A 1961 article, "Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot," claimed that blacks were planning an insurrection, based on interviews with whites who had been alive at the time, and that they were fairly treated by planters of the area. It repeated rumors of 1919 that certain planters were targeted for murder.According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "the Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States.
After the massacre, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that blacks were planning an insurrection. The cover-up was successful, as national newspapers repeated the falsehood that blacks in Arkansas were staging an insurrection.A New York Times headline read, "Planned Massacre of Whites Today," and the Arkansas Gazette (the leading newspaper in Arkansas) wrote that Elaine was "a zone of negro insurrection."Subsequent to this reporting, more than 100 African-Americans were indicted, with 12 being sentenced to death by electrocution.After a years-long legal battle by the NAACP, the 12 men were acquitted.
Because of the widespread attacks which white mobs committed against blacks during the Red Summer of 1919, the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama classified the black deaths as lynchings in its 2015 report on the lynching of African Americans in the South.
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