It has been 100 years later, but we will never forget. This day is the 100th year commemoration of the Tulsa massacre of black human lives at Tulsa, Oklahoma. The victims and the victims' descendants have told their stories including 3 survivors recently in May of 2021. It was one of the worst pogroms against black people in American history. It took place from May 31 to June 1, 1921. By 1921, Oklahoma had tons of intense social, racial, and political tensions. Many WWI veterans had returned after WWI ended. This end wasn't too long ago from the end of the American Civil War. This time saw massive civil rights and voting rights suppression of African Americans. Black workers wanted economic opportunities, life, liberty, and happiness. The Klan started their 2nd resurgence after the racist 1915 The Birth of a Nation film. Tulsa had tons of oil resources. Many affluent, educated, and professional African Americans lived in Tulsa too. Back in the day, the rich, middle class, and poor black Americans lived together in communities. Oklahoma had Jim Crow laws too. Tulsa founder, the Klan member W. Tate Brady, was involved in the riot as a night watchman. Other racist groups were there like the black robed Knights of Liberty. Lynching was huge in Oklahoma back then too. Greenwood was a district in Tulsa which was created in 1906 after Booker T. Washington's 1905 tour of Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Oklahoma. Greenwood became so prosperous that it was known as Black Wall Street. There were businesses, grocers, 2 newspapers, 2 movie theaters, nightclubs, and many churches. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy served their peers. Washington encouraged the people of Greenwood to have co-operation, economic independence, and excellence.
Mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials attack black residents, and they destroyed black businesses in the Greenwood District in Tulsa. The attack also was carried fro private aircraft where 35 square blocks of the district (at the time the wealthiest black community in America or Black Wall Street) was destroyed. These events were part of the nadir (or low points) of race relations in America. About 300 black men, women, and children died as a product of the massacre. To this day, we have not found all of the mass graves from the massacre. More than 800 people were in hospitals. As many as 6,000 black residents were interned in large facilities against their wills. They were placed in these locations for many days. Before the massacre started, the 19 year old Dick Rowland (or a black American shoeshiner) was accused of assaulting 17 year old Sarah Page or a white elevator operator of the nearby Drexel Building). Investigations show that what happened was that the man tipped near the elevator and grabbed Sarah Page's arm for safety. Page didn't want to press charges at all.
The man was taken into custody after he hid in his mother's house. There were rumors that Rowland was lynched. Hundreds of white people in a mob gathered around the jail where Rowland was held. A group of 75 black men, some of whom were armed, were at the jail to make sure that Rowland would not be lynched. The sheriff Willard M. McCullough convinced the black group to leave the jail, assuring them that they had the situation under control. As the group left, one member of the mob tried to disarm one of the black men. A shot was fired, then violence occurred. At the end of the firefight, 12 people were killed, 10 white people and 2 black people. News spread across Tulsa, and mob violence exploded. White rioters rampaged all over the black neighborhood by night time and morning. They killed men and burned plus looted stores and homes. That National Guard rounded up black people and took them to the Convention Hall on Brady Street for detention. Many white and black people squared off in gun fights. The fighting was founded along sections of the Frisco tracks, which was a dividing line between the black and white commercial districts. At 1 am., the white mob started to set fires, mainly in businesses on commercial Archer Street at the southern edge of Greenwood district. Some black people used self-defense, and others started a mass exodus from the city. When the Tulsa Fire Department arrived to put out the fires, they were turned away at gunpoint. The rioters killed black people indiscriminately. Airplanes used burning tupentine balls on the office building, hotel, a filing station, and many other building. Young and old black residents were gunned down in the street. By noon on June 1, 1921, the Oklahoma National Guard imposed marital law, ending the massacre.
About 10,000 black people were left homeless. Property damage has been amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $32.65 million in 2020). Many survivors left Tulsa. Many people in Tulsa stayed silent about the terror, violence, and losses for decades. Mary E. Jones Parrish, who was a survivor of the Tulsa massacre, was hired by the Interracial Commission to write an account of the riot. She was a young black teacher and journalist back then. She wrote about her experiences, collected other account,s gathered photographs, and documented a roster of property loses in the African American community. She published the first book about the riot called, Events of the Tulsa Disaster." Oliver Hooker or the first African American to join the Coast Guard was a survivor of the massacre too. She earned her Master's degree in psychology from Teacher's College, Columbia University. Sh earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Rochester. More survivors of the anti-black murders at Tulsa were Eldoris McCondichie, George Monroe, Lessie Benninfield, Hal Singer, Essie Lee Johnson Beck, Vernice Simms, and other human beings. The massacre was omitted heavily from local, state, and national histories until recently. In 1996, 75 years after the massacre, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission's final report was published in 2001. It stated that the city had conspired with the mob of white citizens against black citizens. It recommended a program of reparations to the survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation in order to form scholarships for the descendants of survivors, encourage the economic development of Greenwood, and to develop a park in memory of the victims of the massacre. The park was dedicated in 2010. By 2020, the Tulsa massacre became part of the Oklahoma school curriculum, but the governor of Oklahoma wants to ban critical race theory. This massacre is not new. In 1863, a mob harmed black people in Detroit living almost 200 black residents homeless. There were black people in Clinton, Mississippi massacred in 1875. White racists burned down the Wilmington, North Carolina Daily Record newspaper in their 1898 attempt to overthrow the city's biracial government. 60 black residents were killed. A racist mob killed almost 50 black people in East St. Louis, Illinois. Now, protesters in Tulsa, Oklahoma desire reparations as they should receive it. Our black lives always matter. We are not naive about American history. One way to move forward is to be honest about our history, and we have to make sure that justice is truly enacted for real (without compromising to the status quo).
By Timothy
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