Elaine is a small town in Phillips County, Arkansas, United States, in the Arkansas Delta region of the Mississippi River. The population was 636 at the 2010 census. The city is best known as the location of the Elaine massacre of September 30 – October 1, 1919, in which an estimated 237 black people were killed in the rural county by rampaging white mobs. Five whites died in the events. This was one of the worst incidents of racial and labor violence in American history.