Death in a Promised Land

by Scott Ellsworth

  For some, the riot was a bearer of lessons. In her Events of the Tulsa Disaster, Mary E. Jones Parrish wrote what she felt they were:

  The Tulsa disaster has taught great lessons to all of us, has dissipated some of our false creeds, and has revealed to us verities of which we were oblivious. The most significant lesson it has taught me is that the love of race is the deepest feeling rooted in our being and no race can rise higher than its lowest member.

  Some of our group who have been blest with educational or financial advantages are oftimes inclined to forget ourselves to the extent that they feel their superiority over those less fortunate, but when a supreme test, like the Tulsa disaster comes, it serves to remind us that we are all of one race; that human fiends, like those who had full sway on June 1st, have no respect of person. Every Negro was accorded the same treatment, regardless of his education or other advantages. A Negro was a Negro on that day and forced to march with his hands up for blocks. What does this teach? It should teach us to “Look Up, Lift Up and Lend a Helping Hand,” and remember that we cannot rise higher than our weakest brother.

  “Comfort the feeble minded; support the weak.”

  I Thes. 5:14.11

  Although in essence Parrish is calling here for black nationalism, the intimidation that her muted tone reveals alludes to an even greater problem faced by black Tulsans after the riot: how to survive. The actions of the city government, police, and elite business and commercial groups during the summer and winter of 1921 confirmed that this struggle would, if anything, be as hard as before.

  Thus, as American blacks have done throughout their history, black Tulsans turned to themselves. For the first decade after the riot, it appears that the local churches, community groups, and simply the local networks of friendship and work place association of black Tulsans were the primary organizational means for coping with the issues of survival. It is true that a branch of the NAACP was formed in black Tulsa one year after the riot, but by 1926 a national officer for the organization wrote that the Tulsa Branch had been “dormant so long, I think it useless to make further inquiries regarding it.” A new branch was not organized until 1930.12

  III

  Perhaps the most lasting effects of the riot are the twin oral traditions—one set white and the other black—which it has generated in Tulsa decades later. The collective white “memory” of the riot in Tulsa has revealed both realism and fantasy, but in all cases, it has been subdued in one way or another. Those whites who were involved in the riot have been reluctant to discuss it—especially in the presence of a tape recorder—or have minimized their role. Fifty-seven years after the event, several white Tulsans allowed copies of old photographs of early Tulsa to be made, but adamantly refused to permit riot photographs to also be copied. White Tulsans too young to remember the event, or who were born after it, have often been able to spin tall tales about it.

  A central feature of the local white oral tradition of the riot involves the cultivated ability which most white Americans have to blame other people for the racism and racial injustice which surrounds them. Primarily, blacks and other nonwhites are blamed, and as we have seen, black Tulsans have been blamed for the riot. But when white Americans are not faulting nonwhites for racial injustice, they blame other whites. Northern and western whites easily overlook the poverty—as well as the positive aspects—in their Harlems, Roxburys, and East Palo Altos and claim that only southern whites are racist. Southern ruling elites blame the “red-necks.” And so forth. This ability to fault others has played a role in the mythology of the riot in white Tulsa, where today, among the upper and middle classes, it is said that the white rioters in 1921 were all “poor white trash.” One local history buff even informed the author that the “white” rioters were Mexicans!

  Although the specific historical evidence on who the white rioters were is far from great, that which we have is persuasive that no one “class” of whites had a monopoly. Photographs exist showing rioting whites dressed in the clothing of both businessmen and laborers. The official dead and wounded tabulation of the police department for whites included a salesman, a barber, a tool dresser, and the manager of an oil company. Rather, it is likely that the white rioters came from all economic and social classes. Similarly, their victims ran the economic spectrum of black Tulsa, for as Mary E. Jones Parrish stated, “a Negro was a Negro on that day.”13

  The local white oral tradition of the riot also includes the events of its immediate aftermath. Indeed, many white Tulsans feel that the humanitarian actions of their forebears after the riot atoned for the involvement of whites in the violence itself. This has even worked its way into the popular historical literature about the riot: in 1976, one white woman wrote that within two days after the violence “white Tulsans had immediately begun a generous relief program.”14 The historical evidence, however, points to a vastly different conclusion. If anything, the aftermath of the riot was marked by a concerted attempt by white Tulsa’s social and economic elite to further destroy the city’s black community.

  It should be pointed out that white Tulsans are hardly alone in this endeavor to “remember” their history, in Ralph Ellison’s words, as that which they “would have liked to have been.”15 Rather, it is a characteristic of the oral historical tradition of most white Americans. That an institution as brutal as black slavery has been romanticized so often over the years is in itself a statement about the psychological needs of most white Americans in confronting—or rather, not confronting—their past.

