William Wordlaw

William Wordlaw was one of the "Elaine Twelve," and one of the six "Ware" defendants — Black sharecroppers sentenced to death by an all-white jury 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. The Ware defendants' convictions were reversed by the Arkansas Supreme Court (Ware v. State) for procedural defects; when the state failed to retry them within the time the law allowed, they were discharged on June 25, 1923.