Blood in Their Eyes

Blood in Their Eyes
Author: Grif Stockley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2020-05-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1682261360

On September 30, 1919, local law enforcement in rural Phillips County, Arkansas, attacked black sharecroppers at a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. The next day, hundreds of white men from the Delta, along with US Army troops, converged on the area “with blood in their eyes.” What happened next was one of the deadliest incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States, leaving a legacy of trauma and silence that has persisted for more than a century. In the wake of the massacre, the NAACP and Little Rock lawyer Scipio Jones spearheaded legal action that revolutionized due process in America. The first edition of Grif Stockley’s Blood in Their Eyes, published in 2001, brought renewed attention to the Elaine Massacre and sparked valuable new studies on racial violence and exploitation in Arkansas and beyond. With contributions from fellow historians Brian K. Mitchell and Guy Lancaster, this revised edition draws from recently uncovered source material and explores in greater detail the actions of the mob, the lives of those who survived the massacre, and the regime of fear and terror that prevailed under Jim Crow.

Blood in My Eye

Blood in My Eye
Author: George Jackson
Publisher: Black Classic Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1990
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780933121232

Originally published: New York: Random House, 1972.

With Blood in Their Eyes

With Blood in Their Eyes
Author: Thomas Cobb
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0816599483

Winner, Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel (Western Writers of America) and Southwest Book Award (Border Regional Library Association) On February 10, 1918, John Power woke to the sound of bells and horses’ hooves. He was sharing a cabin near the family mine with his brother Tom and their father Jeff; hired man Tom Sisson was also nearby. Then gunfire erupted, and so began the day when the Power brothers engaged the Graham County Sheriff’s Department in the bloodiest shootout in Arizona history. Now Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and Shavetail, has taken up the story in this powerful and meticulously researched nonfiction novel. What seems at first a simple tale of crime and pursuit takes on much greater meaning and complexity as the story traces the past lives of the main characters and interconnects them—all leading back to the deadly confrontation that begins the book. Cobb cunningly weaves the story of the Power brothers’ escape with flashbacks of the boys’ father’s life and his struggle to make a living ranching, logging, and mining in the West around the turn of the century. Deftly drawn characters and cleverly concealed motivations work seamlessly to blend a compelling family history with a desperate story of the brothers as they attempt to escape. Grappling with themes of loyalty, masculinity, technology, and honor, this sweeping saga reveals the passion and brutality of frontier life in Arizona a hundred years ago. Richly authentic and beautifully written, With Blood in Their Eyes breathes dramatic new life into this nearly forgotten episode of the American West.

The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas

The Elaine Massacre and Arkansas
Author: Guy Lancaster
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2018-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1945624302

Although it occurred nearly a century ago, the Elaine Massacre of 1919 remains the subject of intense inquiry as historians try to answer a multitude of questions, such as why authorities in the Arkansas Delta used such overwhelming violence to put down a farmers’ union, exactly how many people were killed in the massacre, and how the event shaped the following century. We cannot fully understand what happened at Elaine without examining the one hundred years leading up to the massacre. An analysis of the years from 1819, when Arkansas officially became an American territory, to 1919 provides the historical foundation for understanding one of the bloodiest manifestations of racial violence in U.S. history. During the antebellum years, slaveholders grew paranoid about possible “insurrections,” and after the Civil War and Emancipation, these fears lingered and led to numerous atrocities long before Elaine. At the same time, African Americans—particularly fieldworkers—worked to organize themselves to resist oppression, setting the stage for the farmers’ union that was the target for mob and military wrath during the Elaine Massacre. These essays provide the larger history necessary for understanding what happened at Elaine in 1919—and thus provide a window into the current state of Arkansas and the nation at large. Contributors include Richard Buckelew, Nancy Snell Griffith, Matthew Hild, Adrienne Jones, Kelly Houston Jones, Cherisse Jones-Branch, Brian K. Mitchell, William H. Pruden III, and Steven Teske.

Ruled by Race

Ruled by Race
Author: Grif Stockley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1557288852

Winner of the 2010 Booker Worthen Literary Prize and the 2009 Ragsdale Award. From the Civil War to Reconstruction, the Redeemer period, Jim Crow, and the modern civil rights era to the present, Ruled by Race describes the ways that race has been at the center of much of the state’s formation and image since its founding. Grif Stockley uses the work of published and unpublished historians and exhaustive primary source materials along with stories from authors as diverse as Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris to bring to life the voices of those who have both studied and lived the racial experience in Arkansas. Topics range from the well-known Little Rock Central High Crisis of 1957 to lesser-known events such as the Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 and the shocking yet sadly commonplace attitudes found in newspaper reports and speeches. Through the words of the most powerful Arkansans such as racist Arkansas Govenor Jeff Davis (1901–1906) to the least powerful, including an unflinching look at the narratives of former slaves, readers will come away with increased awareness of the ways that race continues to affect where Arkansans live, send their children to school, work, travel, shop, spend leisure time, worship, and choose their friends and life partners.

Blood in Their Eyes

Blood in Their Eyes
Author: Grif Stockley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

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.