Please join us this Monday night on our Zoom Webinar at 5:00 pm CST, with our featured speakers Rev. Dr. Mary Olson, Director of The Elaine Legacy Center; and massacre victim descendant James White.  

Summer of 1919 earned the name Red Summer.  It was a period of widespread attacks on the returning 380,000 black veterans from WW1, who heeded the call of President Wilson to “make the world safe for democracy”. These veterans sought to secure the same freedoms they had so gallantly put their life on the life for “over there”. The prevailing thought by a racist society determined to keep them suppressed was best expressed by a federal official who is quoted as saying, “One of the principal elements causing concern is the returned negro soldier who is not readily fitting back into his prior status of pre-war times.” The bloodbaths that spread caused black people to organize to confront the onslaught of white terrorism that spread nationally.

In Elaine, Arkansas black farmers and sharecroppers organized to secure better wages and fairer prices. Over a two-day period from September 30 thru October 1, 1919, over 200 African Americans were massacred. 

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