Blood in Their Eyes examines the Elaine, Arkansas racial violence of 1919 by tracing how Black sharecroppers organizing for fair treatment became the target of law enforcement, white mobs, and military force in Phillips County, Arkansas. It combines a narrative of the escalation and aftermath with close attention to the Jim Crow power structure, the climate of fear and silence that followed, and the long legal and historical reverberations—using newly uncovered or re-examined sources (in later editions) to deepen the portrait of what happened and why it was buried for so long.
