from the current issue of Literary Matters, ed. Ryan Wilson.
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Note: The following is an excerpt from Chapter 8, “In Memoriam”, from the book, Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation by J. Chester Johnson. Damaged Heritage is being published in May, 2020 by Pegasus Books. The Elaine Race Massacre of 1919, which occurred one county removed from where the author grew up white in southeast Arkansas, serves as a backdrop for much of the book’s commentary. As an excerpt, the following article also contains certain clarifications, modest in size, to provide context and linkages that do not appear in Chapter 8 of the original work.
In October, 2010, I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, located in the extreme northwest corner of the state and home of the University of Arkansas, to receive the University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. As part of this campus visit, which lasted several days, the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, an entity of the University, interviewed me through Scott Lunsford, associate director of the Center, for upwards of ten hours. At some point during the extensive interview, we began to explore the issue of race and its impact on my life, and as the discussion progressed, I veered toward the Elaine Race Massacre of 1919 that occurred among the rich cotton fields of Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Mississippi River Delta: more than a hundred and possibly hundreds of black sharecroppers and members of their families were killed. By this time, the Massacre had already begun to occupy a good deal of my intellectual attention, as well as my time, including a considerable amount dedicated to research on the particulars of the conflagration and its legally significant aftermath.
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for more of this piece by J. Chester Johnson, please link here.
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