White officials rounded up Black citizens of all layers of society (including business men, doctors, and preachers) and put them to work strengthening levees.
According to the Pittsburgh Courier, a national African-American weekly newspaper, the Black laborers were coerced to work without food and many were not allowed to change into workwear.
"[2] In Helena, Arkansas, white police officers walked into a Black church during the service and made the men of the congregation work on the levees.
Flemming refused, killed Waters, and was then captured but not arrested: the Helena sheriff, J. D. Mays, was called by the plantation owner Woods, but supposedly said, "I'm busy.
The Courier responded: Along with other phrases, this will go down in history as one of the most notable ever delivered, for it conveyed into the hands of a white mob of 500 people, the living form of Owen Flemming, well-to-do race man of this city, and made of him one more sacrifice upon the bloody altar of the reign of this country's uncrowned sovereign—'King Lynch 'Em'.