In the News

1919's Elaine 12 to get heritage trail markers

ADG
11/02/19

The Elaine 12 will become a permanent part of the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail on Tuesday.

The Elaine 12 were a group of black sharecroppers in Phillips County who were wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death by all-white juries after the Elaine Massacre of 1919. Eventually, all of the men were freed.

Markers commemorating each of them will be unveiled Tuesday during the annual Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail induction ceremony, according to a news release from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

The Civil Rights Heritage Trail begins on the sidewalk in front of the Old State House Convention Center on Markham Street in Little Rock and will eventually extend to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in the city, according to the news release. Each honoree's name is commemorated with a 12-inch bronze marker on the trail and a biography on the trail's website, arkansascivilrightsheritage.org.

Several events regarding Elaine were held across Arkansas in September, the month in which the massacre began 100 years earlier.

The Elaine Massacre Memorial was dedicated in Helena's Court Square Park on Sept. 29, and symposiums on the massacre were held earlier that month in Fayetteville and Little Rock.

The induction ceremony will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday. This year's markers will be installed on the north sidewalk of President Clinton Avenue between Cumberland Street and Rock Street.

Speakers will include UALR Chancellor Christina Drale; U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark.; Lenora Marshall, a member of the Phillips County Quorum Court; Kwami Abdul-Bey, co-convener of the Arkansas Peace and Justice Memorial Movement; and Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott.

Brian Mitchell, assistant history professor at UALR, and his students will read the names, and birth and death places of the Elaine 12 defendants. Mitchell and his students have done extensive research on the Elaine Massacre.

The Elaine 12 were Alfred Banks, Ed Coleman, Joe Fox, Albert Giles, Paul Hall, Ed Hicks, Frank Hicks, Joe Knox, John Martin, Frank Moore, Ed Ware and William Wordlaw.

Two of the men are known to be buried in Arkansas, according to the news release. Moore, a World War I veteran, is buried in the National Cemetery in Little Rock, and Knox is buried in the Haven of Rest Cemetery in Little Rock.

The convictions of six of the Elaine 12 were overturned in a landmark Supreme Court ruling, Moore v. Dempsey, in 1923.

The Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail was created by the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity in 2011 to acknowledge the sacrifices and achievements of those who fought for racial and ethnic justice in Arkansas, according to the news release. Last year, the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail was named a part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.

Since the trail's inception in 2011, East-Harding Construction of Little Rock has partnered with the university to install each year's markers along the trail.