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.

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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 , 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 ►

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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 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 ►

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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. were too great. According to the statements of onlookers, men in uniform, either home guards or There would be no reconciliation the night of May ex-service men or both, carried cans of oil into Little 31 in Tulsa. After the courthouse gunfight, a dozen Africa, and, after looting the homes, set fire to them. black and wh ite men were dead or wounded. Outnumbered (it wasn 't even close). the blacks One incident White recounted involved a black who 'd driven down from Greenwood retreated doctor, A.C . Jackson: through the streets while scores of whites were deputized on the spot by the Tulsa Police Department, Dr. Jackson was worth $100,000; had been described which now perceived the event as "a Negro uprising." by the Mayo brothers 'the most able Negro surgeon Even one white who was turned away, a bricklayer in America;· was respected by white and colored named Laurel Buck, was told, "Get a gun, and get people alike, and was in every sense a good citizen. busy and try to get a nigger," according to Ellsworth. A mob attacked Dr. Jackson's home. He fought in defense of it, his wife and children and himself An A bla ck Tulsan was gunned down running out of officer of the home guards who knew Dr. Jackson an all ey nea r Youn kman 's drugstore. Another was came up at that time and assured him that if he

chased into a wh ite movie thea ter, where, spotted would surrender he would be protected. Th is Dr. ►

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Jackson did. The officer sent him under guard to First, the armed whites broke into the black homes Convention Hall, where colored people were being and businesses, forcing the occupants out into placed for protection. En route to the hall, disarmed, the street, where they were led away at gunpoint Dr. Jackson was shot and killed in cold blood. The to one of a growing number of internment centers. officer who had assured Dr. Jackson of protection Anyone who resisted was shot. Moreover, African­ stated to me, 'Dr. Jackson was an able, clean-cut American men in homes where firearms were man. He did only what any red-blooded man would discovered met the same fate. Next, the whites have done under similar circumstances in looted the homes and businesses, pocketing small defending his home. Dr. Jackson was murdered items, and hauling away larger items either on by white ruffians.' foot or by car or truck. Finally, the white rioters then set the homes and other buildings on fire, Reading these passages, it's impossible not to recall using torches and oil-soaked rags. House by house, President Obama's remarks about Trayvon Martin: block by block, the wall of flame crept northward, It "could've been me" - it could have been us. Really, engulfing the city's black neighborhood. it could've been anyone during the Tulsa Race Riot, because at one point, according to Ellsworth, "[a]t The Aftermath least one white man in an automobile was killed The last shots in the Tulsa Race Riot were fired by a group of whites, who had mistaken him to be sometime after noon on Tuesday, June 1. In the black." In the fog of a riot, as in war, no one is safe aftermath, there were 26 and 10 from being profiled. whites reported dead, but many who'd lived through it found the official count dubiously low. Eighty It continued when the Tulsa police and National years later, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission report Guard troops arrived in Greenwood on the morning determined that some 1,256 homes were burned of June 1 and imposed martial law. Still convinced in Greenwood, and while an exact count of those blacks were to blame for the riot, the troops focused killed could not be established, even the best their efforts on detaining Greenwood's residents evidence pointed to between 75 and 300 killed, with instead of shielding them from the terror. Estimates a ratio of three or four blacks to every one white, are that close to 4,000 to 6,000 Greenwood but really it's hard to be precise when so many of residents (almost half the population) were arrested the black victims were buried without dignity - and relocated to holding centers throughout the or even in a pine box. Then there are the families city, leaving their homes and businesses even more that fled . Aaron Myers, in his entry on Tulsa in vulnerable to attack. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (a reference book The "deadly pattern" was set, Scott Ellsworth I co-edited with Kwame Anthony Appiah). puts that writes: number at more than 700 - 700 families displaced by what followed from an elevator ride gone bad . ►

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So many more questions remained - most of all , whites' fury at the number of black families moving why? into their cities , blacks' willingne ss to push back against the excesses of Jim Crow and the visible Visiting Tulsa in the immediate aftermath, Walter public presence of black World War I veterans White pointed to three general causes: poor in uniform. and working -class whites' resentment of blacks prospering in Tulsa's oil economy; blacks' Justice determination to "emancipat[e] themselves from Shortly after the Tulsa Riot, a grand jury was the old system"; and "rotten political conditions," convened to examine the incident. Its findings were where "in a county of approximately 100,000 summed up in a headline published in the Tulsa population, six out of every one hundred citizens World : "Grand Jury Blames Negroes for Inciting were under indictment for some sort of crime, with Race Rioting; Whites Clearly Exonerated," according little likelihood of trial in any of them." to Brophy. Outside the courthouse, blacks knew different. One, B.F. Johnson, later had this to say, Whites in Tulsa had their own narrative. At least according to the Tulsa Reparations Coalition: "There one, Amy Comstock, in her piece for Survey in seemed [to] be on the part [of] many white people a July 1921 , agreed that general lawlessness was sort of joy in having unrestrained priveleges [sic] in a problem in Tulsa, but she located it in Greenwood: shooting the negroes ... [W]hat these boys and men "It was in the sordid and neglected 'Niggertown' did was because they had hell in their harts [sic]." that the crooks found their best hiding place .. . There, for months past, the bad 'niggers,' the silk­ Whatever was lurking in Sarah Page's heart, in shirted parasites of society, had been collecting September 1921, the most consequential elevator guns and munitions. Tulsa was living on a Vesuvius operator in Tulsa history was a no-show against Dick that was ready to vomit fire at any time." Rowland in court - and so his case was tossed. In an amazing turn of events, Rowland had survived the The truth was the United States during and after riot in jail and now was a free man once again. To World War I was suffering an epidemic, not this day, his life - and death - remain a mystery, of influenza, but of race riots . Among the most so, too, his face, as illustrated by an ongoing debate notorious were the East St. Louis Riot of 1917 about whether "that's him" in the 1921 Booker T. and the Riots of 1919 in , Washington school yearbook. From what I can tell, which, over four days, claimed the lives of two Dick Rowland was last known to have relocated dozen blacks with hundreds more injured. Scholars, to Kansas City, where, in my fantasy, he was among including Cameron McWhirter, author of Red the first to see the young Charlie Parker play the Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening saxophone. ► of Black America, have offered many theories about the causes of these race riots : conflicts over jobs,

