December 7, 1936

A headline in a Time magazine article about Paul Peacher’s peonage conviction read “Slavery in Arkansas.” The year 1936 saw two notable instances of such “slavery”: Paul Peacher, a deputy sheriff of Crittenden County who had his own farming operation on the side, was revealed to be engaging in peonage, and a gang of white riding bosses and planters entered the Providence Methodist Church outside of Earle (Crittenden County) where 450 African-American sharecroppers were gathered for a meeting of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and began beating them with ax handles and pistol butts.