Two years ago, I was contacted by an historical researcher who had seen my posting and who informed me that Joe Knox had been one of the Elaine 12. That was the entirety of the message.
I didn't add this information to his page immediately. I wanted to do a little research first, to make sure this was the correct person for one thing, and, for goodness's sake, to find out about this group I had never heard of, the Elaine 12. It started me on a search that consumed several days.
An internet search for "Elaine 12" turned up all kinds of resources. Elaine, it seems, is the name of a town in Phillips County, Arkansas. And the primary "hits" weren't about the Elaine 12 but of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 (AKA Elaine Race Riot; AKA Elaine Race Massacre) that began 100 years ago this month.
The following information is a summary of Elaine Massacre of 1919 in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, but at the end of that article are many references for those wanting more resources.
The stage seemed to be set, on one side, by the new sense of freedom of the returning World War I African Americans; and on the other side by the government’s and business’s fear of “the work of foreign ideologies, such as Bolshevism” and hostility toward labor unions. On September 30, 1919, about 100 African American workers, mainly sharecroppers, met at a church three miles from Elaine, Arkansas, as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America.
Leaders of the Hoop Spur union had placed armed guards around the church to prevent disruption of their meeting and intelligence gathering by white opponents. Though accounts of who fired the first shots are in sharp conflict, a shootout in front of the church on the night of September 30, 1919, between the armed black guards around the church and three individuals whose vehicle was parked in front of the church resulted in the death of W. A. Adkins, a white security officer for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad, and the wounding of Charles Pratt, Phillips County’s white deputy sheriff.
The Phillips County sheriff sent several hundred armed people to find and arrest suspects. Phillips County authorities also sent three telegrams to the governor,
requesting that U.S. troops be sent to Elaine. Brough responded by gaining permission from the Department of War to send more than 500 battle-tested troops from Camp Pike, outside of Little Rock.
The white mobs slaughtered many African Americans as they met them, without regard to who was or was not at the meeting. “In 1925, Sharpe Dunaway, an employee of the Arkansas Gazette, alleged that soldiers in Elaine had ‘committed one murder after another with all the calm deliberation in the world, either too heartless to realize the enormity of their crimes, or too drunk on moonshine to give a continental darn.’ “
Details can be found in the article and other sources. Unjustly, but unsurprisingly, twelve of the Black men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. The appeals lasted years. The Rev. J. E. Knox in the death notice above served several years in the Arkansas State Prison. All men were ultimately released, some on indefinite parole after pleading guilty of second degree murder.
Yes, indefinite parole after confessing, when the victims were Black and the perpetrators were white. I’m searching for words to explain this. I can’t find one single word that would make sense of this.
The full article is brief. You can read it in a few minutes. The resources, though, are many.
The thread is now open.