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The Rebuilding As compelling as their case wa s, however, Despite initial promises from Tulsa officials to a U.S. district court judge granted the defendants' rebuild Greenwood, blacks who had lost everything motion to dismiss because the underlying facts found no redress from the city or the courts. Of fell outside the statute of limitations. the more than 100 suits filed in the yea,·s after the riot, only two went to trial , Brophy reports, and Ogletree's team pressed on to the 10th Circuit U.S. both plaintiffs lost. Those who sought to rebuild Court of Appeals. "The lawyers in Brown v. Board found their progress slowed by a lack of funds of Education had to fight a lot of battles and and new zoning ordinances, while even those home­ suffer a lot of losses before they could win," he and business-owners who had insurance learned told the Harvard Crimson in March 2004. "We're their policies contained "riot exclusion" clauses. prepared to fight equally long." Unfortunately, a few Because of the slow pace of progress, a thousand months later, justice in Alexander v. Oklahoma survivors spent the winter of 1921-1922 living was denied again, despite the plaintiffs' argument in tents. The hurricane that had displaced them that the clock should have started with the Tulsa was hate. Race Riot Commission's findings in 2001, not with the whitewashing that had occurred in the 1920s. The Long Memory of Tulsa The court disagreed, stating that even if vital In 1997, the Oklahoma Commission to Study information to the case had been concealed in the the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was formed by riot's immediate aftermath, those seeking redress a resolution in the Oklahoma State Legislature. could have pursued it after federal civil rights It was tasked with researching the facts legislation had been passed in the 1960s or when and making recommendations about possible Scott Ellison wrote his history of the riot in 1982. reparations. Based on the commission's As a result, those like Otis Clark who remembered findings, the legislature did apologize for the living through the riot would not live to see their Tulsa Race Riot but stopped short of providing day in court. more than limited funds for the community. As a result, in 2003, several hundred victims Thankfully, the story doesn't end there. and descendants of the Tulsa Riot (including 100 year-old Otis Clark) filed a lawsuit against the The Vigil state, the city and the police department. Charles One tangible result of the commission's findings was Ogletree, my friend and colleague at the Harvard the creation of John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, Law School, led the reparations team with what dedicated in 2010 in honor of the greatest African- contributor Alfred Brophy described as "immense American historian of his generation, a Tulsa native, humanity," a "rigorous legal mind" and a fierce a member of the commission and my dear late friend, determination to pursue "justice on behalf of whose father, Buck Colbert Franklin, had performed those who cannot fight for themselves" (pdf) . heroic service as a lawyer in the immediate ►

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aftermath of th e ri ot. Designed to continue "the American tradition of erecting memorials based on tragic events by giving vo ice to the untold story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the important role African Ameri ca ns played in building Oklahoma ," Reco ncili ation Park served as an important gathering place for the community on the evening of July 16, 20 13, after it was announced that a Florida jury had found Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman , not guilty.

Pres ident Obama had yet to deliver his remarks from the White House pressroom on the "set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away," but already Tu lsans were there at Reconciliation Park to remember the souls of the long - and recently - departed. In the words of one attendee, Geoff Woodson, "This is something we should do, anyway. We still have [Interstate] 244 that divides us. We still have people that don't want to talk about the 1921 [Tulsa] Race Riot. We need to come together. It's the only way healing can take place."

My intention, in presenting the Colfax Massacre and the Tulsa Riot the past two weeks, has been to aid that healing from a place of truth. None of us but God will ever know what Trayvon Martin was thinking in his final moments of struggle, or what those who were marched out of Colfax to their slaughter said to their butchers or how Dick Rowland felt when Sarah Page screamed and he was alone , but we do have a "set of experiences and a history" of facts with which to contend, and wh ile the work ahead will be hard, it is necessary if we are going to change the way people feel when someone who "fits a profile" steps on an elevator and isn't accompanied by the Secret Service .

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