In this essay, I turn to the example of the 1919 Elaine Massacre—the deadliest incident of anti-Black violence in U.S. history—in order to better understand how its economically motivated, state-sanctioned, and brutally indiscriminate violence were nearly erased from history. I find that white journalists, military officials, as well as the Governor of Arkansas himself, drew upon long-standing race-based fears in their characterizations of what took place in Elaine. In so doing, they were able to simultaneously glorify and obfuscate the anti-Black violence, as well as further protect the property and economic interests of the white residents who had putatively been “under threat.” The scale of the violence in Elaine and the near totality of its erasure from the official record make the Elaine Massacre a chilling example of what Lindsay Schakenbach Regele has described as “martial capitalism”: the use of concealed military violence to wrest economic resources away from marginalized communities and toward their white counterparts.

在本文中，我以 1919 年伊莱恩大屠杀为例，这是美国历史上最致命的反黑人暴力事件，以便更好地理解其经济动机、国家批准和残酷不分青红皂白的暴力行为是如何几乎从历史中抹去的。我发现白人记者、军方官员以及阿肯色州州长本人在描述伊莱恩事件时都利用了长期存在的基于种族的恐惧。通过这样做，他们能够同时美化和混淆反黑人暴力，并进一步保护被认为“受到威胁”的白人居民的财产和经济利益。伊莱恩暴力事件的规模及其几乎全部从官方记录中抹去，使伊莱恩大屠杀成为林赛·沙肯巴赫·雷格勒所说的“军事资本主义”的一个令人毛骨悚然的例子：利用隐蔽的军事暴力来夺取经济资源。边缘化社区及其白人同行。