24 Hours From Tulsa...that was the first thing I thought of was the song! No connection AT ALL of what todays anniversary is all about but that’s really all I knew about Tulsa. It was a good song at the time and nothing more. As you can most likely tell I live on a completely different continent but aware of what happens in the world. Usually that is!
Today is the anniversary of a dreadful act in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Something I
have never heard of before in my lifetime and a part of history, it seems, many
Americans aren’t even aware happened and just as many that do know would like
it to remain hidden.
Today President Biden, the first President to do so, paid a visit to Tulsa
to remember the race riots of 1921. On that sad day one hundred years ago a
white mob destroyed the Greenwood district known as “Black Wall Street”. Many
experts have called this the most horrific incident of racial terrorism since
slavery.
The Greenwood district was a mix of thriving entrepreneurs, domestic
workers who worked for the rich white families, artists and professionals such
as doctors, accountants, solicitors and so on.
History goes that a black shoe shiner 19 year old Dick Rowland entered an
elevator at the Drexel building on South Main Street, Tulsa the day before the
massacre. The elevator operator was a 17 year old named Sarah Page. Dick Rowland
was one of many shoe shiners that worked at white owned businesses and as there
were no bathroom facilities for 'colored’ employees it was arranged they
could use the elevator to go to the only coloreds restroom in the building on a
higher floor.
Which to us now sounds so bizarre but there you go that was then...this is
now I guess!
As he entered..maybe he fell..she screamed no one really knows and he ran
out of the building. Nothing more was thought of the incident but for a white
store worker who saw Dick running out of the building and assumed he tried to
assault the young elevator operator.
The police were called but they didn’t seem to be particularly worried the
story goes until a white owned newspaper in the city ran a story that a Black
man had tried to assault a white girl..but there was little evidence just the
store clerk that saw Dick Rowland run out.
It was reported the newspapers editorial page was designed to incite
readers to violence and “To Lynch a Negro Tonight”. No record of the editorial
has survived. A complete issue of the newspaper has never been found. It seems
to have been wiped from history.
As word of a lynch mob heading to the courthouse to find and murder Dick Rowland
spread a group of Black armed veterans went to protect him. Black war decorated
war heroes returning from World War 1 stirred up particular anger among Tulsa's
white population. This enraged the mob and that's when the massacre began.
Privately owned planes dropped incendiary bomb's on businesses and homes
killing so many. As President Biden says “This was not a riot this was a
massacre”
The violence was so horrific and indeed traumatizing many Black survivors
never spoke of it to their children and it was never mentioned again. The official death toll today stands at 36 but many say it is significantly
more. The earliest stories state 80-175. A mass grave was discovered only
October last year. 35 square blocks were eventually burned to the ground and many survivors
fled the city to relocate elsewhere.
Despite heavy losses no one was ever charged in relation to the
destruction and murders in the Greenwood district.
Sarah Page never pressed charges and Dick Rowland...no one knows where he
went for sure.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" George Santayana 1905
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