school, which closed several years ago along with the other Elaine public schools, is now owned by the Elaine Alumni Association.

This year’s Unity Fest included a town hall, a panel discussion on the subject of restorative justice, a writing workshop and a church service. It is Sponsors These included the Delta Commons Group, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), the Emmett Till National Park Campaign, Holding Spaces, The Magic Soul, and Damaged Heritage. The festival was not without its challenges: its virtual character, dictated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in some Elaine residents being unable to attend due to a lack of adequate internet services.

Many of the problems Elaine and Phillips Counties face are, the descendants believe, a direct result of the massacre and its aftermath. Local authorities arrested 122 black people and falsely accused them of crimes; 12 were sentenced to death. In their brochure “The Arkansas Race Riot” Investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett calculated the money the Elaine Twelve’s families lost to unable to harvest their cotton while in Phillips County Jail to be at least $ 86,050 – over 1.3 million US dollars in today’s dollars. Wells-Barnett estimated that a full account of the cotton profits lost by the families of murdered or imprisoned black tenants – money largely poured into the pockets of white planters – would amount to $ 1 million, or nearly $ 16 million today.

In the ten years after the massacre 5,660 blacks have moved away from Phillips County – an increase in black brain drain from the area. All of the Elaine Twelve moved out of the state after their sentences were mitigated; only one, Joseph Knox, would return to Arkansas permanently.

One of the first to leave was Robert Lee Hill, the organizer of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, who met at a church in nearby Hoop Spur the night the massacre began. On the run from white occupiers and possible arrest, Hill went first to Oklahoma and then to Kansas, where he was arrested by local authorities in 1920. The NAACP fought his extradition to Arkansas and was eventually released; he lived the rest of his life in Topeka. One of Hill’s descendants, his great-niece Charlotte “Mama C” Hill O’Neal, who is co-director of the United African Alliance Community Center in rural Tanzania, has as Video titled “The Blood That I Carry” and reflects her great-uncle’s legacy and the justice and justice work she continues to do.

“I knew that the blood that I carry, the blood that cries out for freedom, the blood that spreads love, the blood that is similar to what my great-uncle talked about when he started the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America … knew Great Uncle Robert Lee Hill must have been the one they always talked about, “said O’Neal.” And now I know why the conversations were so whispered.

“We need broadband”

During a Friday morning session on restorative justice, panellists lamented the fact that recent apologies and recognitions of the massacre of white Arkansans and state officials have not led any individual, philanthropist or government to invest more in Elaine.

“I would implore more action, more restoration, more transformation, more engagement with the issue at hand, the problems that are ravaging our community,” said Clarice Abdul-Bey, co-founder of the Arkansas Peace and Justice Memorial Movement and a descendant of a black family who lived in the area at the time of the massacre.

“If you have the capital and you are repentant … and you have connections or resources, repentance is fine,” continued Abdul-Bey. “But recovering to help thousands of young people and people see their homework, be tech savvy, get on the internet, do telemedicine, do telemedicine for mental health, all of these things are very important. I want to Combine remorse with resources for change. “

High-speed Internet could give the community all sorts of opportunities, Gilbert believes. With the internet, they could set up a call center in the old high school that would create jobs. With the internet, they could do concerts not only for the community, but also to fuel tourism and economic development.

“We have to have broadband, and that is what money is for,” Gilbert said. “Here we are again. No one came to help Elaine during that massacre. Nobody came to help. And here we are again, they’re still not trying to help. Where are our state representatives, our local representatives? She?”

On Friday’s conference call, panelists also pointed out the city’s rusty water tower, a photo of which was recently featured in a USA Today detection in pathogens in water towers. Elaine’s water, they said, often comes out of the faucets discolored.

“The water situation in Elaine has been an issue for years,” Gilbert said during the panel on Restorative Justice. “This is not just the water that comes into the houses, but also the pipes, the sewer system. If it rains, if we get a lot of rain, it means they have sewage stagnation.” Gilbert said Elaine residents tried unsuccessfully to alert the city and mayor to water and sewer problems; Mayor Michael Craven, who did not attend Unity Fest, did not respond to an email request to be interviewed for this article.

Gilbert has also spoken to UAMS about bringing a telemedicine clinic to Elaine to be housed in the old high school. Currently, people living in Elaine must travel to Marvell or Helena-West Helena for at least 30 minutes for medical care. There’s no ambulance in town. “If you can’t get doctors to come to these rural areas, why not connect them with interactive video?” said Terri Imus, UAMS’s director of operations for clinical telemedicine, who worked with Gilbert on the vision of telemedicine surgery.

The barriers currently are broadband and funding. Imus estimates they’ll need less than $ 50,000 in startup costs and an internet that allows video calls and uploads. The equipment for setting up a telemedicine clinic is relatively simple – a mobile cart with a camera, lenses, and stethoscope that allows doctors to virtually examine heart and lung sounds, as well as patient lesions and wounds, and medical equipment housed in the exam room. Federal grants and COVID aid have dried up at the moment, but Imus says they are still looking for funds.

“We don’t care where the money comes from,” said Imus. “A Walton or a Rockefeller, someone who has some money to give away, we’ll take it.”

Test the water

In addition to working with organizations inside and outside Elaine to bring service and economic recovery to the city, Gilbert will work to maintain the park at the Lee Street Community Center and create a youth program.

“I want to create a leadership program, but I want to ask first [the youth], ‘What would you like to see in your community? How does it look? What is the leadership program like? ‘”She said. She hopes that by staying in Elaine and working to focus the needs of the community, she can encourage others to be more open about the massacre and its ongoing effects – talks that often still whispered, still controversial – and that the city, black and white residents alike, can move towards restoring justice, reconciliation and unity.

Her first attempt at engaging students in this reconciliation effort was a student essay contest on racial reconciliation for Phillips County students, such as the late Sheila Walker, a descendant of one of the Elaine Twelve, and J. Chester Johnson, whose grandfather participated in the massacre. She only had one entry which, in her opinion, points to the culture of silence and fear that still exists to recognize the history and legacy of the Phillips County massacre – and the current tense climate surrounding conveying the history of the Racism.

“With all this talk about critical racial theory, teachers are afraid to bring up certain topics. And I mean, this was about reconciliation,” she said. “But it was on purpose. I had to test the water. I go in apparently blind, but I had to test the water to see what to expect.”