STONO REBELLION (1739)

CONTRIBUTED BY: CLAUDIA SUTHERLAND

On Sunday, September 9th, 1739 the British colony of South Carolina was shaken by a slave uprising that culminated with the death of sixty people. Led by an Angolan named Jemmy, a band of twenty slaves organized a rebellion on the banks of the Stono River. After breaking into Hutchinson’s store the band, now armed with guns, called for their liberty.  As they marched, overseers were killed and reluctant slaves were forced to join the company. The band reached the Edisto River where white colonists descended upon them, killing most of the rebels.  The survivors were sold off to the West Indies.

The immediate factors that sparked the uprising remain in doubt. A malaria epidemic in Charlestown, which caused general confusion throughout Carolina, may have influenced the timing of the Rebellion.  The recent (August 1739) passage of the Security Act by the South Carolina Colonial Assembly may also have played a role. The act required all white men to carry firearms to church on Sunday. Thus the enslaved leaders of the rebellion knew their best chance for success would be during the time of the church services when armed white males were away from the plantations.

After the Stono Rebellion South Carolina authorities moved to reduce provocations for rebellion.  Masters, for example, were penalized for imposing excessive work or brutal punishments of slaves and a school was started so that slaves could learn Christian doctrine.  In a colony that already had more blacks than whites, the Assembly also imposed a prohibitive duty on the importation of new slaves from Africa and the West Indies.  Authorities also tightened control over the enslaved.  The Assembly enacted a new law requiring a ratio of one white for every ten blacks on any plantation and passed the Negro Act of 1740 which prohibited enslaved people from growing their own food, assembling in groups, earning money they, rather than their owners, could retain or learning to read.

ELAINE, ARKANSAS RIOT (1919)

CONTRIBUTED BY: WESTON W. COOPER

One of the last of the major riots of the “Red Summer” of 1919, the so-called race riot in Elaine, Arkansas was in fact a racial massacre. Though exact numbers are unknown, it is estimated that over 200 African Americans were killed, along with five whites, during the white hysteria of a pending insurrection of black sharecroppers. The violence, terror, and concerted effort to drive African Americans out of Phillips County, Arkansas was so jarring that Ida B. Wells, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published a short book on the riot in 1920. It was also widely reported in African American newspapers like the Chicago Defender and generated several public campaigns to address the fallout.

On the night of September 30, 1919, approximately 100 African Americans, mostly sharecroppers on the plantations of white landowners, attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church in Hoop Spur, a small community in Phillips County, Arkansas. They hoped to organize to obtain better payments for their cotton crops. Aware of white fears of Communist influence on blacks, the union posted armed guards around the church to prevent disruption and infiltration.

During the meeting, three white men pulled up to the front of the church. One of the men asked the guards, “Going coon hunting, boys?” Gunfire erupted after the guards made no response. Though sharp debate exists as to who fired first, the guards killed W.A. Adkins, a security officer from the Missouri-Pacific Railroad, and injured Charles Pratt, the deputy sheriff.

The next morning, an all-white posse went to arrest the suspects. Though they encountered little opposition from the black community, the fact that blacks outnumbered whites ten to one in this area of Arkansas resulted in great fear of an “insurrection.” The concerned whites formed a mob numbering up to 1,000 armed men, many of whom came from the surrounding counties and as far away as Mississippi and Tennessee.  Upon reaching Elaine, the mob began killing blacks and ransacking their homes. As word of the attack spread throughout the African American community, some black residents fled while others armed themselves in defense. The mob then turned its attention to disarming those blacks who fought back.

Meanwhile, local white newspapers further inflamed tensions by reporting that there were planned black uprisings. By October 2, U.S. Army troops arrived in Elaine, and the white mobs began to disperse. Federal troops rounded up and placed several hundred blacks in temporary stockades, where there were reports of torture. The men were not released until their white employers vouched for them.  There was also considerable evidence that many of the soldiers sent to quell the violence engaged in the systematic killing of black residents.

In the end, 122 blacks but no whites were charged by the Phillips County grand jury for crimes related to the riots. Their court-appointed lawyers did little in their defense despite the investigation and involvement of the NAACP. The first 12 men tried for first-degree murder were convicted and sentenced to death. As a result, 65 others entered plea bargains and accepted up to 21 years for second-degree murder. Led by black attorney Scipio Africanus Jones, the NAACP and other civil rights groups worked towards retrials and release of the “Elaine Twelve.” Eventually they won their release, with the last of the twelve set free on January 14, 1925.

Tribute To Ermias " Nipsey 'Tha Great' Hussle" Asghedom

DETON BROOKS (1909-1975)

CONTRIBUTED BY: BRIAN KASTNER

Deton Brooks in India, CBI Roundup, ca. 1945

During World War II, thirty African-American correspondents risked their lives reporting news home from the front-lines of the war. Covering the war took two forms. First, they were reporters of the combat between the Allies and the Axis. Concurrently, they reported on the treatment of African American soldiers amid the segregation of American Army units. This is the dichotomy that African American correspondent Deton Brooks experienced as a reporter and advocate in his war coverage in Burma.

