An 18-year-old African American named William Turner was lynched on November 18, 1921, in Helena, Arkansas, for an alleged assault on a 15-year-old white girl. Two years earlier hundreds of African-Americans were killed during the Elaine Race Riot in Hoop Spur, a nearby community also in Phillips County, Arkansas.

Incident

Early November 18, 1921, a 15-year-old was walking to her work at the local telephone exchange when she was allegedly assaulted by William Turner. Before being arrested, the brother of the 15-year-old had shot Turner in the leg.

Lynching

Aware of the possibility of a lynching, Sheriff Mays tried to drive Turner to Marianna, Arkansas. However, a group of masked white men stopped the sheriff, dragged Turner out of the car and shot him dead. At the same time, a separate mob stormed the jail in rear of the Phillips County Courthouse. As the ambulance arrived on word of the shooting a larger mob of people pulled his body from the ambulance and shot his corpse several times. Then to chants from the mob of "Burn the body! Burn the body!" his body was doused with gasoline and set on fire. The Black paper the ''St. Louis Argus'' reported that "after the celebrants had had their fill," they called the victim’s father, August Turner, to come to the little city park to and remove his son's bullet-ridden, charred remains.

Red Summer

Two years earlier there were several incidents of civil unrest in the so-called American Red Summer of 1919. Terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods. In some cases, black community groups resisted the attacks, especially in Chicago and Washington DC. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine Race Riot in Hoop Spur, Phillips County, Arkansas (just from Helena, Phillips County, Arkansas) where an estimated 100 to 240 black people and 5 white people were killed. Also in 1919 were the

Chicago Race Riot The Chicago race riot of 1919 was a violent racial conflict between white Americans and black Americans that began on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, on July 27 and ended on August 3, 1919. During the riot, 38 people died (23 black and ...

and Washington D.C. race riot which killed 38 and 39 people respectively. Both had many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching into the millions of dollars.

National memorial

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018, in a setting of . Featured among other things, is a sculpture by

Kwame Akoto-Bamfo Kwame Akoto-Bamfo (born 1983) is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and activist, known for his sculptures and massive body of works dedicated to the memory, healing and Restorative Justice for people of African descent. His outdoor sculptur ...

of a mother with a chain around her neck and an infant in her arms. On a hill overlooking the sculpture is the Memorial Corridor which displays 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place and, for each county, the names of those lynched. According to the Equal Justice Initiative from 1880 to 1940 Phillips County had the highest rates of Lynching per year at 11.82 (Per 100,000 Residents) and had the most Lynching Victims at 245.

Bibliography

Notes References * * * * * * * {{Lynching in the United States 1921 riots in the United States 1921 in Arkansas African-American history of Arkansas History of Phillips County, Arkansas Lynching deaths in Arkansas November 1921 events in the United States Protest-related deaths Racially motivated violence against African Americans Riots and civil disorder in Arkansas White American riots in the United States