1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

If you are Black and not a delu­sion­al Republican, and if you both­er to take the time to stop scrolling or spend­ing your time on buf­foon­ery, you may begin to under­stand why Republicans do not want your his­to­ry taught in schools.
Better yet, you may begin to under­stand why they left these things out of the History books and have sought to white­wash history.
You may even start to under­stand why old clos­et racists like Mitch McConnell and igno­rant scam­mers like Donald Trump would like to keep these his­tor­i­cal facts hid­den from you.
Never mind me, though, you may go back to Instagram, Facebook, or wher­ev­er it is you spend your time online, [not] inform­ing yourselves…

FACTS

On the morn­ing of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was rid­ing in the ele­va­tor in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what fol­lowed vary from per­son to per­son. Accounts of an inci­dent cir­cu­lat­ed among the city’s white com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the day and became more exag­ger­at­ed with each telling.
Tulsa police arrest­ed Rowland the fol­low­ing day and began an inves­ti­ga­tion. An inflam­ma­to­ry report in the May 31 edi­tion of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a con­fronta­tion between black and white-armed mobs around the cour­t­house where the sher­iff and his men had bar­ri­cad­ed the top floor to pro­tect Rowland. Shots were fired, and the out­num­bered African Americans began retreat­ing to the Greenwood District.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was loot­ed and burned by white riot­ers. Governor Robertson declared mar­tial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assist­ed fire­men in putting out fires, took African Americans out of the hands of vig­i­lantes, and impris­oned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 peo­ple were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.
Twenty-four hours after the vio­lence erupt­ed, it ceased. In the wake of the vio­lence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 peo­ple were treat­ed for injuries, and con­tem­po­rary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 peo­ple may have died. To under­stand the Tulsa Race Massacre, it is impor­tant to under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the times. Dick Rowland, Sarah Page, and an unknown gun­man were the sparks that ignit­ed a long-smol­der­ing fire. Jim Crow, jeal­ousy, white suprema­cy, and land lust all played roles lead­ing to the destruc­tion and loss of life on May 31 and June 1, 1921. In 2001, an offi­cial Race Riot Commission was orga­nized to review the details of the event. No one will ever know the absolute truth of what hap­pened dur­ing the hours of the Race Massacre. However, by exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal resources, mem­bers of the Race Riot Commission deter­mined many details to be unde­ni­able. “These are not myths, not rumors, not spec­u­la­tions, not ques­tioned. They are the his­tor­i­cal record.”

Black Tulsans had every rea­son to believe that Dick Rowland would be lynched after his arrest. His charges were lat­er dis­missed and high­ly sus­pect from the start. They had cause to believe that his per­son­al safe­ty, like the defense of them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ty, depend­ed on them alone. As hos­tile groups gath­ered and their con­fronta­tion wors­ened, munic­i­pal and coun­ty author­i­ties failed to calm or con­tain the sit­u­a­tion. At the erup­tion of vio­lence, civ­il offi­cials select­ed many men, all white and some of the par­tic­i­pants in that vio­lence, and made those men their agents as deputies. In that capac­i­ty, deputies did not stem the vio­lence but added to it, often through overt acts that were ille­gal. Public offi­cials pro­vid­ed firearms and ammu­ni­tion to indi­vid­u­als, again all of them white. Units of the Oklahoma National Guard par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mass arrests of all or near­ly all of Greenwood’s res­i­dents. They removed them to oth­er parts of the city and detained them in hold­ing cen­ters. Entering the Greenwood dis­trict, peo­ple stole, dam­aged, or destroyed per­son­al prop­er­ty left behind in homes and busi­ness­es. People, some of them agents of the gov­ern­ment, also delib­er­ate­ly burned or oth­er­wise destroyed homes cred­i­bly esti­mat­ed to have num­bered 1,256, along with vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er struc­ture — includ­ing church­es, schools, busi­ness­es, even a hos­pi­tal, and library — in the Greenwood dis­trict. Despite duties to pre­serve order and to pro­tect prop­er­ty, no gov­ern­ment at any lev­el offered ade­quate resis­tance, if any at all, to what amount­ed to the destruc­tion of the Greenwood neigh­bor­hood. Although the exact total can nev­er be deter­mined, cred­i­ble evi­dence makes it prob­a­ble that many peo­ple, like­ly num­ber­ing between 100 – 300, were killed dur­ing the massacre.

