August 7, 2012

Members of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) took preliminary steps toward economic independence by hiring Little Rock (Pulaski County) lawyer Ulysses S. Bratton to sue their Phillips County landlords for their share of the large 1919 fall cotton crop. Planters believed that the organization represented a significant, and possibly violent, challenge to their economic and social hegemony. The ensuing violence became known as the Elaine Massacre.