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LESSON 7.2.8 I READ I Who Killed Black Wall Street? PURPOSE

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LESSON 7.2.8 I READ I Who Killed Black Wall Street? PURPOSE LESSON 7.2 .8 I READ I Who Killed Black Wall Street? PURPOSE The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 serves as Americans of Tulsa in 1921. The fact that today a major example of the ways in which white it's rarely discussed and remembered outside communities resented and prevented of Tulsa's black community is a tragedy for the prosperity in African American communities. rest of us to consider. Professor Henry Louis Gates. Jr. provides you with an in depth look at the race riot, ATTACHMENT------- its causes, and its effects. The complete • Who Killed Black Wall Street? story is one of great tragedy for the African PROCESS Find the attached article on the Tulsa Riot of 1921 by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. As always, you should read actively, underlining important names, places, events, and/or passages as you go. After finishing the reading , write a brief one page reflection on what you found to be the most essential parts of the piece. Your short write up should include a reflection on how this helps you answer the first of the essential questions of this lesson. ) STUDENT HAN DO UT ( ♦ <RAIH <OUilf i UI HIITORY READ IN GI WhoKilled Black Wallstreet? ,- Henry LouisGat es Jr. 'Nab Negro' he wondered why it had never "occurred to the In a city of 100,000 people, high on oil. "The Drexel citizens of Tu lsa that any sane person attempting Building was the only place downtown where we criminally to assau lt a woman would have picked were allowed to use the restroom," Robert Fairchild any place in the world rather than an open elevator Sr. recal led, according to the Tulsa Reparations in a publ ic building with scores of people within Coal ition. That was why 19-year-old Dick Rowland ca lling distance." But it was too late for cooler heads. was there. His boss at the white shoeshine parlor or even facts, to prevail. "The story of the alleged on Main Street had arranged for black employees assault was published Tuesday afternoon [a day like Dick Rowland to use the "colored restroom " after the incident] by the Tu lsa Tribune, one of on the top floor of the Drexel. "I shined shoes with the two local newspapers," Wh ite added, and its Dick Rowland," Fairchild said. "He was an orphan headline and text were vicious. and had quit school to take care of himself." "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator," the page- On Monday, May 30, 1921, Rowland entered the one story ran. In it, the Tribune claimed Rowland Drexel Building and took a chance violating one of had gone by the nickname "Diamond Dick" and that the unwritten rules of Jim Crow: He rode an elevator he'd "attacked [Page], scratching her hands and with a wh ite girl - alone. Really, what choice did face and tearing her clothes." More menacing, the he have? Seventeen-year-old Sarah Page was the paper let the people of Tulsa know exactly Drexel Building's elevator operator. No one knows where Dick Rowland was after being "charged with how the two greeted each other, or if they'd met attempting to assault the 17-year-old white before. except that minutes later, someone did hear elevator girl ... He will be tried in municipal court a scream - a woman 's scream. Rowland ran . this afternoon on a state charge ." Perhap s he should've waited for a crowd to get No wonder one black Tulsan remembered the onto the lift with him, because in the aftermath headline differently: "To Lynch a Negro Tonight," Page claimed Rowland had assaulted her. Not true, as an op-ed in the Tulsa Tribune was titled. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, Accusations about black men raping white women was quick to clarify in a piece he wrote for The had long been used to justify lynching, an idea Nation magazine June 29, 1921 : "It was found called the "old thread -bare lie" by activist Ida B. afterwards that the boy had stepped by accident Well -Barnett in her 1892 book, Southern Horror: on her foot." To White, it was obvious - and so Lynch Law in all Its Phases. The same lie received ► llttp//wv,,rw t/Jeroor. com/who-killed-black-wall-street -7790897586 ) STU DEHl HANDOUT ( ♦ CRIIH COURIE I UI HIIIORl a higher pro file in 1915 with the rel ease of D.W. help in protecting Rowland . The police refused their Griffith 's sil ent film The Bi rth of a Nation, which offer, just as they had whites ' demands to release featured white actors in blackface