  Any similarities between the black and white oral traditions of the riot in Tulsa are far outweighed by their differences. Among black Tulsans, as well as among white Tulsans, the folklore of the event decades later includes both sober renditions and fantastical accounts of what transpired, and at least one folktale about the riot—one of which concerns “Peg Leg” Taylor, who is remembered by some for his work with black youth in Tulsa—has been collected and published. But unlike their white brethren, most black Tulsans who were involved in the riot have not been reluctant to discuss their experiences. This is because for many black Tulsans, the riot, and particularly the rebuilding of their community, is an issue of pride. Fifty years after the terrible spring of 1921, W. D. Williams—the young Bill Williams in the Prelude—had a message for young black Tulsans: “They must remember that it was pride that started the riot, it was pride that fought the riot, it was pride that rebuilt after the riot, and if the same pride can again be captured among the younger Blacks, when new ideals with a good educational background, with a mind for business, ‘Little Africa’ can rise again as the Black Mecca of the southwest. But it is up to the young people.” For others the memory of the riot has proved to be hardly an ennobling challenge. A black police officer related that his uncle, who had lived through the riot, still in 1978 kept a gun and ammunition in case it should happen again.16

  It has been said in the city, by both blacks and whites, that the story of the riot has been “hushed up,” and in fact during the 1950s and 1960s black civil rights leaders used the threat of “bringing up” the riot as leverage in negotiations with white leaders in Tulsa. Indeed, the most important factor seems to be what part of Tulsa one lives in. The Oklahoma Eagle, which has for many years been Tulsa’s black newspaper, appears to have had no aversion to mentioning the riot over the decades, and in 1971 over two hundred black Tulsans commemorated the event with a ceremony. No such ceremony took place in white Tulsa that year, during which the Tulsa Tribune carried what was probably the first in-depth article on the riot since the 1920s. “For fifty years the Tribune did not rehash the story,” this article concluded, “but the week of the 50th anniversary seems a natural time to relate just what did happen when a city got out of hand.” The article made no mention of the role which the 1921 Tribune played in causing the riot.17

  If the story has been suppressed, one reason would have to do with the very history of the city itself. Socially and politically prominent white Tul
sans have always been especially sensitive about the city’s image, a heritage dating from the early twentieth century when trainloads of “Tulsa Boosters” fanned out across the nation, trying to win new immigrants and convince people that Oklahoma was not a no man’s land, but that young, beautiful Tulsa was a city bound for glory. If the national image of the city was brightened by these efforts, it was set back in the 1930s with the state’s dust storms and migrants streaming west. Today, as Tulsa’s claim to being the “Oil Capital of the World” grows pretentious, some neo-boosters still bill Tulsa as “America’s Most Beautiful City,” an appellation given by Reader’s Digest in the 1950s.18 The race riot is, for some, a blot on the city’s history and something not to be discussed, much less proclaimed.

  A condition peculiar to but one American city? Hardly. Like the well-distributed history of racial violence in the United States, a segregation of memory exists in every part of the nation. It shall continue to do so as long as the injustice which has bred it continues.

  IV

  Beyond Tulsa, the immediate significance of the riot was perhaps greatest to the young state of Oklahoma. Of his youth in Oklahoma City, within one hundred miles of Tulsa, Ralph Ellison has written:

  We had a Negro church and a segregated school, a few lodges and fraternal organizations, and beyond those was the great white world. We were pushed off to what seemed the least desirable side of the city (but which years later was found to contain one of the state’s richest pools of oil), and our system of justice was based upon Texas law, yet there was an optimism within the Negro community and a sense of possibility which, despite our awareness of limitation (dramatized so brutally in the Tulsa race riot of 1921), transcended all of this.19

  In the aftermath of the Tulsa race riot, black Oklahomans employed their own resources, and in doing so, they have endured.

  Yet, the event was not denied. If the early history of Oklahoma reveals a greater measure of black freedom and opportunity than the rest of the nation, then the Tulsa race riot—along with the Grandfather Clause, the increased lynchings of blacks, and the rise of Jim Crow—was a capstone to a movement to suppress any uniqueness in race relations which the young state had.

  By the spring of 1921, Oklahoma had truly entered the Union.

  Epilogue

  Notes on the

  Subsequent History of

  “Deep Greenwood”

  The rebuilding of black Tulsa after the riot, particularly that of “Deep Greenwood,” is a story of almost as great importance as the riot itself. Perhaps more than anything else, this rebuilding was a testament to the courage and stamina of Tulsa’s black pioneers in their struggle for freedom.

  Many of the buildings along the first block of Greenwood Avenue running north from Archer Street were rebuilt by the end of 1922. Although the burned-out shells of the pre-riot structures were for the most part torn down, many of the new buildings assumed the form of their predecessors. The 1922 Williams building, for example, bears a great resemblance to its pre-1921 predecessor. Many of these later buildings were constructed, as the original ones had been, with red bricks from a local brickyard located two blocks north on the avenue.1

  “A little over a decade” after the riot, Henry Whitlow has written, “everything was more prosperous than before. Most of these businesses even survived the Depression.” Furthermore, Whitlow tells us that a local Negro Business Directory was published, a Greenwood Chamber of Commerce organized, the National Negro Business League hosted here, and a black entrepreneur by the name of Simon Berry established a black-owned bus system. “Tulsa’s Negro owned and operated business district became known nationally.”2

  Phoenix-like “Deep Greenwood” did not, however, prosper for ever. By the end of World War II the district had begun a downward spiral. Again we turn to Whitlow: “The merchants of south Tulsa found that the dollar from Greenwood was just as green as the south of the tracks dollar. Relations became better ... by the late fifties Greenwood was on the decline.”3

  A city reborn: looking north down Greenwood from Archer, 1938.

