 I'm Marsha Joyner, and we are navigating the journey. Today's journey is long ago and far away, and yet it's current. Given the occupant of the White House, it is necessary that we take a look at what yesterday was like when he talks about going back. We can't do that. So I have invited Mary Olson, the founder of the Elaine Legacy Center, to take us on this journey back to Arkansas. Elaine Arkansas. Mary? Hey, thank you for having me on the program, and thank you for your words of wisdom. We are the Elaine Legacy Center, the site of the largest massacre in the United States history. That is to say the Native American massacres were prior to the founding of the nation. And we are celebrating or commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Elaine Massacre. It also is a great victory because although hundreds and hundreds of people died, we estimate about 1,000. Eventually, the Elaine 12 chose not to fight back with guns, but to use the legal processes in order to make a case. And they won in the United States Supreme Court in 1923. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the decision that said, this basically states must follow the federal bill of rights. People must have equality. Well, but the center was founded. Let me just add this point because our oral history of African Americans, whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were alive and suffered or survived the massacre, do not match what academics write about it. The themes of our oral histories are land theft. People came in and killed in order to steal land and transgenerational trauma. And the stealing of the land, the transgenerational trauma, and the inequalities still go on today. So basically it's 100 years since the three-day massacre, but it had been going on since years before it and on through today. Well, we are developing a case for reparations. And you have an event on teaching civil rights to high schoolers, discussing all of these issues that did come up. And tell us about that event. Right. We're excited about this because Paul Ortiz is bringing a team in here to document oral history and to lead a big event on August 10th in which he himself will lead the Teaching Acres History because he has recently published a book called The African American and Latinx History of the United States, Re-Vision American History. That's to say, seeing history through the eyes of the African American and the Latino or Hispanic populations. And then a community leader that Marcia, I believe you know, is Ahara Simmons. Yes. And she is a professor of African American studies. Been a member of SNCC for years and a leader. She has her PhD in African American studies. And then Bill Brand, Michael Brandon is going to be with us. His specialty is teaching civil rights to high schoolers. We expect many Teach for America students here because teachers in general ponder how do we teach civil rights so that people today can come to understand the young people are not just passive and do not just feel they have no put into it, input into it. But how do they really come alive in a leadership role that only they can lead? Well, we have a video of a newscast. It's that honestly it just grips you right in the gut because this is a story that most of us don't know. And I thought that I was versed in most of these riots and massacres, but I had missed this one. So I would like for our audience, because most of them are like me and didn't know, and especially the youngsters. So this is a newscast that was made. And I'd like for our audience to see this because once they see it, then they know the importance of what you're doing. Can we show that, please? A few events of the past change with time and perspective. Historians are now taking a closer look at one of the state's most tragic events. It is a chapter of history that few people know about or even understand. And tonight's all about Arkansas. Steve Powell recounts the frightening last days of September 1919 in the small Delta town of Elaine, Arkansas. In this part of Phillips County, the crops stretch beyond the horizon, field upon field, bake in the steamy Delta heat. A small community does stand in the midst of all this farmland, but precious little is growing in town. They've closed the schools here. Elaine, Arkansas is fighting for its survival. It's hard to imagine tougher times, but here it's been worse, much worse. Historically, this was just about the worst thing that could have happened in the United States. Author Griff Stockley is one of the state's preeminent scholars on race relations. He believes what happened in Elaine some 87 years ago may be the bleakest moment in Arkansas's racial history. Locals say it happened here at what's now known as Morningstar Church, a group of mostly black sharecroppers held a union meeting. Many whites opposed the union and the emerging black empowerment movement. A few showed up outside the church. We don't know whether they were just there to spy or to break up the meeting, but as it turned out, their shots rang out. We don't know who fired the first shot, but a white was killed. What happened next was a firestorm. Blacks outnumbered whites on 9 to 1 in that part of the county. Whites began to panic thinking that blacks were going to quote, revolt. The papers of the day fueled the panic. Angry whites descended on Elaine by the hundreds. The result, according to Stockley, was no riot. It was a massacre. We basically had 600 person to 1,000 person posse that came in and literally began to shoot blacks. 