Death in a Promised Land

by Scott Ellsworth

  Immediately a cracker by the name of Ken Murphy gave the Confederate yell: ‘Whoo-whoo—let’s get the nigger.’ Simultaneously five hundred poor pecks rushed on the armed sheriffs, who made no resistance whatever. They tore the Negro’s clothing off before he was placed in a waiting automobile. This was done in broad daylight. The Negro was unsexed and made to eat a portion of his anatomy which had been cut away. Another portion was sent by parcel post to Governor Dorsey, whom the people of this section hate bitterly.

  The Negro was taken to a grove, where each one of more than five hundred people, in Ku Klux ceremonial, had placed a pine nut around a stump, making a pyramid to the height of ten feet. The Negro was chained to a stump and asked if he had anything to say. Castrated and in indescribable torture, the Negro asked for a cigarette, lit it and blew the smoke in the face of his tormentors.

  The pyre was lit and a hundred men and women, old and young, grandmothers among them, joined hands and danced while the Negro burned. A big dance was held in a barn nearby that evening in celebration of the burning, many people coming by automobile from nearby cities to the gala event.3

  Black Americans were losing ground during this era in other ways, too. Many black postal employees lost their jobs during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and the number of black police declined. In the organized labor movement, once in 1917 and twice in 1921, resolutions to denounce racial discrimination in union locals were defeated in conventions of the American Federation of Labor. And hotels and restaurants in northern cities like Boston and Chicago which had previously served blacks had begun to bar them.4

  These national trends were mirrored by similar developments in Oklahoma, but their effects in the young state were even more disastrous because of the unique history of race relations in the territory. The character of Native American slavery had been debated back and forth, and although even the mildest form of slavery is a far cry from freedom, one “Creek Negro” is recorded as stating: “I was eating out of the same pot with the Indians... while they were still licking the master’s boots in Texas.” Beginning in the 1880s, there had been an attempt to make Oklahoma into an all-black state—a dream of Edwin P. McCabe, former state auditor of Kansas, and by those southern blacks who formed “Oklahoma Clubs” during the land rush era—and in 1890, a black had been elected to the territorial legislature.5 During the next three decades, a virtual war was waged as to whether Oklahoma would conform to the national pattern of race relations, and most of the results of this conflict proved to be particularly catastrophic to black Oklahomans—to those for whom Oklahoma was their native land, as well as to those who had risked so much to come and try to make it into a Canaan for themselves and their children.6

  Beginning in the 1890s, the territorial government passed its first Jim Crow laws. Although certain similar measures were defeated in the twentieth century, others were added, and Oklahoma was later to have the distinction of being the first state to segregate its telephone booths. Oklahoma’s greatest racist distinction in Jim Crow legislation, however, concerned the franchise. Up until 1910, black Oklahomans legally had the right to vote, and it appears that many of them exercised that right. But that year—which also saw the last black to sit in the Oklahoma State Legislature until 1964—the in-famous “Grandfather Clause” was adopted by the legislature, and it effectively disfranchised the state’s black population. Although it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1915, a new method, that of setting “an extremely brief registration period for voters not already eligible,” was adopted to check black suffrage. In Tulsa, and other places, blacks did however continue to vote.7

  The first two decades of the twentieth century brought an increase in racial violence to Oklahoma and by 1911 the nature of lynchings in the state began to change: thereafter, more blacks were lynched per year than whites. And although fewer blacks were lynched in the state from 1917 to 1919 than in the preceding three years, the war was by no means a definite improver of the status of blacks in the state. For one thing, the death blow which the war years dealt to the Oklahoma Socialist party, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and other radical groups in the state was not without significance to black Oklahomans as a group. The IWW had been founded as an interracial body, and its national office rhetorically supported black rights. The Oklahoma Socialist party “fought consistently for full enfranchisement of Negroes,” it has been claimed, and there were black party members. The Socialist party in Tulsa had never been as strong as it was elsewhere in the state, and after 1918, Socialist slates of candidates for city offices were no longer being fielded by the party local.8

  Nationwide, the resurgence of aggressive white supremacy was accompanied by a racist literature so ubiquitous that one historian concluded that the “chief difficulty in studying racist attitudes towards Negroes during the early twentieth century is the existence of mountains of readily available materials.” One such book was Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, which another historian has called the central intellectual inspiration of the white racism of the 1920s. Totally ignorant of black history, Grant stated that “negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within.” A similar work referred to black Americans as “ten million malignant cancers [which] gnaw the vitals of our body politic.”9

  The most widespread organizational means for the expression of white racist and nativist thought was the so-called “second” or “revived” Ku Klux Klan. Organized in 1915, it was particularly active in the 1920s. Klansmen were found throughout the nation, from Maine to Oregon and from Florida to California. Blacks, however, were not the only victims of Klan terrorism and intimidation; Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and those whom the hooded order felt to be guilty of moral turpitude (for alleged “crimes” such as adultery or bootlegging) were also victimized. The Klan was very strong in the Southwest, and particularly in Tulsa, which boasted by the time of the riot a “thriving chapter.” Late in 1921, the Tulsa “Klan No. 2” claimed a membership of 3,200. Moreover, the Women of the Ku Klux Klan were also said to be “thriving” in Tulsa soon after this separate order was founded in June, 1923. Furthermore, Tulsa was to have the distinction of being one of the few places where the “Junior” Ku Klux Klan existed. This order, founded in 1924, was open to white boys from twelve to eighteen years of age.10

  Klan ceremony, Hobart, Oklahoma.

