On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation

On September 30, 1919, a group of white planters tried to shut down a black sharecroppers’ meeting in Arkansas; a sheriff was killed in the melee, and the next day hordes of whites traveled to the county. Thus began the Elaine Massacre, the “indiscriminate hunting down, shooting and killing of Negroes,” as one white witness described it. Whitaker (The Mapmaker’s Wife ) reconstructs the “killing fields” where by October 3, five white men and over 100 black men, women and children were killed. Hundreds of black sharecroppers were arrested; after torture-obtained confessions, 74 men were convicted and 12 received the death penalty. Whitaker examines the trial, the ensuing appeals and the heroic—ultimately successful—efforts of the lawyer and former slave, Scipio Africanus Jones and the 12 defendants who were finally set free in 1925. His research is thorough, particularly in his use of Arkansas resources; the arrangement of his documentation, however, makes tracking his sources a put-the-jigsaw-together exercise for the reader. Whitaker’s balanced report of what are, at times, diametrically opposed versions of events illuminates a dismal corner of American history. (June)