500 troops from Camp Pike came to restore order. Governor Brough came on the same train. It was too late for many. Stockley says hundreds of African Americans had been killed. If I'm right about the number of people killed, it represents the worst racial violence in the United States that's ever occurred. Five whites died too. In the aftermath, blacks were arrested by the dozens. Twelve were hastily sentenced to die in the electric chair. We know that hundreds of African Americans were killed in Elaine. But in fact, there was not a single white who was charged for the murder of any of them. The 12 blacks sentenced to death were eventually released, thanks in part to the legal work of black little rock attorney, Cipio Jones. The men had spent years in prison. Whites certainly are in denial about what happened, but at the same time, blacks historically have not wanted to address these issues. Nothing could be more painful than to think about the fact that your relatives were massacred. Historians like Stockley will continue to study what happened all those years ago. As for the folks in Elaine, they have little time to contemplate the past. They just want to secure their future. Steve Powell, all about Arkansas. And the Elaine School closing came through consolidation. Many in the county hope that decision will be reversed. By the way, Stockley's book on Elaine is called Blood in Their Eyes and it is available in bookstores. Wow. Does that just not tear your heart out? And to think that it was done over and over from one city to the next, it's just hard to think, to see that. And to think that the occupant of the White House is trying to take this back. Mary? Yes. For us, what the occupant in the White House does is remind us that possibly what he knew is in America we didn't want to exist. He recognized the vast numbers of white supremacists and we didn't want to believe it. As we go back in history, we see that the white terrorism of 1919 and slavery itself, the same roots are within the spirit of America today. And it happened here. It happened in Hawaii. Hawaii has a story not unlike ours of terrible inequality. And we need to unite to shape a new movement that brings all the movements together. We see ourselves as the epicenter here, which is why we are sponsoring events like how to teach civil rights and how to teach accurate history. Because in a sense, we're little and we're small and we're rural. We know our people, our enemies, the white supremacists and the peacemakers all have real faces and real names. But we are like the whole country. And the question is, can we reshape America? Martin Luther King's dream was the American dream for all. And it needs to somehow we need to figure out how to transform our country. From Nazareth, some of us say, from Galilee, from Elaine, Arkansas. Exactly. Is Elaine in reference to the major cities in Arkansas that we know about? Yeah, we're two and a half hours from Little Rock and about an hour and a half from Memphis. We're in the Delta, the poorest region. We're over on the banks of the Mississippi River. We're scared of flooding now from all the rains that came into the Gulf and into our area. We are on the vast Delta, the vast cotton plantation. And if you cross the river in the Mississippi, you see the same plantation economy and the same Delta culture. What is it like now? Yeah, what is the town like now? It is very small, very rural and still it is the center of agriculture in the region. Many African Americans are in substandard housing, living well below the poverty level. At the same time, the largest farmer in America, according to my definition, lives within a stone's roll of Elaine. The very large disparities of 1919 are existing today. I always say the poorest people in the country live on the richest soils in the world in Elaine, Arkansas. We have a front street that's going down, but we also have new businesses springing up and we are looking to use the pilgrimages as an economic base for furthering the culture of Elaine. We need to take a break and we will be back in 60 seconds and then tell us more about what you expect, what you want from your project, the teaching, accurate history and civil rights. We'll be back in one minute. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Stan Osterman, Stan the energy man. Every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. If you're really interested in finding out what's going on in energy, especially here in Hawaii, but also all the way around the world and especially if it has to do with hydrogen, look into Stan the energy man. Every Friday, 12 o'clock, Think Tech Hawaii. Be there. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and we're back. We are visiting with my new best friend, Mary Olson. Thank you. He is the Elaine Legacy Center, the founder of the Elaine Legacy Center. So tell us more about the Elaine Legacy Center and where you expect to go with it. What do you want from it? From the center itself, we expect to be, first of all, a center for the accurate history of the massacre and the victory at the US Supreme Court. And we expect that to lead into new leadership in the movement for civil rights. We have a partner with a number of national groups such as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, such as the National Council of Churches. And we expect to see out of our area to come the leadership. Because we're little and when people come to Elaine, they don't have anything else they have to run and do. They come together and civil rights leaders in great numbers are coming together in Elaine to discuss. So that's one of the purposes of this event coming up August 10th. Yes, we will have lectures on teaching accurate history. People will be more aware that we need to have the oppression of the African-American and the Hispanic people understood as the core of history and real history. And we need to figure out and realize that that has a whole lot of implications for our own reparations strategies. If oral history is more true than what the academics write because they come from major, mainline white, basically white institutions, then we need to prioritize oral history for truth. But in all of that, the people who come are as important as what we're talking about. Civil rights leaders from across the Mid-South will be with us. Teachers will be with us. When I got this email, it said, and the reason I called you, it was asking people if they have stories, let you know. We are interested in other aspects of black history. And if you have stories, that's when I called you. Not to hear my story, but to hear more about all of these other stories, to really