Biography
Sam Wilson was one of the Black defendants imprisoned after the Elaine massacre of September–October 1919 in Phillips County, Arkansas, in which white mobs and federal troops killed an estimated 100 to 800 Black residents who had been organizing the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America to demand fair settlement for their cotton. Arkansas prosecuted 122 Black survivors in trials lasting minutes before all-white juries; not a single white attacker was charged. Rather than face a death sentence, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Luther Earles case and was sentenced to twenty-one years in the state penitentiary. His exact release date is not established in the sources.
Release-date correction: The January 13, 1925 endpoint did not apply to this defendant and has been removed. The individual release date remains unresolved. The University of Arkansas Press chronology distinguishes the six Moore defendants from the other Elaine prisoners, whose releases were completed by December 19, 1924. That latest-known group boundary is not substituted for an individual release date.
