Biography
A. B. Brookins was a Black preacher, organizer, chaplain and song leader of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union near Marked Tree, Arkansas. Deputies and plantation men severely beat Brookins during a November 1934 raid on a union meeting in Cross County. He did not receive medical attention until the next day. On March 21, 1935, armed men attacked his home after failing to lure him outside. He went into hiding.
The union’s25th-anniversary history explicitly confirms actual arrest during a raid on a Negro church meeting near Parkin,CrossCounty. It says the sheriff and deputies arrested four organizers, kicked Brookins in the face and stomach, and withheld medical attention until the following day. Page 11’s named portrait identifies him as chaplain and song leader and adds that his ten-year-old daughter was wounded by a ricocheting bullet when night riders attacked his home. The booklet supplies no exact new arrest or discharge day; existing 1934/1935 chronology differences are not silently resolved. Source: https://archive.org/download/csfst_006827/csfst_006827_access.pdf#page=7
