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Elaine Massacre
The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas, where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans were murdered and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". da B. Wells (Wells-Barnett, I. B.)(1920). he Arkansas Race Riot https://archive.org/details/TheArkansasRaceRiot/ Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of Black people murdered during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. The white mobs were aided by federal troops (re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Summer
The Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which Terrorism in the United States#White nationalism and white supremacy, white supremacist terrorism and Mass racial violence in the United States, racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by Civil rights movement, civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized Nonviolent resistance, peaceful protests against the racial violence.Erickson, Alana J. 1960. "Red Summer." Pp. 2293–94 in ''Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History''. New York: Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan.Cunningham, George P. 1960. "James Weldon Johnson." Pp. 1459–61 in ''Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History''. New York: Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan. In most instan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equal Justice Initiative
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a non-profit organization, based in Montgomery, Alabama, that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial. It guarantees the defense of anyone in Alabama in a death penalty case. Founder Bryan Stevenson was depicted in the legal drama '' Just Mercy,'' which is based on his memoir '' Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.'' The film tells the story of Walter McMillian and, in less detail, the stories of other Stevenson cases. The Equal Justice Initiative won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Charitable Organization/Nonprofit in the category Web. History The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) was founded in 1989 in Montgomery, Alabama, by attorney Bryan Stevenson, who has served as the organization's executive director ever since. Stevenson has been working on Alabama defense cases since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lynchings
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often in the form of a hanging) for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in all societies. In the United States, where the word ''lynching'' likely originated, lynchings of African Americans became frequent in the South during the period after the Reconstruction era, especially during the nadir of American race relations. Etymology The origins of the word ''lynch'' are obscure, but it likely originated during the American Revolution. The verb comes from the phrase ''Lynch Law'', a term for a punishment without trial. Two Americans during this era are generally credited for coining the phrase: Char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, " Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. The last of the Jim Crow laws were generally overturned in 1965. Formal and informal racial segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures ( Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement. In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poll Tax
A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. ''Poll'' is an archaic term for "head" or "top of the head". The sense of "counting heads" is found in phrases like polling place and opinion poll. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century. In the United Kingdom, poll taxes were levied by the governments of John of Gaunt in the 14th century, Charles II in the 17th and Margaret Thatcher in the 20th century. In the United States, voting poll taxes (whose payment was a precondition to voting in an election) have been used to disenfranchise impoverished and minority voters (especially after Reconstruction). Poll taxes are regressive, meaning the higher someone's income is, the lower the tax is as a proportion of income: for example, a $100 tax on an income of $10,000 is a 1% tax rate, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights based on race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper (and thus not violate the Fifteenth Amendment), but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters. In the 1870s, white racists had used violence by domestic terrorism groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan), as well as fraud, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation Store
A company store is a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing and daily necessities to employees of a company. It is typical of a company town in a remote area where virtually everyone is employed by one firm, such as a coal mine. In a company town, the housing is owned by the company but there may be independent stores there or nearby. Employee-only company stores often accept scrip or non-cash vouchers issued by the company in advance of periodic cash paychecks, and gives credit to employees before payday. Except in very remote areas, company stores in mining towns became scarcer after the miners bought automobiles and could travel to a range of stores. Even so, the stores could survive because they provided convenience and easy credit. Company stores served numerous additional functions, as well, such as a locus for the government post office, and as the cultural and community center where people could freely gather. Company stores were monopolistic institutions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharecroppers
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a higher economic and social status. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The French '' métayage'', the Catalan '' masoveria'', the Castilian ''mediero'', the Slavic ''połownictwo'' and ''izdolshchina, the Italian mezzadria'', and the Islamic system of ''muzara‘a'' (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping. Overview Under a sharecropping system, landowners provided a share of land to be worked by the sharecropper, and usually provided other necessities such as housing, tools, seed, or working animals. Local merchants usually provide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of America, Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by U.S. state, states that had Secession in the United States, seceded from the Union. The Origins of the American Civil War, central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether Slavery in the United States, slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantations In The American South
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the Pen (enclosure), pens for livestock. Until the abolition of Slavery in the United States, slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the Southern United States, particularly before the American Civil War. The mild temperate climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the Southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for a white elite. Today, as was also true in the past, there is a wide range of opinion as to what differentiated a plantation from a farm. Typically, the focus of a farm was subsistence agriculture. In cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkansas Delta
The Arkansas Delta is one of the six natural regions of the state of Arkansas. Willard B. Gatewood Jr., author of ''The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox'', says that rich cotton lands of the Arkansas Delta make that area "The Deepest of the Deep South." The region runs along the Mississippi River from Eudora, Arkansas, Eudora north to Blytheville, Arkansas, Blytheville and as far west as Little Rock, Arkansas, Little Rock. It is part of the Mississippi embayment, itself part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Mississippi River Alluvial Plain. The flat plain is bisected by Crowley's Ridge, a narrow band of rolling hills rising above the flat delta plains. Several towns and cities have been developed along Crowley's Ridge, including Jonesboro, Arkansas, Jonesboro. The region's lower western border follows the Arkansas River just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, Little Rock down through Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Pine Bluff. There the border shifts to Bayou Bartholomew, stretching south t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
