On September 30, 1919, members of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) met with an accountant outside of Elaine, Arkansas. In the heart of the Mississippi Delta, which stretches from the southeast corner of Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico along the Mississippi River, the union members — mostly black sharecroppers — had been laboring under white planters who refused to pay them for their portion of the largest cotton crop in the region’s history. The accountant they met was the son of a lawyer, who would be taking their case to court. Or so they thought.

After just forty minutes, the meeting between PFHUA and the accountant was broken up by a heavily armed white posse. Simultaneously, white assailants fired upon another meeting of union members at a nearby church. When PFHUA returned fire, killing one of their attackers, word quickly spread that a planned “insurrection” by the black sharecroppers was underway. Over the next week, white planters, local sheriffs, vigilantes, the American Legion, and active-duty Army troops tore through Elaine and the surrounding areas, indiscriminately torturing, killing, and desecrating the bodies of black residents. When the violence finally receded, up to 856 black people lay dead in what would come to be known as the Elaine Massacre. Needless to say, the sharecroppers’ suit against the planters did not materialize.

Nevertheless, unwilling to remain under the heel of planter tyranny and white supremacy, black sharecroppers continued organizing. Beginning in 1934, they joined the Socialist Party–backed Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) by the tens of thousands, along with the Communist-led Alabama Sharecroppers Union. Over the next decade, the STFU enabled mostly black sharecroppers and white tenant farmers to challenge their exploitation, and the Communists proved themselves an unparalleled force against Jim Crow tyranny.