From: David Evans <...evans@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 8:13 PM
Subject: Book About the "Elaine Riot"
To: perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu
Perry,
I've just finished On the Laps of Gods by Robert Whitaker (Crown
Publishers), the most detailed account of the "Elaine Riot" in 1919.
There are photographs and many of the last names will be familiar to
all persons knowledgeable of Phillips County, Arkansas. All black
Phillips Countians (such as I) with a modicum of religious upbringing,
will want to pray after reading what our ancestors endured in the face
of a brutal massacre.
My mother was a little girl and lived within three miles of the
epicenter of the massacre which began at Hoop Spur, AR (between Wabash
and Elaine). Even so, neither she, her siblings nor our grandmother
ever wanted to discuss it in any detail. I now understand better why
they were reluctant--after reading the book. Some of the perpetrators
and/or their kinfolk were still alive and powerful in Phillips County
during my childhood. In fact, I used to caddy for one of the men
whose testimony helped convict the twelve men, but I had no way of
knowing his evil history. Moreover, one of the powerful men who
supported the brutality was Gerard B. Lambert (a 1908 Princeton
graduate) from St. Louis who founded Lambrook, Arkansas west of
Elaine. His father founded Lambert Pharmaceuticals and invented
Listerine in St. Louis.
The book also offers detail biographic coverage of Scipio Africanus
Jones, one of he most remarkable attorneys ever to enter a courtroom.
And to think, he rose from birth into slavery in Arkansas to become a
civil rights lawyer that ranks along side Thurgood Marshall, et al.
He shepherded the twelve black men who were sentenced to death in the
kangaroo trials in Helena all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court where
Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the majority opinion
(Moore vs. Dempsey, 1923) invoking the 14th Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution affirming that they were convicted in kangaroo trials and
denied due process of law. This decision eventually saved their lives
and gained their freedom.
Here are links to some of the book reviews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/books/review/Jennings-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307339829
http://www.amazon.com/Laps-Gods-Summer-Struggle-Justice/dp/0307339823
(scroll down page for review)
http://booksofsoul.com/2008/06/on-the-laps-of-gods/
"Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come..."
Best regards,
David