Examining the Elaine Massacre

One of the largest racial confrontations in U.S. history occurred in 1919 in the Phillips County farming town of Elaine, Arkansas where a massive violent white mob took aim at a small black sharecroppers labor union struggling to organize for higher cotton crop prices.

James White stands in front of what he says will be the site of a small museum memorializing the state’s largest massacre of blacks in 1919. 

It’s a boarded up storefront — a brick corner building on the main drag of downtown Elaine, Arkansas, a town of just over 600 people in the Arkansas Delta.

His group, the Elaine Legacy Center, is seeking donated objects from the era for the museum. 

“We would be looking for old artifacts. Old stuff — clothing…  most definitely pictures,” said White.