  Courtesy of W. D. Williams

  “Greenwood won’t be here any longer,” Clarence Cherry told a journalist in 1971. “In a few years there won’t be any Greenwood.” Seven years later, Cherry’s Shine Parlor is gone. So is the cafe, the nightclub, Jackson’s barber shop, and the rooming house which lined the first block of Greenwood Avenue when Cherry reminisced.4 In 1978, only two businesses, one of them the Oklahoma Eagle, remained. To be certain, the red brick buildings—many of them with cement datestones reading 1922—remain, but they are but empty ghosts of an earlier era.

  Sitting in his sister’s home in Tulsa, Dr. John Hope Franklin told the author, “There are two ways which whites destroy a black community. One is by building a freeway through it, the other is by changing the zoning laws.” Along with the destruction of the 1921 riot, the first block of “Deep Greenwood” has, at least physically, survived this, too. Franklin’s father helped to defeat the fire ordinance passed by the City Commission after the riot. In recent years, a freeway has cut through the section, but the first block of Greenwood Avenue remains. Few places in the city of Tulsa are as worthy of preservation as this first block of “Deep Greenwood,” a monument to human endurance.

  Greenwood and Archer, 1978.

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  NOTES

  PRELUDE In the Promised Land

  1. For a discussion of the contents of the May 31, 1921, issue of the Tulsa Tribune, see pages 47–48, herein.

  2. The primary source for this Prelude is an interview with W. D. Williams—“Bill” Williams—on June 7, 1978, in Tulsa.

  3. A tabulation of racial violence in America which includes race riots is to be found in Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 320–26.

  4. William Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 268.

  Chapter 1: Boom Cities

  1. United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 1 (Washington D. C: Government Printing Office, 1975), 24–37; Simon Kuznets and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, Population Redistribution and Economic Growth: United States, 1870–1950, Vol. I (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1957), 92.

  2. William Butler, Tulsa 75: A History of Tulsa (Tulsa: Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, 1974), 27, 155; James Monroe Hall, The Beginning of Tulsa (Tulsa: Scott-Rice Company, 1928), 3; 1929 Consolidated Building Directory with City Map of Tulsa, Oklahoma (n.p., n.p., n.d.), 1; Tulsa City Directory, 1921 (Tulsa: Polk-Hoffhine Directory Company, 1921), 8.

  3. A. V. Bourque, “The Story of Tulsa Is the Story of Oil,” Tulsa Spirit, October, 1924, p. 16; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 302–303; Butler, Tulsa 75, 41.

  4. Hall, Beginning of Tulsa, 3; Butler, Tulsa 75, 41, 45, 47.

  5. Butler, Tulsa 75, 47, 49; Bourque, “The Story of Tulsa Is the Story of Oil,” 16; Angie Debo, Tulsa: From Creek Town to Oil Capital (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943), 98.

  6. In 1909, the city government purchased the bridge which spanned the Arkansas River and established it as a “toll free route,” thus further facilitating travel between Tulsa and the nearby oil fields. Butler, Tulsa 75, 49, 156.

  7. Tulsa and West Tulsa, Oklahoma, Directory for 1909 (Tulsa: Burkhart Printing and Stationary Company, 1909), 16–22; Butler, Tulsa 75, 51–53.

  8. Kuznets and Thomas, Population Redistribution and Economic Growth, I, 617, and III, 200.

  9. Tulsa World, September 5, 1920, p. A2.

  10. Debo, Tulsa, 44, 56–57. See also Arthur L. Tolson, The Black Oklahomans: A History, 1541–1972 (New Orleans: Edwards Printing Company, 1972).

  11. Tulsa City Directory, 1916 (Tulsa: Polk-Hoffhine Directory Compan
y, 1916), 34; Tulsa City Directory, 1922 (Tulsa: Polk-Hoffhine Directory Company, 1922), 15. See Appendix I.

  12. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, manuscript schedules for Tulsa, Creek County, Indian Territory, Vol. XV, 78A-89A, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  13. Oklahoma Eagle, September 9, 1968, p. 14; Tulsa World, February 13, 1972, p. A8; Tulsa Guide, September 8,1906, pp. 1–2; Tulsa City Directory, 1907 (Tulsa: Tulsa OK Press, 1907), 17–24.

  14. Tulsa City Directories for 1910, 1911, and 1913 (Tulsa: Polk-Hoffhine Directory Company, 1910–1913). Tulsa County’s illiteracy rate for all blacks ten years old and older in 1910 was 8.3 percent, whereas the state and national rates for the same group were 17.7 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively. United States Bureau of the Census, Negro Population, 1790–1915 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918), 102, 404, 826–27; Tulsa Weekly Planet, July 18, 1912, p. 3. See Appendix II.