Deton Brooks was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 14, 1909 to parents Laura and Deton Brooks. Educated in the local public schools, he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1935 before becoming a school teacher and later, a journalist. Reporting on the war for the Chicago Defender, he arrived in India to cover the China-India-Burma theater in September of 1944. Soon after arriving, he drew the ire of U.S. military officers in India for attempting to submit a story on the segregation of a swimming pool at a military base he visited. When a military censor refused to transmit the story, Brooks threatened to notify his paper and demand an investigation. The Army relented and his story was quickly sent to the Chicago Defender. Following the story’s publication in the Defender, the pool was swiftly integrated.

Brooks next went to Burma to cover the construction of Ledo Road, which was to serve as a supply route between China and India for the Western Allies. Here he was joined by fellow African American correspondent Frank Bolden of the Norfolk Journal & Guide. Bolden and Brooks covered the road’s construction by eight American Army units, of which six were African American units.

When construction was completed on the road in January of 1945, a convoy was set to ride into China. As the convoy was being readied, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, the political leader of the Republic of China, pronounced that no black soldiers could enter China. Unaware of this proclamation Deton Brooks inquired why there were no African American drivers in the planned convoy. After hearing of the ban he immediately went back to headquarters and registered his protest. In response, the Army sent eleven African American soldiers to join the convoy.

When the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, Deton Brooks was in Chongqing, China. Within days the Japanese surrendered and the Chinese delegation to the surrender ceremony agreed to take three Western journalists to represent the wire services. The thirty correspondents in China were told to elect three journalists to cover the surrender ceremony, and Brooks was selected by his fellow journalists. He was present at the signing of the Japanese surrender on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri.

Once the war ended Brooks returned to the United States and civilian life. He received his Master of Arts degree and Doctor of Education degree from Columbia University in 1958. He then worked in the Cook County Department of Public Aid starting in 1958 and was appointed the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Human Resources in 1969, becoming the first African American to head a city department.

Denton Brooks died in Chicago, Illinois on August 29, 1975. He was 66 years old at the time of his death.

THE THIBODAUX MASSACRE (NOVEMBER 23, 1887)

CONTRIBUTED BY: KC WASHINGTON

The Thibodaux Massacre took place in Thibodaux, Louisiana on November 23, 1887. Black sugar cane workers, determined to unionize for a living wage, chose to combine their minimal power during the crucial harvest season. Instead, their actions sparked a massacre.

With echoes of the bondage their ancestors had experienced during slavery, the cane workers protested the harsh working conditions, long hours, and starvation wages. They were fed subsistence meals and paid as little as 42 cents a day with scrip which could only be used in plantation stores.

The Knights of Labor, one of the few labor unions to organize blacks, encouraged the sugar cutters to demand better treatment and $1.25 a day in cash. The Knights had tried unsuccessfully to organize the workers in 1874, 1880, and again in 1883 but had been blocked all three times. But the cutters thought the results might be different in 1887, when the Knights urged them to wait until the rolling season was almost underway to propose making a stand. During the rolling season, there was a narrow window of time to harvest the cane and unlike with cotton growers, the planters were unable to attract enough strikebreakers from out of the area because of the low pay they offered. With this strategy in mind, Junius Bailey, a 29-year-old schoolteacher and the president of the Terrebonne chapter of the Knights of Labor, went directly to the growers with the sugar cutter’s demands.

When the growers refused to negotiate and fired the union members on November 22, the strike was called and for the next three weeks an estimated 10,000 workers (the largest such action in the farming industry) went on strike, affecting four parishes: Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary, and Assumption.

Meanwhile, white vigilantes locked down Thibodaux and went door to door attempting to identify strikers and demanding passes from any blacks going in and out of town. As morning broke on November 23 shots rang out from a cornfield and two white guards were injured. At that point, the massacre began.

The planters persuaded Governor Samuel D. McEnery, a Democrat and former sugar planter, to unleash several units of the all-white state militia. Commanded by ex-Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, the militia brought a .45 caliber Gatling gun while the paramilitary groups set up outside of the Thibodaux courthouse. Both the militia and white vigilantes went door to door shooting suspected strikers and those unlucky enough to cross their path.

The indiscriminate killing left approximately 60 people dead. The bodies of many of the strikers were dumped in unmarked graves. Those who survived hid in the woods and swamps as the killings spread to other plantations.

Although the Thibodaux Massacre was one of the deadliest episodes in United States labor history, the Southern white press heralded the action of the militia and vigilantes. Sugar planter Andrew Price, who participated in the attacks, won a seat in Congress in 1888. Statues were erected and public areas named after many involved in the unlawful killings while the workers, including women and children, went anonymous, their murders marked only by their loved ones. Black farm workers wouldn’t attempt to unionize in earnest again until the 1930s.