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12. The Legal Proceedings in Moore : The State Criminal Proceedings
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The Legal Proceedings in Moore: The State Criminal Proceedings Underlying Moore is not a single crime but a massive race riot that took place in the fall of 1919 in Phillips County, Arkansas, near the town of Elaine.1 How the outbreak originated was sharply disputed at the time,2 and remained so for generations.3 The local white establishment called the events an “insurrection”—the product of an organization of violent radicals and the machinations of an unscrupulous charlatan who duped blacks into joining4 —whose object, fortuitously disrupted before it could come to fruition, was a general massacre of whites by blacks. In the words of the Committee of Seven, a quasi-official group of prominent local citizens who investigated the outbreak: The present trouble with the Negroes in Phillips county is not a race riot. It is a deliberately planned insurrection of the Negroes against the white[s], directed by an organization known as the “Progressive Farmers’ and Household Union of America,” established for the purpose of banding Negroes together for the killing of white people.5 The NAACP took the view, which is supported by modern scholarship, that the violence was an effort by whites to revenge and deter legal attacks on an entrenched system of peonage.6 The events took place, moreover, within the context not only of bloody race riots throughout the country but of the “Red Scare”: class-based strife was manifesting itself in violent disputes over working conditions, and in vigorous advocacy—and even more vigorous suppression—of radical political and economic views.7 Thus, as the riot was beginning, a lawyer seeking to meet with the tenant farmers in the neighborhood was seized by vigilantes who claimed to have taken from him literature of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as of the Progressive Farmers’ Union. After being held in jail for a month—partly for his own protection from 12 68 lynching—he was released, but, to appease the mob, indicted for barratry (a charge that was dropped the following year). Following the disturbances, the Arkansas authorities sought, by complaint to the Post Office and by state court injunction proceedings, to prevent the circulation of newspapers containing “untrue and seditious” accounts of the Elaine riot and other contentious episodes.8 Meanwhile, between 200 and 250 blacks and at least four whites had been killed in the violence before order was eventually restored by federal troops. No whites faced criminal charges growing out of the upheaval, but 122 blacks were indicted, 73 of them for murder. Ultimately, 67 blacks were sentenced to prison terms and 12 to death, all for the murder of whites.9 The death sentences were returned within six weeks of the riot in a series of trials in each of which jury deliberations lasted less than ten minutes: Table 2 The Elaine Riot Capital Cases, 1919 Defendant Date Convicted Victim Jury Deliberations Ware Defendants Ed Ware Nov. 18 W. D. Adkins 4 minutes William Wordlow Nov. 4 W. D. Adkins 9 minutes Albert Giles Nov. 4 James A. Tappan 6 minutes Joint Joe Fox Nov. 4 James A. Tappan 6 minutes trial John Martin Nov. 4 W. D. Adkins Unknown Joint Alf Banks, Jr. Nov. 4 W. D. Adkins Unknown trial Moore Defendants Frank Hicks Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 8 minutes Frank Moore Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 7 minutes Joint Ed Hicks Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 7 minutes trial J. E. Knox Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 7 minutes Joint Paul Hall Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 7 minutes trial Ed Coleman Nov. 2 Clinton Lee 7 minutes10 The remaining 67 sentences resulted from guilty pleas entered, perhaps prudently , after these trials had taken place.11 In December, the defendants sentenced to death filed motions for new trials.12 The primary grounds were: 1. [They are all] negro[es] of the African race, and . . . at the time of the returning of . . . [the] indictment and trial . . . bitterness of feeling among the whites of . . . [the] county, against the negroes, especially against the The Legal Proceedings in Moore: The State Criminal Proceedings | 69 [3.238.57.9] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:11 GMT) defendant[s] was . . . at the height of intensity . . . [and] co-extensive with the county . . . ; [t]hat during . . . [their] confinement . . . [they] were frequently subjected to torture, for the purpose of extracting from . . . [them] admission [s] of guilt—as were others then also in custody, to force them to testify against defendant[s] . . . ; [t]hat while . . . [they...