attacking white Rowland to the ir brand of ask-no-questions justice. women. On Memorial Day 1921, Dick Rowland had On the roof, police riflemen stood at the ready. stepped into more tha n just an elevator, and more Below, "cries of let us have the nigger' cou ld be than one scream would follow. heard echoing off the walls" (quoted from Scott Ellsworth 's, "The Tulsa Race Riot, " included in Tulsa The First Shot Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission Blacks made up 12 percent of Tulsa 's population. to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 ). Most resided north of the city in Greenwood, sometimes called the "Negro Wall Street of Even though the black visitors returned to their cars, America" because of the number of prominent whites in the mob were enraged by their audacity citizens (includ ing at least three millionaires, and rushed home to get their guns. Others made an according to Walter White) who had seen their unsuccessful attempt to supply themselves with fortunes rise as a result of the oil boom. Unwelcome ammunition from the National Guard Armory. By downtown, except when working, Greenwood 9:30 p.m., there were 2,000 whites crowding the blacks had established their own newspapers, courthouse, from "curiosity seekers" to "would-be theaters, cafes, stores and professional offices. lynchers," according to Ellsworth. Those in Tulsa who paid attention to the news were Back in Greenwood, black Tulsans canceled regular well-aware that a white man had been lynched activities, while another round of men, this time out of the county jail a year earlier, the same year about 75, decided it was time to head down to the that in Oklahoma City, young African-American courthouse. With their guns at the ready, they male Claude Chandler had been hanged from a tree wanted to make one thing clear: There was not after being dragged out of jail on charges of killing going to be any lynching in Tulsa that night. a police officer. Greenwood blacks feared Rowland would be next, and so they gathered at the black­ "Then it happened," Scott Ellsworth writes. "As the owned Tulsa Star to figure out what to do. black men were leaving the courthouse for the second time, a white man approached a tall African­ Twenty-five or so black men, including veterans American World War I veteran who was carrying of World War I (which had just ended three an army-issue revolver. 'Nigger,' the white man said , years before), took the ride to Tulsa's downtown, 'What are you doing with that pistol?' Tm going to whe re, encountering a growing white mob, they use it if I need to,' replied the black veteran. 'No, you formed a line and marched, with arms, up the give it to me.' like hell I will.' The white man tried courthouse ste ps to offer the wh ite police force to take the gun away from the veteran, and a shot ► ) STUDfHT HANDO UT ( ♦ CRAIi! COII OSL I USIII SIORl ra ng out. Am eri ca's worst race rio t had begun ." in the projector's glow, he was shot in the head. Dick Ro wland was now almost in cid ental - in fact, Sti ll an other was sh ot on West Four th and knifed he was abou t to be in on e of the safest place s to the po int wh ere a whi te do ctor, seeing him in th e city: jail. "writhing," rea lized "it wa s an impossi ble situati on to co ntrol, that I coul d be of no help," re ports The Riot Ell swo rth . In the Nation, Walter Wh ite tried to It wou ld be impossi ble, in this lim ited spa ce, convey the terror that swept north to Gree nwood to recount every horror inflicted on black Tu lsans into the next morning, June 1: through the long night - their bus inesses, their properties. their ci vic and cu ltural ce nters, mt1e /white} mob, now numbering more than 10,000, their live s. For those seek ing to kn ow more, made a mass attack on Little Africa. Machine-guns I stro ngly encou rage you to re ad the findi ngs were brought into use; eight aeroplanes were of the governm ent-sponsored 1921 Tulsa Race employed to spy on the movements of the Negroes Riot Comm ission. released in a 188 page -report and according to some were used in bombing the in Februa ry 2001 . Other indispensable books colored section. All that was lacking to make the include Scott Ellsworth 's Death in a Promised Land: scene a replica of modem 'Christian' warfare was The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and Alfred Brophy's poison gas. The colored men and women fought Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of gamely in defense of their homes, but the odds 1921 : Race, Reparations, and Reconcil iation.
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