Death in a Promised Land

by Scott Ellsworth

  The World declared that with the raid, “War on the I.W.W. was declared by the city of Tulsa last night.” This was indeed the case, if the newspaper was referring to Tulsa’s municipal government. The union men were political prisoners in a city where many looked with disdain at the current oil workers’ strike in Texas and Louisiana, a strike which some alleged to have been influenced by the IWW.28 Police Captain Wilkerson, who led the raid, stated: “Regardless of the outcome of the cases, we are going to arrest every man who is found loitering about the I.W.W. headquarters. If they get out of jail and go back there we will arrest them again, and again and again. Tulsa is not big enough to hold any traitors during our government’s crisis, and the sooner these fellows get out of town the better for them.”29 Wilkerson’s words proved to be true. The next evening, police detectives raided the IWW hall once again, and arrested the one man who was there, who soon joined the other eleven in the city jail. (One of the twelve had provided for bail, but his bondsman backed out, leaving him incarcerated.)30

  A scene in the Mid-Continent field, south of the city. Tulsa's IWW chapter sought to organize the region’s oil workers into the Oil Field Workers Union.

  Courtesy of the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa

  Commenting on the upcoming case, the World stated: “There is much speculation today whether any attorney in Tulsa would risk attracting the contempt of loyal citizens by appearing in court today to represent the defendants.” Tulsa attorney Charles Richardson apparently decided to risk that contempt. Prior to the trial, Richardson stated that certain acts of misconduct needed to have occurred for a vagrancy charge, and as these had not happened, the men should be freed. “What we are going to prove,” he said, “is that this I.W.W. is the only fraternal society in the country which requires that every man, before being accepted, shall establish the fact that he is a bonafide worker and wage earner.”31

  During the first day of the trial, attorneys for the prosecution sought to learn the attitude of the defendants and witnesses about the government. When asked his opinion on this subject, E. M. Boyd, secretary of the local IWW chapter, replied, “We are not interested in that, we are interested in raising wages.” A pipeline worker, Boyd stated that eighteen years ago he earned three dollars a day for his work, and that today, he made the same amount. After five hours, Judge T. D. Evans adjourned the court until the next afternoon.32 (Evans later became the mayor of Tulsa, and held that office during the race riot.)

  T. D. Evans, judge at the 1917 IWW trial, and mayor of Tulsa during the race riot.

  Courtesy of the Office of the Mayor, City of Tulsa

  The World, disappointed that “nothing sensational had happened” thus far at the trial, could not conceal its impatience. In an editorial entitled “Get Out the Hemp” which appeared the next morning, the newspaper—which was then edited by Eugene Lorton—advised:

  If the I.W.W. or its twin brother, the Oil Workers Union, gets busy in your neighborhood, kindly take occasion to decrease the supply of hemp. A knowledge of how to tie a knot that will stick might come handy in a few days. It is no time to dally with the enemies of the country. The unrestricted production of petroleum is as necessary to the winning of the war as the unrestricted production of gunpowder. We are either going to whip Germany or Germany is going to whip us. The first step in the whipping of Germany is to strangle the I.W.W.’s. Kill ‘em just as you would kill any other kind of snake. Don’t scotch ‘em; kill ‘em. And kill ‘em dead. It is no time to waste money on trials and continuances like that. All is necessary is the evidence and a firing squad. Probably the carpenters union will contribute the timber for the coffins.33

  The IWW was not without supporters, however, as was revealed in the continuation of the trial that evening. F. J. Ryan, a former IWW local secretary who had also been involved in the Free Speech fight led by the Socialist party of Tulsa in 1914, was applauded by courtroom spectators for his statements on decreasing wages and soaring prices. He added his opinion that the case was fixed and that he knew for a fact that posters were at that moment being printed ordering the IWW to leave town. Judge Evans found it necessary to instruct police detectives in the courtroom to arrest anyone who applauded further.34