  Courtesy of the Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library

  Swearing in new Klansmen in Oklahoma. Tulsa was one of the state’s strongest Klan centers.

  Courtesy of the Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library

  In the latter months of 1921, “masked bands” whipped at least thirteen persons in Tulsa County. County officials eschewed making inquiries into these beatings on the grounds that the victims “probably got what they deserved and that formal investigations would only bring criticism to the investigators.” Such an official stance, of course, amounted to an “open invitation” to the Klan for further extralegal acts of violence. As might be expected in such an environment, the influence of the Klan became notably pronounced. As one authority has written, “In Tulsa County the Klan could not lose.” In the November 1922 elections, for example, both the Republican and Democratiç candidates for county attorney and sheriff were Klansmen.11

  Recruiting for World War I, downtown Tulsa.

  Courtesy of the Tulsa County Historical Society.

  II

  How did black Tulsans—and black Americans in general—cope with this increasingly oppressive racial climate? How were they to respond to yet another period of heightened white violence? Many concurred with one black veteran from Chicago who, in describing his postwar outlook, stated: “I ain’t looking for trouble, but if it comes my way I ain’t dodging.”12

  Participation in the First World War had indeed helped to clarify black thinking on the subject of white militancy. The f
act that black soldiers had fought and died in France only added to black America’s indignation toward the sharp postwar wave of white violence. During the war, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had urged in Crisis: “Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.” A year later, however, in September of 1919, Crisis stated: “To-day we raise the terrible weapon of Self-Defense. When the murderer comes, he shall no longer strike us in the back. When the armed lynchers gather, we too must gather armed. When the mob moves, we propose to meet it with bricks and clubs and guns.” Crisis did, though, advise its readers to “tread here in solemn caution” and not to “seek reform by violence.”13 In a similar vein, Marcus Garvey chaired a convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which resolved in 1920 that “the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of his color.”14

  This concept of self-defense was voiced in a number of other black periodicals and by numerous other black leaders. Some were quite militant. The Wisconsin Weekly Blade stated that one “cannot be too radical in a righteous cause.” Black socialist leader A. Philip Randolph, noting that Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence recognized the law of self-defense, concluded that blacks should employ armed force against white assailants, and black journalist John Edward Bruce resolved that “equality is not obtained by gift but by struggle.”15

  At times, black spokesmen combined religious references with desperate visions of apocalypse. In October, 1919, Challenge Magazine of New York editorialized:

  America hates, lynches, enslaves us not because we are black, but because we are weak. A strong, united Negro race will not be mistreated any more than a strong united Japanese race. It is always strength over weakness, might over right.

  But with education comes thought, with thought comes action; with action comes freedom.

  Read! Read! Read! Then when the mob comes, whether with torch or with gun, let us stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord.16

  Black religious leaders, it should be added, were far from quiescent on these issues. For example, when a number of black Methodist bishops were asked to condemn the use of violence in 1919, many of them “answered that self-restraint and patience should be practised, but that if white assailants would not desist, Negroes should use arms if necessary to protect themselves and their homes.”17

  Black Tulsans were not unaffected by these intellectual currents which swept across black America during this period. Both W. E. B Du Bois and Chief Alfred Sam—a black leader who advocated a return of American blacks to Africa—spoke in Tulsa before the race riot. There had been interest in forming an NAACP chapter in Tulsa at least as early as 1917, and black organizations in the city prior to the riot included a local chapter of the militant African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). With branches scattered throughout the United States and the Caribbean, the ABB proposed that “Blacks organize into trade unions, build cooperatively owned businesses, and create paramilitary units to safeguard the community.” And black Tulsa, it should be added, had its share of World War I veterans, some of whom had fought in France.18

  Similarly, extant issues of Tulsa’s black press reveal a concern with the problems confronting black Americans nationwide—including that of black responses to white violence. Although differences of opinion existed, one editorial in the Tulsa Star in 1920 spoke for a large segment of the city’s black community on that problem. In the editorial, entitled “Misguided Oklahoma Patriots,” the newspaper was critical of an armed group of Oklahoma City blacks who had gathered after a black had been lynched by whites. Although the Star stated that it was the paper’s aim “to seek honorable and peaceful ways of settling the differences which unavoidably now and then crop up between the races,” the newspaper added that “it is quite evident that the proper time to afford protection to any prisoner is BEFORE and during the time he is being lynched.”19 Thus, clearly, there were black Tulsans who were not “looking for trouble,” but were not about to “dodge” should it come their way.

