A letter from our Civil Wrongs coordinator

October 13, 2023

Dear Reader,

During the Great Depression, eastern Arkansas was ground zero in a nationwide civil rights campaign to end the exploitation of poor farmworkers.

Not too far from Memphis, a federal case against a sheriff’s deputy made national headlines. Under color of law, this deputy had enslaved eight Black men on his plantation – seven decades after Emancipation. 



This is the subject of our upcoming season of Civil Wrongs and the topic of a talk I gave this week to the Arkansas Legal Aid conference.  

Laura Kebede-Twumasi

With me was Carla Peacher-Ryan, the great-niece of the sheriff’s deputy, and Robert F. Thompson, a Paragould lawyer who first wrote a historical article about the case in the 1990s.

Together, we unpacked the tensions in Cotton Country in the 1930s and the rise of a rare interracial labor union, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Challenging the agricultural oligarchy at the time was dangerous, and the laborer-activists faced beatings, eviction, and even death.

Carla Peacher-Ryan speaks at Wednesday's conference. With her are Robert F. Thompson (left) and Laura Kebede-Twumasi

Despite the obstacles, their advocacy helped push for the era’s most significant labor laws establishing rules around overtime, minimum wage, and employee rights to organize a union. But as we’ve learned in reporting about connections to present-day injustices, those laws are only as good as their enforcement.  

Many of the conference attendees were not familiar with this history, which has been the case for most of the public presentations we’ve made on our historical investigations for Civil Wrongs. Tragically, the past – and its invaluable lessons – is often forgotten.

A picture from Time magazine in 1936 of enslaved men who testified at Paul Peacher's trial.

Together, we'll learn how the past informs the present, and what history can teach us about today.

Laura Kebede-Twumasi

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The Institute is led by director Marc Perrusquia, who worked nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He’s the author of the 2018 book “A Spy In Canaan,’’ which exposed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as an FBI informant and inspired the 10-part podcast “Ernie’s Secret” and the documentary film “The Picture Taker,’’ to be released on PBS in January.

The Institute’s associate director, David Waters, worked more than 30 years at The Commercial Appeal and another four at The Washington Post. He is revered as Memphis’s best news writer and is beloved for his work exploring faith, child poverty and education

Laura Kebede-Twumasi is a Report for America corps member. She recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special “History, Justice and the Journalists” on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area. She previously covered education inequities for Chalkbeat Tennessee and local government and religion for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.