Scipio Africanus Jones - The Elaine Twelve

The Elaine Twelve

Jones is most famous for his skillful defense of the Elaine 12, twelve black sharecroppers sentenced to death for participation in the Elaine Race Riot in 1919. The twelve men had been sentenced to death by an all-white jury in a series of trials that were said to have lasted approximately 20 minutes.

The plight of the Elaine 12, and 87 other black men who were convicted to prison terms for participation in the riot, quickly made international headlines. Three organizations offered assistance: the Arkansas Conference on Negro Organizations (ACNO), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Equal Rights League (NERL). The ACNO and NERL joined together to hire Jones as the defense attorney for all 99 of the convicted men. The NAACP hired former state attorney general George W. Murphy as the defense attorney for only the Elaine 12. The two attorneys were friends and decided to work together.

When Murphy died unexpectedly, Jones took the lead in guiding the appeals process. After much internal debate, the NAACP temporarily retained Jones as their replacement for Murphy, making him briefly the sole attorney for all of the 99 defendants. He successfully saw the Elaine 12 case to the Supreme Court of the United States and is credited with having been the author of the brief used before the Court.

When it was time to argue the Elaine 12 case before the Supreme Court, the NAACP decided to replace Jones with Moorfield Storey and former assistant U.S. attorney Ulyssess S. Bratton. It was Jones' efforts that led to the landmark Supreme Court Moore v. Dempsey ruling that, for the first time, permitted collateral attack through habeas corpus on a state appellate court decision.

During the trials, Jones received frequent lynching threats and was said to have shifted his location each night to avoid those who wanted the Elaine 12 defendants convicted at any cost.

New trials were granted to the twelve defendants as the court stated that they had not received due process in the original trials.

Charges were quickly dismissed against six of the defendants. The remaining six were retried, convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Jones successfully lobbied Arkansas Governor Thomas McRae, who had earlier refused to release the defendants, to let men out on indefinite furloughs in 1925 just hours before Governor-Elect Thomas Terral assumed office.

This was important because Terral was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). During a speech before one of the largest KKK rallies in Arkansas history the night before his inauguration, Terral vowed to execute the remaining Elaine 12 defendants as his first official duty in office.

Before leaving office, Governor McRae also pardoned the other 87 Elaine defendants.