  The trial was brought to a speedy conclusion. Not only did Judge Evans find the twelve guilty, fine them $100 each, and commit them to jail, but he had five people in the courtroom who had served as witnesses for the defense (including Ryan) arrested, tried on the spot, and also declared guilty. The police were then instructed to transfer the seventeen prisoners that night to the county jail, located in the county courthouse.35

  One half hour later, between eleven and midnight, nine police officers began to escort the seventeen prisoners to the county jail. But en route, at the intersection of First Street and Boulder Avenue, the caravan was halted by a group of forty or fifty armed men garbed in “long black robes and black masks,” who called themselves the “Knights of Liberty.” These men bound the hands and feet of the seventeen prisoners, and had the police drive them to a secluded ravine west of the city near Irving Place.36

  The ravine was lit by a fire and by the headlights of automobiles drawn in a circle. The seventeen union men were then stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and whipped. With each stroke of the whip—which, according to one of the union men was “a double piece of new rope, five-eighths or three-quarters hemp”—the black-robed leader of the “Knights of Liberty” was to have said, “In the name of the outraged women and children of Belgium.” Hot tar and feathers were then applied to the bloodied backs of the seventeen men. One prisoner, an older man, pleaded with the “Knights”: “I have lived here for eighteen years, and have raised a large family. I am not an I.W.W. I am as patriotic as any man here.” But he too was whipped. Several of the prisoners, however, defiantly proclaimed their allegiance to the IWW. F. J. Ryan, the former local secretary, was whipped twice, the second time leaving the hot tar imbedded in his back.37

  Capital and Labor Are Partners—Not Enemies

  John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

  IWW periodicals were quick to point out to their readers that the real cause of the violence against their members—by conservative vigilantes during the war under the guise of patriotism—was economic. This cartoon appeared in One Big Union Monthly, March 1, 1919. Note the “Tulsa” skull at right.

  After their torture, the seventeen prisoners were directed toward the Osage Hills and told to leave. Rifle and pistol volleys, shot into the air, sped their flight. Three hours later, the seventeen union men found refuge at the cabin of “an I.W.W. friend” and cleansed their wounds of the tar and feathers. Meanwhile, the police were “taken” back to town from the ravine. That same evening, printed signs appeared at various points around the city of Tulsa, including the train station, on telephone poles, at the IWW hall, and on the door to the law office of Charles Richardson, who had defended the accused men. The signs read:

  NOTICE TO I.W.W.’S. DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN TULSA.

  —Vigilance Committee38

  The tangible evidence is conclusive that the Tulsa police worked in close concert with the “Knights of Liberty.” Though Chief of Police Lucas stated later that his men were “powerless” against the masked men, and that every precaution had been taken to protect the prisoners, the nine police officers who comprised the escort were surely armed, as even traffic policemen in Tulsa carried guns at the time. Indeed, had they not been armed, given the circumstances, that in itself would constitute prima facie evidence of police collusion. That the police and the “Knights” worked together is further born out by a statement made later by one of the whipped men:

  It was very evident that the police force knew what was going to happen when they took us from jail, as there were extra gowns and masks provided which were put on by the Chief of Police and one detective named_____ , and the number of blows we received were regulated by the Chief of Police himself who was easily recognizable by six of us at least. It wa
s all prearranged. The police knew where we were going, or the extra gowns and masks would not have been ready for the Chief and________ .39

  Apparently, the chief of police was not the only well-known individual involved in the affair, for John Moran, deputy U.S. marshal in charge of the Tulsa office, later stated, “You would be surprised at the prominent men in town who were in this mob.”40

  Not surprisingly, the local authorities took no action against the “Knights of Liberty.” The county attorney was out of town. The city attorney stated that although he deplored the incident, he was “powerless to proceed in the case, owing to the fact that it was not covered by any city ordinance.” The police said that they could not identify any of the “Knights.” They had other quarry. According to the World, two days after the flogging, the police, said the paper, “are continuing their search for I.W.W.’s and will arrest them as fast as they are discovered.” Indeed, when one of the seventeen whipped men reached nearby Sand Springs and was arrested by the chief of police there, authorities in Tulsa told the chief to “turn him loose and tell him to keep going—away from Tulsa.” The Tulsa IWW hall on Brady Street was closed down.41

