SDPC Elaine Massacres Hearing
One-Hundred Year Commemoration: Red Summer
Four-Hundred Year Commemoration: Quad-Centennial 

The mission of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) is to nurture, sustain and mobilize the African American faith community to address critical needs of human and social justice within local, national and global communities. In collaboration with civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders, SDPC strives to strengthen the individual and collective capacity of leaders and activists in the church, academy and community through education, advocacy and activism.  We are standing tall for such a time as this and we are pleased that our efforts as a United Nations Non-Governmental Organization are yielding new partnerships and outcomes.  

As an African American developed, -led, and purposed organization, we know that the Black-lived experience in the United States historically can be translated into tones that echo something familiar for African Americans today. Then and now (in 1619, in 1919 and today in 2019), white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy stirs up storm clouds of destruction. Then and now (in 1619, in 1919 and today in 2019), Africans across the Diaspora are repeatedly exposed to biases and trauma at the hands of populist nationalism.

Given the significant history of Elaine, Arkansas, SDPC selected this upcoming 100-year commemoration of the Red Summer and the Elaine massacres, during this Quad-Centennial remembrance occasion, to begin what we see as the sacred work of reclaiming memory and righting history- speaking truth to power about racial cleansing in this nation and exposing the roots of racial economic injustice that plagues African Americans in the state of Arkansas today. Our goal in Elaine was to incisively listen to the black citizens of Elaine and scholarly perspectives of the massacres – the narratives and perspectives that are all too often ignored, marginalized or maligned in public discourse. 

The Hushmouth: The Elaine Massacre video offers a summary of what themes emerged out of what was said on that scared ground in Elaine where the blood of our ancestors soaked the soil upon which we gathered. Although, one hundred years later, the story is not widely known, courageous citizens from Elaine, Arkansas, trusted scholars and academics gave voice to issues regarding racial terror, land ownership, land theft, debt, slavery, the state of racial oppression in the Arkansas Delta and reparations stemming from the 1919 massacres. 

Please share this video with your family, academic community and faith community. Please find the time to further contemplate and reflect upon the importance of the community gathering; the invaluable truth encapsulated in the oral utterings of a past unknown; the terror and trauma that resides in our communal and personal histories and memories; and the ways in which you are still being called to share with others the continuing quest for justice and human rights that we seek. 

We are honored to uniquely serve the SDPC family in the shared responsibility to tell our story. As these commemorative years collide, we know that only Divine Time can truly mark the pain and the promise of this moment across the generations of time, place and circumstance.

For exclusive access to the Truth Telling Commission on the Elaine Massacres, please complete the form below. 

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