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History
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Published: March 30, 2000 The
Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: Part Two The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the
worst single incident of racial violence in U.S. history. 200 to 300 people,
mostly African Americans, are believed to have died. As many as 10,000
white men and boys gathered to attack the African American community.
Police officers and the local unit of the National Guard also joined in
the burning of 35 blocks of the once-thriving African American business
district. According to Red Cross reports, 191
African American businesses were burned, 1256 African American houses
were burned, and 314 were looted but not burned. Using the real estate
exchange, damages were placed at $1,500,000. Using the Consumer Price Index, the inflated cost in 1999 would be
approximately $14,000,000. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission met
again on Monday, August 9,1999 to try to get a better picture of what
happened when the fighting broke out on May 31,1921, and to determine
if reparations should be made. The Commission also approved a plan to
do limited excavation at a downtown cemetery where archeologists have
narrowed a search for mass graves. State archeologist Bob Brooks said
examining samples of remains or artifacts is the only way to know for
sure if race riot victims are buried there. John
Hope Franklin, head of President Clinton's National Advisory Board on
Race, also addressed the panel. His
father survived the race riot and, as a lawyer, helped defeat a city ordinance
that hampered efforts by African Americans to rebuild in the Greenwood
area called "Negro Wall Street." John
Hope Franklin has related that if one went to court regularly as he did
with his father in the late 20's, one would be interested to hear cases
involving the estate of some white person who died on or about on June
1,1921. One was always tempted to conclude
that the deceased lost his life in the riot. Many African Americans had
insurance, but the insurance companies refused to pay because the companies
said the insurance did not include damages from insurrection or riots.
Many African Americans then went to court to try to get the insurance
companies to pay, however, nearly all of the 197 cases were dismissed
by the same judge, Judge Bradford Williams, on the same day. Commissioner
Jim Lloyd of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission has stated that if the Commission
could determine that the riot was actually a police action, government
immunity would be lifted and the county, city, and state could be held
liable. It all started when a white mob gathered
to lynch an African American name Dick Rowland, who had been accused of
attacking a 17 years old white female elevator operator name Sarah Page,
who later declined to press charges. Sarah Page, a new arrival in Tulsa,
had left her husband in Kansas City and Sheriff Willard McCullough had
served divorce papers on her just 2 months before. He was reported to
have said later that if half the charges alleged in the petition were
true, "she is a notorious character." Nevertheless, her charge
of assault gave Tulsa's most disreputable newspaper enough to work with. The Tulsa Democrat had been purchased
2 years before by Richard Lloyd Jones, a cousin of Frank Lloyd Wright's.
Mr. Jones had changed the paper's
name to the Tulsa Tribune, but not its behavior. He not only continued
the newspaper's racist ways but raised them to a higher power, referring
to the African American section of Tulsa as either "Little Africa"
or "N____rtown." Sheriff McCullough telephoned the office of
the Tulsa Star, an African American newspaper, to warn them he expected
an attack would be made on the jail that night. The sheriff promised that he would
do all he could to protect Mr. Rowland, but that if he found he could
not cope with the situation, for the African Americans to get together
and he would call them to help protect Mr. Rowland. That evening a crowd
of about 400 whites gathered around the jail. A group of about 25 African
Americans, all armed headed to the jail. After talking to the deputy sheriff,
whom reassured them no harm would come to Mr. Rowland, the African Americans
went home. But the white crowd did not disperse. It continued to swell
to ominous proportions, reaching 1,500 to 2,000. The African Americans returned, this
time numbering about 75. Again they were convinced, that no harm would
come to Mr. Rowl and. As they
were leaving, John McQueen, a white deputy, approached Johnny Cole, an
armed African American veteran who was leaning in an open automobile doorway.
Indicating the army issue .45 colt automatic that Mr. Cole was holding,
Mr. McQueen asked, "N____r, what are you doing with that pistol?" "I am going to use it, if I need
to," Mr. Cody replied. "No,
you'll give it to me." The deputy reached for the weapon. "Like
hell I will." was Mr.Cody's response. As they wrestled for the pistol
it discharged, striking Andy Brown, an African American in the chest,
and killing him. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was on. In what was an act
of either naiveté or depravity; Police Chief John Gustafson deputized
as many as 500 white volunteers with "special commissions." The NAACP's Walter White, being very
light complexioned, volunteered for duty shortly after his arrival in
town, and was given one of these commissions. "Now you can go out
and shoot any n____r you see," he was told, "and the law will
be behind you." Mr. White would spend a tense night riding about
the city in the company of 5 members of the Ku Klux Klan. Now and again
the mob would string an African American corpse to the rear bumper of
an automobile and drag the body around town. The
white volunteers also began to round-up any African Americans that they
saw as prisoners. At least one of these prisoners, Dr.
