Cut Off from Fair Play: Representing Labor Issues in the Context of the Elaine Massacre

In 2019, Arkansas commemorated the 100th anniversary of what was likely the state’s single deadliest racial conflict, eight days that saw what many researchers now believe to be more than 200 African Americans killed in rural Phillips County. The Elaine Massacre, as that event is now known, was a racially-motivated conflict, and its legacy is often first examined through that lens. The Massacre was also a labor conflict, however, with roots in the suppression of sharecropper organization efforts. Many of the barriers faced by Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) organizers and members in 1919 no longer exist.