a student newspaper of the university of tulsa
april 22, 2013 issue 24 ~ volume 98
g n i r e b m e m Re the The Tulsa Race Riot dealt a crippling blow to the residents of the black Greenwood District. The Greenwood District, referred to by such derogatory names as “Little Africa” by the Tulsa Tribune, faced machine gun fire, arson and even aerial bombings from a white mob (top). The residents were forced from their homes and held in the Convention Hall, now the Brady Theater (bottom-left). The Riot, which investigators estimate resulted in $300 million worth of damage in today’s currency, “devastated the Greenwood District” (bottom-right).
Eighty-two years ago, the black Greenwood District was destroyed and its citizens held captive by their white neighbors in what would become known as the “Tulsa Race Riot.” John Lepine Student Writer
North of downtown Tulsa, just beyond the Frisco railroad tracks, two side-by-side neighborhoods radiate youthful vitality, engaged in what resembles a healthy sibling rivalry of development and expansion. The Brady Arts District is the longtime home to Tulsa landmarks like Cain’s Ballroom and the Brady Theater. Last fall it opened the Guthrie Green, a public park used for everything from concerts to markets to yoga classes, and the Henry Zarrow Center, an art gallery, studio space and community classroom site supported by TU. Go east from the Brady District. When you cross Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, you are in Greenwood, and you’ll see a similar boom in development. Drillers baseball just opened its fourth season at ONEOK Field, and the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park was dedicated in 2011. There is a large apartment complex rising at the corner of Greenwood and Archer, and the popular Fat Guy’s Burger Bar is just down the street from there. But these siblings districts were not always friendly partners in the revitalization of North Tulsa. The Brady District boasts old and historic attractions that Greenwood
lacks, because Greenwood was burned down in the 1920s, economically gutted in the ‘60s, and cut in half with a highway in the ‘70s. In fact, the “old lady on Brady”—Brady Theater, the former city convention hall—was used as a concentration camp for Greenwood residents on a fateful night some 92 years ago. In 1921, Greenwood was “the Black Wall Street.” It published two newspapers and was home to
in 1920. The Klan followed a blackrobed group called the Knights of Liberty that dispensed vigilante justice in Tulsa during World War I, including the “Tulsa Outrage,” in which some 30 union members who opposed the war effort were whipped, tarred and feathered. Brady was a participant in the Outrage. In the midst of this climate of lawless “justice,” Roy Belton, a white man accused of an August
“(The Riot) wiped out personal fortunes and created an economic vacuum in the destroyed community.” a dozen churches, scores of shops and some of the most successful black businessmen and professionals anywhere in the United States. Jim Crow laws relegated blacks to their own neighborhood on the fringe of downtown, but segregation had the side-effect of building an economically powerful community that was a source of pride to the African-Americans who called Tulsa home. It was also a source of gall to envious poor whites and rich city leaders who wanted to expand into Greenwood and push blacks northward. Racial tensions were high in the early summer of 1921. The largest ever Sons of Confederate Veterans convention had come to Tulsa in 1918, due largely to the efforts of W. Tate Brady, one of Tulsa’s founding fathers. The Ku Klux Klan formed an Oklahoma chapter, of which Brady was a member,
1920 hijacking and murder, was seized from prison and lynched in Jenks by a mob. The Tulsa Tribune and Tulsa World published approving editorials. No one was indicted. And then, on May 31, a black man named Dick Rowland got on an elevator with a white elevator
Riot
Courtesy of McFarlin Special Collections, Graphic by Jill Graves
That afternoon the sensationalist Tulsa Tribune, which called Greenwood “Little Africa” and even less polite names, reported on the incident with an article entitled “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.” According to a 2001 report put out by commission of the Oklahoma legislature, there are numerous accounts by blacks and whites of an editorial called “To Lynch Negro Tonight” in that same paper. No extant copies of the May 31 Tribune remain. The microfilm of the front page and editorial page for that day have been destroyed. But by sundown, the Tribune editorial had had its effect. Hundreds of armed whites surrounded the courthouse where Rowland was under the protection of a newly elected sheriff and his deputies. Scores of blacks from Greenwood arrived to offer their assistance in protecting the accused, which the sheriff refused. Then, in the standoff outside the courthouse, someone fired a stray shot, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 began.
“A machine gun was set up on Stovepipe Hill
overlooking Greenwood. Cars of armed whites drove
through the streets, forcing people from their houses.” operator named Sarah Page. Maybe he fell and grabbed her. Maybe they knew each other and had a lovers’ quarrel. Rowland was later declared not guilty by a jury, but on that elevator that day Sarah Page screamed and Rowland was taken into custody for assault.
“The Riot devastated the Greenwood District,” said Frances Jordan-Rakestraw, Executive Director of the Greenwood Cultural Center. “It wiped out personal fortunes and created a temporary economic vacuum in the destroyed community.” According to the 2001 Commis-
sion to Study the Tulsa Race Riot, a conservative estimate for the cost of damages done (in 1921 dollars) is $1.5 million. In today’s dollars, estimates for the economic cost of the Riot to Greenwood range as high as $300 million, and all that in a single night. In some sense, it is a misnomer to call it a riot. After shots were exchanged at the courthouse, the outnumbered residents of Greenwood returned to their neighborhood. The lynch mob, unable to get at its well-guarded target, decided to string up a populace instead. Around daybreak on June 1, the city whistle blew, a signal for the white “home guards” to advance on the neighborhood they had surrounded. A machine gun was set up on Stovepipe Hill overlooking Greenwood. Cars of armed whites drove through the streets, forcing people from their houses. Fires were lit in black houses and business. “(I) saw white guards (Home Guards) break into stores of all kinds and carry out the contents that were being loaded onto trucks, then hastened toward the white district of the city,” wrote M.D. Russell in a letter recounting his memories as a Greenwood resident. J.C. Latimer, a Greenwood architect, recorded similar occurrences: “I could see men and boys swarming around the colored people’s homes, while other looted and burned the homes of my people.” “(A)eroplanes began to fly over us, in some instances very low to the ground,” wrote Riot survivor R.T. Bridgewater. Bridgewater
See Riot page 5