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PAPER TRAILS UCA professor’s book examines brutal, deadly railroad strike in northwest Arkansas in the early 1920s | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

PAPER TRAILS UCA professor’s book examines brutal, deadly railroad strike in northwest Arkansas in the early 1920s | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The story of how a group of citizens used violence and intimidation to quell the Arkansas railroad strike of 1923 is the subject of a fascinating new book by historian Kenneth S. Barnes.

Mob Rule in the Ozarks: The Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad Strike, 1921-1923, out now from the University of Arkansas Press, is a well-researched and thorough study of the railroad that ran from Helena through the Ozarks to Joplin, Missouri, the strike and its aftermath. .

Barnes talks about the benefits of rural Arkansas after the line opened and how a strike caused by the M&NA’s plans to cut workers’ wages affected the region’s economy.

He gives a vivid account of the uprising against the strikers and strike supporters, which resulted in one man being lynched and many others publicly stripped and beaten, beaten and driven from their homes in Harrison (where the M&NA was headquartered), Leslie, Heber Springs and elsewhere.

Barnes, professor emeritus of history at the University of Central Arkansas, decided to research the strike while working on a previous book, “The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas.”

“While writing this book, I came across the events of the Harrison Riot and the Klan’s connection to the Harrison Riot,” he said. “I also had this really rich evidence from legislative reports and transcripts from testimony taken before this committee.”

“Mob Rule in the Ozarks” recounts how the Klan, along with local and state officials, many of whom were Klan members, cooperated to suppress the strike by force, and details the farcical investigation of the events by a pro-railroad committee in the Arkansas Legislature.

He had already started writing when Donald Trump supporters rioted outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“It really made me think about how mobs can act,” he said, “and how they can act on behalf of certain people who could avoid getting their hands dirty.”

Barnes will discuss the book at 1 p.m. Friday at the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library, 186 Spring St., and at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Boone County Library, 221 W Stephenson Ave., in Harrison. Other events are planned for Heber Springs and Marshall in the coming weeks, he added.

As for what he would like readers to take away from the book, Barnes said, “I hope people will take a serious look at how easy it is to overlook violent, illegal activity if it serves your own economic interests. It bothers me that people at that time could so easily resort to violence and then dismiss it and justify it to some extent even today, and that worries me as a citizen, as it does me looking at these events of the 20s. historian”.

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