tie in to you and your project and to stay tuned to your project as it moves along, as we have stories that the rest of us can get to know. We are broadcast on YouTube, which goes everywhere. So we would like to know the stories. We would like to meet the people that come to your event. Thank you. You're absolutely right. Around the event, Paul Ortiz has a strong team of oral history experts. They've just added us to their Mississippi summer project. So Elaine now is part of the Mid-South oral history. They will take roughly 50 stories of oral history that tell the story of Elaine as a story of stealing land, murdering to steal land and trauma. And it will go on the internet and it will be available. What it is doing, this is the first time we've had a whole team like that in here. And what it is doing is we are getting calls from all over. We're not from Elaine, but we would like our stories recorded. And yes, people from the Mid-South will have their stories told. Actually, I would recommend, Marcia, that you from Hawaii call in and have your story recorded electronically. Because they are very much interested in pulling together stories from Elaine, but also from the Civil Rights Movement of our day. Well, Hawaii has its own issues. And in fact, as we speak, the Indigenous Hawaiians are at the top of the mountain at Mauna Kea, protesting the development of a telescope, one of those massive telescopes. And in fact, I was just saying that the world needed to see that as we have the protesters. Absolutely. The protesters. Absolutely. And the security. And when I was watching this morning and it was live on television. And to see the protests could be so peaceful. And it could be that when we disagree, it doesn't have to be ugly. And this one security guard said to this capuna, the older lady, he said, I am of your blood. And oh, I just cried. I just cried. But it is a protest. And it goes back as far back as we can take this to taking the land. Right. The language, everything. That's where this starts. That's absolutely right. And I'd like to encourage you or others from Hawaii because I'm sure Paul would take some over the phone interviews because what we need to do is increase the value of oral history. Just as the academic history has never said a word about land theft, the oral histories say nothing but land theft or as primary. Yes. We need to expand that that's true in Hawaii. And I'm sure Hawaii has tried to hide that story across the Delta. They have tried to hide that story because the investors who came in and did it are still big names in our society. Yes. They are. Yes. Yeah. And so, and also encourage whoever is listening that it's not, it's a gift to have all our teams bring a team in here. He is often called the leading expert on oral histories and the value of oral histories. And his recent book shows that. But usually we don't have a polar teaser and start documenting your own oral history. What's not as easy to do as it sounds. No, it isn't. And because even categorizing them, they get lost computers and but it's important. It is important. And we need to begin to take down our own stories. Now, would you give us a telephone number or email that we can put on the screen so people can send can call you and send you their oral histories or how they can participate, whatever you wanted, however you want to do that. Yeah, the phone number is 8708166798. Right. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So anybody that wants to participate wants to have their oral history included in the project can call that number. Right. And this is a project we expect to go on for years. So this is the beginning of it for us. And after this year you will be able to see on the website from the University of Florida. Oh, these oral histories. It's going to be on their website, University of Florida. Yes. Yes. Do we have an email for them? I do. I do not have their, I will send it to you, Marcia, when I get it. Okay. Call Ortiz is developing that and redeveloping it. And so I'll get the latest one from you. He currently is in New Zealand. Gathering oral histories from New Zealand. From the Maui's? The Maui's went through the same thing of losing their land. And language. Yes. Correct. And the fact that we dream in the conqueror's language is unbelievable. You know, we lose our histories. Right, absolutely right. The stories, our heroes, our language. And like I said, and we dream in this language, yeah. Yeah. Even the words slave owner is problematic for us. Because slave owner infers dominance and infers it's all right. We've started saying people who enslaved people, but we're looking for a term for enslavement of others. That would grasp what people were really doing. Yeah. Land theft. Land theft. Another word. Cultural theft. Land theft. Language theft. That's good. Cultural theft. Right. Yeah. And then realize how united we are. Our story is not unique. That's too bad. It is not unique. It's really sad. It happens over and over again. All across the world. Yes. It is too bad. And we ask ourselves, so what should we be doing at the border with Mexico? Well, you know, they don't talk about the fact that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California belong to Mexico. That's absolutely right. That was part of Mexico. And then the Mexican war and the Americans took it. Right. And now they don't want the Mexicans to come in. Yes. Right. That's absolutely right. That's all the same underneath. It's the same lack of virtual values across the country and across the world. Right. Mary, this has been a real pleasure spending this time with you and just know that we will be back and we'll talk more of the closer you get to the event and to talk to Paul. Thank you. And we look forward to being on film with you next time, not just voice. Okay. We look forward to helping people see Elaine, see how similar it is to where you are living and what you are living through now and live through yesterday. Thank you so much. And look forward to being new partners. Thank you. Aloha. And we'll see you next time. Aloha. Aloha. Amen.