20. The Worst One Was In Elaine, Arkansas
Most of the race riots were in large urban centers. One thing that sets the Elaine riot apart is that it happened in a rural area. Another thing that sets it apart is the sheer number of people that were brutally massacred. We don’t know the exact number, but at least 200 African Americans – many of them women and children – were hunted down and executed.
Elaine is a small town in Phillips County, Arkansas. African Americans in the area outnumbered whites by 10 to 1, and it was here that Robert Hill sought to unionize sharecroppers. During the Red Summer of 1919, even though the act of unionizing is nonviolent, the racial tensions that already existed were bound to explode.
