S3 E1: The Sheriff and the Sharecroppers

Slavery was still happening in eastern Arkansas in the 1930s — seven decades after Emancipation.

Efforts to seek better pay and working conditions by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a rare interracial labor organization, sparked violent backlash from the planter class. One sheriff’s deputy went so far as to arrest and enslave eight Black men on trumped up charges so they could work on land that he was leasing.

In this first episode of season 3 of the Institute for Public Service Reporting’s podcast Civil Wrongs, we follow the federal investigation that followed and talk with descendants of people connected to this case who only recently learned this piece of their family history.