b'APRIL 2024AMERICAS FORGOTTEN MASS MURDERS: WHEN 237 PEOPLE WERE MURDERED IN ARKANSAS Cont. from pad 7The posse believed that a black conspiracy to murder white planters had just been begun and that they must do whatever it took to put down the alleged uprising. The result was the Killing of 237 African Americans. The Arkansas sharecroppers who stood up against the white planters of Phillips County were a major part of resistance during 1919. Their came with heavy costs. As word of the trouble spread, white vigilantes from Mississippi crossed the river and began attacking blacks. The posse organized by Sheriff Kitchens scoured the canebrakes and fields, firing on blacks. Meanwhile,ArkansasGov.CharlesBroughcabledtheWarDepartmentto requestthedeploymentofinfantryunits.Almost600whitetroopsand officers soon arrived from Camp Pike. Told that a black uprising was underway, the soldiers rounded up African Americans and, like the Mississippi vigilantes andlocalposse,killedindiscriminately.AspecialagentfortheMissouri Pacific Railroad who led a force of approximately 50 white men later said the Mississippi mob shot and killed men, women and children without regard to whether they were guilty or innocent of any connection with the killing of anybody, or whether members of the union or not. The root cause of 1919s violence was the reassertion of white supremacy after World War I. Disfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, and biased police forces and courts had stripped Blacks of many of their constitutional rights and createddeepseteconomic,social,andpoliticalinequalities.Blackswho defied the rules and traditions of white supremacy risked personal ruin (being banished from their hometowns was one punishment), bodily harm (beatings and whippings), and death. Follow us on 8'