  In the aftermath of the incident, the World—whose editorials had urged a far more serious fate for the union men than that which they received—could barely mask its approval for what had transpired. “As regrettable as the deportation of some very persistent and incorrigible agitators may seem,” the newspaper stated, “it may yet prove a deterrent to any ambitious souls anxious to follow their example.” The next day, the World referred to the “Knights of Liberty” as a “patriotic body,” although reminding the reader that some Tulsans were unsure of their methods. Other white newspapers in the city generally concurred with the attitude of the World. One paper referred to the event as the “Tulsa Tar Party” and a reporter for the Tulsa Democrat also dubbed the tar and feathering “a party, a real American party.”42

  IV

  The 1917 IWW incident revealed how disastrous the consequences could be for a group of Tulsans if the power of an influential newspaper, the city government, and the local courts and police was brought to bear against them. More than that, it revealed how dire the results could be even in such a situation when the defendants were white and when the official charge lodged against them was no more serious than vagrancy.43

  A second incident which contributed to the mob-rule potentialities in Tulsa took place two years later. It had its beginnings at about nine o’clock on the evening of St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1919, when a white ironworker by the name of O. W. Leonard was accosted by two armed men on the streets of Tulsa. They told him to raise his hands, and when he refused, he was shot in the back. He died twelve hours later in a local hospital. But before he died, Leonard told the authorities that his two assailants were black, and he was able to give the police a very meager description of them.44

  In its initial coverage of the incident, the Democrat stated: “Violence is feared if the guilty pair is taken in charge. Officers are preparing to evade such violence.” Yet, although the crime was frontpage news, the reporting of the white Tulsa press—the World, the Times, and the Democrat—was mild in comparison to the tone of the IWW coverage two years earlier.45

  In the days that followed, three black men were arrested in the case and—after employees of the Oklahoma Ironworks had quit work to attend the funeral of their slain co-worker—rumors began to spread in Greenwood that there might be an attempt to lynch the three black defendants. Near midnight on the day after Leonard’s funeral, a party of about fifteen armed blacks drove down to the city jail to investigate the situation firsthand. Their leader asked to see if the defendants were safe. “In the meantime,” the Tulsa Times later reported, “the report of race riot had spread through the streets,” and, all told, eventually some two hundred black Tulsans had gathered outside of the jail. After temporarily disarming a spokesman for the group, Sergeant Rice of the police department allowed this person to enter the jail and, “see for himself that none of their race had suffered anything, and the men went away, declaring they were satisfied.”46

  Tulsa’s Black Veterans of World War I. Photograph from the Tulsa Star, November 23, 1918.

  The next morning, several blacks went downtown to see if they could get any or all of the prisoners released, but were informed that the sheriff would have formal charges lodged against the prisoners before nightfall. That day the Democrat reported that “excitement following the visit of the negro crowd at the police station Thursday night subsided to some extent Friday morning, although much talk of trouble with the colored element was heard.”47

  Actually, the reverse happened—black police officers had trouble with whites. On Saturday night, March 22, a mass meeting was held in Greenwood to discuss ways of suppressing the lawlessness that had been prevalent in the area. On their way from that meeting, shortly before midnight, three black policemen—Barney Cleaver, James Cherry, and Stanley Webb—were held up and fired upon by two white gunmen as they drove past the Oklahoma Ironworks. Aided by two night watchmen at the plant, the three police officers returned the fire, wounding two white men, who were later captured and ultimately accused of being part of a local crime ring.48 After this week of turmoil, the time of extralegal peril for the three black defendants arrested in connection with the Leonard affair had passed. There was no lynching.