  III

  And there was no dearth of “trouble” in Tulsa during the years immediately preceding the race riot. In particular, three incidents warrant our attention, for each of them previewed elements which were to be at work in the spring of 1921. They occurred in 1917, 1919, and 1920, and although only one of them involved racial violence per se, collectively they form a vital section of the necessary backdrop against which the events of the riot must be seen.

  The first episode began at about four o’clock in the morning on October 29, 1917, when the home of J. Edgar Pew, a wealthy oil man, was bombed in Tulsa. Although Pew, his wife, and son escaped unharmed, the blast did considerable damage to the house, demolishing the front porch and blowing the front wall of the house inward. Pew was vice-president of the Carter Oil Company, a major subsidiary of Standard Oil.20 Four hours later, an oil worker named W. J. Powers was arrested at the Frisco train station, but was not charged with the bombing, pending an investigation. Later that day, the chief of police, E. L. Lucas, offered the opinion that the attack on the Pew home “is the first in a series of depredidations [sic] in a gigantic plot to destroy the property of the oil companies and the residences of the leaders in the oil business in the Mid Continent field.”21

  In the same spirit, the Tulsa World—one of the city’s three major white newspapers at the time—claimed to have evidence from “unimpeachable sources” to implicate the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), in a story which carried the headline, “I.W.W. PLOT BREAKS PREMATURELY IN BLOWING UP OF PEW RESIDENCE.” The newspaper claimed that members of the IWW had been sent to Tulsa from all over the country, and that the “danger cannot be exaggerated.” As for Powers, the World reported that he was “caught trying to leave town,” and that his “excited haste” in denying IWW membership “confirmed the belief of the detectives that he is a member.” Furthermore, the newspaper claimed: “The World is one of the institutions marked for destruction. Four letters have been received in the past four weeks from I.W.W’s and in each one reference is made to the ‘certain downfall of capitalist newspapers.’ The World is ready for them.”22

  The authorities investigating the case claimed to have but few clues, and felt that the bomb plot may have originated in Muskogee.23 While the story briefly died in the city’s other newspapers, the World continued its attack on the IWW. In an October 31 editorial entitled “Patience Has an End,” the newspaper endorsed vigilante solutions, likening political radicals to horse thieves and recommending similar treatment: “Why should any discrimination be made between a horse thief and one of these cowardly vandals.” Elsewhere in the same issue, the World—no longer claiming to have any evidence linking the IWW to the Pew bombing—was even more explicit in its final solution to the IWW.

  Right here is a good place to disagree with the statement, frequently expressed by Oklahoma editors, that the I.W.W.’s and other pro-Hun individuals should “leave the country.” As a matter of fact, there is no place for them to go. The only relief is a wholesale application of concentration camps. Or, what is hemp worth now, the long foot?24

  Such extravagant anxiety on the part of the World was traceable, in part, to the continuing presence of political radicalism in Oklahoma, a phenomenon evident in the Populist uprising in the 1890s and superseded by a strong socialist presence in the state in the first decades of the twentieth century, of which the Industrial Workers of the World was a part. That the IWW was not pro-German, but was rather against the war, did not seem to concern the World in its journalistic campaign against them.25 Yet, there was an even more important reason for the newspaper’s vehemence against the organization. It had to do with the fact that the Tulsa IWW office, which had been set up at the New Fox Building on Brady Street in January, 1917, was a local of the IWW-affiliated Oil Field Workers’ Unio
n (OFWU), and the union had reportedly organized some three hundred oil workers in the Tulsa area under the IWW banner. The prospect of the Mid-Continent oil field’s being completely organized by the OFWU was more than a prowar, pro-oil-company newspaper such as the World was willing to tolerate.26

  A week after the Pew bombing, the Tulsa police raided the IWW hall on Brady Street, finding the men inside “seated about the place, playing cards and reading.” The local secretary was receiving dues from some members “and placing stamps in their membership books.” When the secretary informed the police—who had immediately begun to search the hall—that the men were paying rent for the hall and asked to see a search warrant, the head of the police raiding party “replied he did not give a damn if we were paying rent for four places [as] they would search them whenever they felt like it.” The men inside offered no resistance and, though no incriminating evidence was found, the eleven men present were arrested and placed under the highest bond Oklahoma law permitted. One prisoner was a local printer and another worked as a plumber for the Monarch Plumbing Company. Neither of these two men could possibly have been guilty of vagrancy, which was the charge lodged.27