A. C. Jackson, whom the Mayo brothers had once called the "most able
Negro surgeon in America," was killed while being held in police
"protection." In the
early 1920's, Klansmen in Tulsa included the city's postmaster and, for
a short time, the publisher of the Tulsa Tribune, Richard Lloyd Jones.
There is also evidence to suggest that many white police officers belonged
to the Klan too, like Captain George G. Blaine. Washington Hudson, who
during the early 1920's was a prominent trial attorney, Majority Leader
of the Oklahoma Senate and the Titular Head of the Ku Klux Klan in Tulsa.
His son, Robert D. Hudson, one of Tulsa's most accomplished and beloved
attorney, name was listed on some yellowing KKK membership rolls that
were discovered in a Tulsa attic some years later. The National Guard finally pulled into
town by train from Oklahoma City at 9:15 am with Adjutant General Charles
Barrett in command. "In all my experience, " Barrett wrote years
later, "I have never witnessed such scenes as prevailed in this city
when I arrived at the height of the rioting. 25,000 whites, armed to the
teeth were roaming the city in utter and ruthless defiance of every concept
of law and righteousness. Motorcars,
bristling with gangs swept through the city, their occupants firing at
will." Nevertheless, the National Guards first official act was to
prepare and eat breakfast. Sheriff McCullough admitted to the press later
that he had fallen asleep. "I didn't know there had been a riot until
I read the papers the next morning at 8 o clock," he said. Reminded
that he too had signed the telegram requesting the aid of the National
Guard in the middle of the night, the sheriff said he had not bothered
to read it. In a confession of a former white Tulsa
policeman, Van B. Hurley that consisted of 31 pages. Officer Hurley, who
was honorably discharged from the force and given splendid recommendations
by his captains and lieutenants, names several prominent city officials
who he declared met in a downtown office and carefully planned the attack
on the African American district by the use of airplanes. After this meeting
Officer Hurley asserted the airplanes darted out from hangers and hovered
over the African American district dropping nitroglycerin on building,
setting them afire. The confession also involves a well known police official.
He is Captain George G. Blaine. Officer
Hurley stated that Captain Blaine rode in one of the airplanes that hovered
over the African American district during the riot on June 1,1921. The owner of McGee's Hardware Store
said that Captain Blaine of the Tulsa police force and a group of white
men broke into his store and Captain Blaine dealt out guns and ammunition
to the group of white men. Other
hardware stores and pawnshops reported break-ins on the night of May 31,1921
with guns and ammunition being stolen. Chief of Police John A. Gustason,
Sheriff McCullough, Mayor T.D. Evans, and a number of reputable citizens,
among them a prominent oil operator, all declared that the girl, Sarah
Page, had not been molested; that no attempt at criminal assault had been
made. Victor F. Barnett, Managing Editor
of the Tulsa Tribune stated that his paper had since learned that the
original story that the girl's face, Sarah Page, was scratched and her
clothes torn was untrue. Police Chief John Gustafson was indicted, tried
and convicted of failure to control the situation. A grand jury initiated
some 27 cases, which indicted over 85 African Americans, no whites, ended
for the most part in inaction. One African American Tulsan may have been
sentenced to 30 days in the county jail for allegedly carrying a concealed
weapon, but no white Tulsans were ever sent to prison for the killing,
burning, and looting during the race riot of 1921. The case against Dick Rowland was dismissed
at the end of September, 1921. His dismissal followed the receipt of a
letter by the county attorney from Sarah Page, the girl he was accused
of assaulting, in which she stated that she did not wish to prosecute
the case. According to Damie Rowland Ford accused "rapist"
Dick Rowland's mother, once Mr. Rowland was exonerated of trying to "rape"
Sarah Page, he immediately left Tulsa, and went to Kansas City. Dick
Rowland was quickly followed there by none other than Sarah Page. According to Mr. Rowland's mother, her son and Sarah Page "had
a relationship" and Sarah was 18 years old and not 17 years old. |
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