  The Tulsa police force, ca. 1918–1920. Note the two black officers at left.

  Courtesy of the Tulsa Police Department

  In the aftermath of the incident. Reverend J. H. Abernathy, the black pastor of the First Baptist Church in Greenwood, criticized those black Tulsans who had gone down to the jail on Thursday evening. “I have inquired carefully for the names of the ringleaders from people I know to be reliable,” Abernathy stated, “and I have been unable to learn of one of them. The wage earning colored people of Tulsa had little if anything to do with that affair.” He described the unknown blacks who visited the jail as “floaters who have drifted in here,” and he suggested that “it would be a good thing if we could have a law to compel such people to get out or get to work.” Abernathy concluded with this remark: “I don’t think that the white citizens of Tulsa would be guilty of the crime this mob was afraid would be committed.”49

  V

  Unlike the IWW prisoners, the three men held in conjunction with the Leonard case were not subjected to the high-pitched abuse of a sensationalistic press nor, to our knowledge, to any extralegal violence. Yet, like the 1917 affair, the events of 1919 revealed much about the nature of law enforcement in Tulsa during the World War I era. Perhaps most importantly, it revealed that there were serious doubts in the black community as to whether the local white law enforcement establishment could be relied upon to protect prisoners, and that there were black Tulsans who were prepared to help protect incarcerated blacks if it was felt that they were in danger of being lynched. The Leonard incident did not, however, close the book on the matter of lynchings and extralegal violence in the “Magic City.”

  Tulsa police officials variously described the “hi-jacking” and murder of Homer Nida, a twenty-five-year-old white taxi driver, as “the arch murder plot of this city,” and “the most cold-blooded act ever committed in the Southwest.” At about 9:30 P.M. on Saturday night, August 21, 1920, Nida was employed by two white men and one white woman in front of the Hotel Tulsa to drive them to a dance in Red Fork. En route to the destination, while driving along the Tulsa-Sapulpa highway, Nida became suspicious of his passengers, and he pulled into a gas station where he secreted away some money which he was carrying. Back on the highway, just before they reached Red Fork, Nida was clubbed on the head by one of the men with a revolver.50 He was then pulled into the back seat of his large Hudson cab, while one of his abductors took the wheel. The party passed through Red Fork, and Nida pleaded for his life, telling the party to take his car and his money, but to spare him. But near the Texas Company’s tank farm just outside of Sapulpa,
Nida was shot in the stomach and thrown from the car, which sped off down the highway.51

  A few minutes later, Nida was discovered by a Red Fork garage owner who, with the help of another man, rushed the wounded taxi driver to a Tulsa hospital. While conscious, Nida told the police at the hospital what had happened, and that he could identify the party who had robbed and shot him. He insisted that the woman had no real part in the crime.52

  The crime and events related to it were made front-page news in the city’s two white dailies, the World and the Tribune. It was also carried by the Tulsa Star, which was then the city’s black weekly. Other local crimes, including the near fatal stabbing of a truck driver, were relegated to the back pages of the World and the Tribune, but the papers kept the city posted almost daily on the Nida affair, generally on the front page. The truck driver, one Walter Allen, was stabbed the week before Nida was shot, yet this event received relatively little press play, regardless of the striking parallels that Allen and Nida languished in hospital beds simultaneously and that neither was expected to survive. Indeed, with a wealth of local crimes to choose from, the World and the Tribune devoted a disproportionate amount of attention to the Nida affair.53

  On Sunday, the day after Nida was shot, an eighteen-year-old white former telephone company worker named Roy Belton secured a ride from Tulsa to Nowata, a town about fifty miles away. In the car, one of the passengers read aloud the Tribune’s account of the crime. Belton remarked that he knew who the woman was in Nida’s cab, as he had heard her plan the hijacking earlier. The passengers in the car then became suspicious of Belton, and upon reaching Nowata, they informed the local authorities there, who arrested him and had him taken back to Tulsa.54