Not one of these crim­i­nal acts was then or ever has been pros­e­cut­ed or pun­ished by the gov­ern­ment at any lev­el: munic­i­pal, coun­ty, state, or fed­er­al. Even after the restora­tion of order, it was offi­cial pol­i­cy to release a black detainee only upon the appli­ca­tion of a white per­son, and then only if that white per­son agreed to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for that detainee’s sub­se­quent behav­ior. As pri­vate cit­i­zens, many whites in Tulsa and neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties did extend invalu­able assis­tance to the massacre’s vic­tims, and the relief efforts of the American Red Cross, in par­tic­u­lar, pro­vid­ed a mod­el of human behav­ior at its best. Although city and coun­ty gov­ern­ments bore much of the cost for Red Cross relief, nei­ther con­tributed sub­stan­tial­ly to Greenwood’s rebuild­ing; in fact, munic­i­pal author­i­ties act­ed ini­tial­ly to impede rebuilding.Despite being numer­i­cal­ly at a dis­ad­van­tage, black Tulsans fought valiant­ly to pro­tect their homes, their busi­ness­es, and their com­mu­ni­ty. But in the end, the city’s African-American pop­u­la­tion was sim­ply out­num­bered by the white invaders. In the end, the restora­tion of Greenwood after its sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion was left to the vic­tims of that destruc­tion. While Tulsa offi­cials turned away some offers of out­side aid, a num­ber of indi­vid­ual white Tulsans pro­vid­ed assis­tance to the city’s now vir­tu­al­ly home­less black pop­u­la­tion. But it was the American Red Cross, which remained in Tulsa for months fol­low­ing the mas­sacre, that pro­vid­ed the most sus­tained relief effort. Maurice Willows, the com­pas­sion­ate direc­tor of the Red Cross relief, kept a his­to­ry of the event (avail­able in full under the “Documents” sec­tion of this online exhibit).

In recent years there has been an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about what to call the event that hap­pened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was giv­en that name at the time for insur­ance pur­pos­es. Designating it a riot pre­vent­ed insur­ance com­pa­nies from hav­ing to pay ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of Greenwood whose homes and busi­ness­es were destroyed. It also was com­mon at the time for any large-scale clash between dif­fer­ent racial or eth­nic groups to be cat­e­go­rized as a race riot.

What do YOU think?

Definition of RIOT: a tumul­tuous dis­tur­bance of the pub­lic peace by three or more per­sons assem­bled togeth­er and act­ing with com­mon intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a num­ber of usu­al­ly help­less or unre­sist­ing human beings under cir­cum­stances of atroc­i­ty or cruelty.

“Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into long­stand­ing oral his­to­ry accounts of mass graves at var­i­ous sites in Tulsa, alleged bur­ial sites for scores of most­ly black vic­tims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Mayor Bynum con­tin­ues to empha­size that this process, which may be long and tedious, is an inves­ti­ga­tion. There is no cer­tain­ty that one or more mass graves will be locat­ed. The inves­ti­ga­tion is geared toward answer­ing, as best we can, the lin­ger­ing his­tor­i­cal ques­tion, orig­i­nat­ing through oral his­to­ries, about the exis­tence of one or more mass graves linked to the mas­sacre. By this under­tak­ing, we hon­or our oral his­to­ry and its tellers. This his­to­ry, sep­a­rate and apart from its truth, has val­ue. Who told what to whom? Why? Was it accu­rate? These are all ques­tions worth explor­ing. The cur­rent Mass Graves Investigation seeks to address those ques­tions and more. It deserves the sup­port of the entire community. ”
(A pro­duc­tion of TulsaHistory​.org.)