Omaha monitor., 1929-01-04

A shot was fired and a white man
in the street was killed. All eleven
colored people were arrested and
charged with Conspiracy" to commit
first degree murder. A first trial of
all defendants together resulted in
jury disagreement. The defendants
then elected to be tried separately
and the state elected to try Henry
Sweet first. Defended by Clarence
Darrow, with the assistance of Thorn
as Chawke and other attorneys re-
tanned by the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored Peo-
pie, the young colored man was ac-
quilted, and early in 1928, the cases
against all the other defendants were
dismissed.
In his argument before the jury,
Mr.. barrow recited the circumstances
preceding and entering into the case,
and the Negroes history and expert
ence of oppression at the hands of
white America He added: "You
know what this case is. You know
why it is. You know that if white
men had been fighting their way
against colored men, nobody would
ever have dreamed of a prosecution.
And you know that, from the begin
ming of this case to the end, up to
the time you write your verdict, the
prosecution is based on race preju-
dice and nothing else"
ARKANSAS PEONACE CASES
Still another criminal case, or rath-
err q series of them, illumined social
processes as well as court procedure
in the cotton raising section of Ar
kansas in 1919, and eliminated in
decision by the United States SUI
preme court in which that court re-
versed a position it had taken in its
decision in the famous Leo Frank
case Frank " Mangum, 237 U. S.
309).
The cases arose out of the share
cropping and tenant farming system
prevalent in Arkansas and through
out the cotton raising sections of the
Mississippi Delta and the south gen.
orally. By this system, advances in
food and supplies are made to Negro
farmers, generally through the land
lords store, the Indebtedness being
charged against the Negro farmers
crop when that has been made. The
system lends itself to gross exploita-
ton of the farmer-tenant, the land
lord often declining to make any
statement of account, overcharging
heavily for supplies and thus keeping
his tenants in debt slavery, or peon-
age.
The Negro farmers in and about
Elaine, Ark, early in 1919, when cot
ton had scared in price, organized to
employ counsel in the effort to OBJ
tain statement of account, fair
settlement and their bare legal rights
from their landlords. A meeting of
colored farmers gathered to raise the
lawyers fee in a church at Hoop
Spur, Ark, was fired upon, and the
church subsequently burned to the
ground and, according to the tran
script of record later filed in the
United States supreme court, reign
of terror was lnaugurated in which
Negroes, men and women, were shot
down in the fields like wild beasts.
Negroes were penned in stockades in
Little Rock, numerous arrests were
made, and testimony was forced by
torture with strangling drugs, flog-
gings and an electric chair" on the
basis of which, without adequate de-
Tense, twelve Negro farmers were
summarily sentenced to death and 81
to lif imprisonment and long terms.
Investigation by the National Asso-
citation for the Advancement of Col
ored People having established the
facts, the convictions of the colored
farmers were appealed, colored at
torney, Scipio A. Jones, bearing the
arduous burden of the defense in
Arkansas. All of the defendants
eventually were liberated.
The case of six of the twelve con-
demnsd farmers appealed to the
United States supreme court Moore
v. Dempsey, 261 U. S. 86) raised the
question of due process of law in
court dominated by mog atmosphere.
The majority decisiion of the court,
handed down by Mr.. Justic Oliver
Wendell Holmes, summarized the
question at issue as follows:
"The ground of the petition for
the writ is that the proceedings in the
state court, although trial in form,
were only a form, and that the ap-
pellants were hurried to conviction
under the pressure of mob without
any regard for their rights and with