Mob Rule in the Ozarks

The Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad Strike, 1921-1923

Kenneth C. Barnes

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781682262627
  9781682262610
• eBook ISBN:
  9781610758284
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Winner, 2025 J.G. Ragsdale Award (Arkansas Historical Association)

On January 15, 1923, a crowd of more than a thousand angry men assembled in Harrison, Arkansas, near the headquarters of the M&NA Railroad, which ran through the heart of the Ozark Mountains. The mob was prepared to use any measure necessary to end the strike of railroad employees that had dragged on for nearly two years, endangering livelihoods and businesses in an area with few other means of transportation. Supported by local officials, the mob terrorized strikers and sympathizers—many were stripped and beaten, and one man was lynched, hanged from the railroad bridge south of town. Over the next several days, similar riots broke out in other towns along the M&NA line, including Leslie and Heber Springs.

This violence effectively brought to a close one of the longest rail strikes in American history—the only one, in fact, ended by a mob uprising. In Mob Rule in the Ozarks, Kenneth C. Barnes documents how the M&NA Railroad strike reflected some of the major economic concerns that preoccupied the United States in the wake of World War I, and created a rupture within communities of the Ozarks that would take years to heal. The conflict also foreshadowed, for both the region and the country, the pendulum's swing back to moneyed interests, away from Progressive Era gains for labor. Poignantly for Barnes, who sees parallels between this historic struggle and present-day political tensions, the strike revealed the fragile line between civil order and mob rule.
 

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. A Railroad Cuts through the Ozarks
• Chapter 2. The Strike Begins: February–July 1921
• Chapter 3. No Trains Run: August 1921–May 1922
• Chapter 4. Conflict Deepens: June–December 1922
• Chapter 5. The Harrison Riot of January 1923
• Chapter 6. Mob Rule in Harrison: January 16–31, 1923
• Chapter 7. The Mob Moves Down the Line: January 1923
• Chapter 8. Investigations: 1923
• Chapter 9. Aftermath: 1923–1924
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index