The Elaine Legacy Center is hosting four online events this month to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Elaine Massacre, a deadly racial confrontation that started Sept. 30, 1919, in Phillips County.
At 5 p.m. Wednesday, Larry L. Welborn, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Fordham University, will present “Paul’s Vision of the Future of Race: Ethnicity and Social Justice.”
On Sept. 16, retired Arkansas Appeals Court Judge Olly Neal, author of the recently published “Outspoken: The Olly Neal Story,” will speak and take questions beginning at 5 p.m. Neal’s Zoom session will be facilitated by James Deke Pope, inaugural president of the Black Student Association at Memphis State University.
At 5 p.m. Sept. 23, Paul Ortiz, professor of history and director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and author of “An African American and Latinx History of the United States,” will present a program called “Why Oral History.”
And at 1 p.m. Sept. 30, two speakers who grew up in Elaine — Catherine Meeks, executive director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, and Nibs Stroupe, nationally recognized leader of racial healing and Presbyterian pastor — will speak and take questions on their book “Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time.”
Each online session will be one-hour long, according to the center. To participate, email elainemassacre2020@yahoo.com.