The Negroes were undoubtedly daring, and held public meetings and used sufficient bravado to alarm the local white population. The rumor flew from farm to farm that the Negroes were plotting an insurrection. Someone discovered a heap of rifles stacked where they had been left and forgotten when the Armistice had interrupted drilling. This gave the necessary color to the idea. Besides the rusty rifles, the Negroes were seen to be not without firearms of one kind or another. The Negro loves weapons, as an Oriental loves jewelry. Shotguns and revolvers in plenty are to be found in the cabins of the colored country folk. The Whites put up a _provocateur_ as before a pogrom in Russia. He started firing on Negroes at random in the Elaine streets. Then two white officials attempted to break into a Negro meeting, resorted to arms, and were met by firing in return. One of the Whites was killed, the other wounded. This started the three days of destruction in Phillips County. The whole Negro population was rounded up by white troops and farmers with rifles. Machine guns were even brought into play against an imaginary black army. A great number of Negroes were put in a stockade under military arrest, many were killed, many wounded. And three hundred were placed in jail and charged with riot and murder. No Whites were arrested. The governor, a Mr. Brough, was largely responsible for this method of investigating the alleged conspiracy of the Negroes to make an insurrection. The whole occurrence was astonishingly ugly, and it was followed by ten-minute trials before exclusively white juries, and swift sentences to electrocution for some Negro prisoners, and to long terms of penal servitude for others. The riot and the trials so exasperated Negroes throughout the United States that there is no doubt a Federal Commission of impartial men might well have been appointed to investigate the whole affair, both as regards its inception and as regards its military culmination and its aftermath of trial and punishment. As it is, though Governor Brough says to the Negroes, “You _did_ plan an insurrection,” and though the Whites of Elaine may feel happier and more secure, it is an obvious truism that the white population of other States cannot be feeling more secure because of it, and that the Negroes in other districts feel less secure—they feel the need to arm. It has caused a great increase in public insecurity. Perhaps because of this the riot has been more discussed than other riots. Somewhat shocked and fretful, the governor, who is probably a brisk business man, and in no way like one of those more neurotic governors of Russian provinces which occur in Aùdreyev’s tales, called a meeting. Some four hundred Whites and tamed Negroes were brought together to see what could be done to improve race relationship. This was a month after these events. The _Commercial Appeal_ of Memphis reports the governor’s remarks: