November 9, 2019 • 25 mins
This 2014 episode came up recently because of the event's inclusion on a television show. "Black Wall Street" was a nickname for Greenwood, a vibrant suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was destroyed in a race riot in 1921. And while Greenwood's destruction was definitely the product of racial tensions, the event was much more one-sided.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. A few weeks ago, the TV series
Watchman debuted and it opened with a depiction of the
destruction of the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, And then
afterward there were a lot of folks talking on social
media about how, yes, this was a real event that happened,
not an alternate history that had been concocted for this
(00:23):
TV show. Greenwood was a black neighborhood that was destroyed
by a white mob during a period of mass anti
black violence. This was just two years after the wave
of racist violence known as the Red Summer that we
also talked about earlier this year. So since there's been
so much talk about this event recently, we thought we
would share our July episode on the subject. Welcome to
(00:50):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Trab Wilson and I'm Frying. And today we have
another frequently frequently requested episode. Lots and lots of people
(01:11):
have asked us to talk about the destruction of black
Wall Street. Black Wall Street was a nickname for Greenwood,
which was essentially a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was
destroyed in a race riot in nine So the name
black Wall Street makes it sound kind of like it
was a business district, but Greenwood was really a vibrant
(01:33):
neighborhood of businesses and homes and schools that even had
its own hospital. And race riot also makes it sound
as though it was a fight instigated by people of
more than one race. But while Greenwood's destruction was definitely
the product of racial tensions, the actual event was a
whole lot more one sided than that. This all happened
(01:57):
during a period of extreme racial tension in the United States.
Race riots and lynchings and vigilante justice were really widespread,
and the Tulsa race riot was one of the deadliest
and most shocking events from this era, and yet a
lot of people knew nothing about it until maybe twenty
or thirty years ago. It got brushed under the rug
(02:20):
for a long time. And to set the scene, the
economy of Tulsa, Oklahoma, really boomed during the nineteen teens
thanks to the discovery of oil in the area, and
the population in this area of Oklahoma grew very quickly,
including an influx of African Americans, many of whom were
leaving the Deep South in the hope that they could
build a life in a less pressive environment, and so
(02:43):
Tulsa's population actually grew tenfold in the span of ten years.
Also growing during this time in Tulsa were crime and lawlessness.
A federal agent actually conducted an undercover investigation in April
of nine and found quote, gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution very
much in evidence at the leading hotels and rooming houses.
(03:06):
The bell hoops and porters are pimping for women and
also selling booze. Regarding violations of the law, these prostitutes
and pimps solicit without any fear of the police, as
they will invariably remind you that you are safe in
these houses. And that's where the quote ends. And in
addition to that, automobile theft was so common that insurance
(03:26):
companies started just canceling all their policies in Tulsa. And
at the same time, the suburb of Greenwood was really flourishing.
By there were about ten thousand African Americans living in
the Tulsa area, and the vast majority of them were
living in Greenwood. They fell all along the economic spectrum,
so you had everyone from doctors and investors worth hundreds
(03:49):
of thousands of dollars to families that were living in
extremely modest homes along dirt roads. Greenwood itself was simultaneously
the product of segregation the black entrepreneurship. O. W. Gurley
and J. B. Stratford were two prominent African American investors
who really get a lot of credit for making the
town what it was. In the early nineteen hundreds, Gurley,
(04:13):
who was a real real estate developer, bought some land,
plotted it out, and then sold it to other African Americans.
Stratford built a fifty four room hotel that was also
home to a restaurant, a banquet hall, and other amenities,
and Stratford's hotel was one of the largest black owned
businesses in Oklahoma at that time. These and other businesses
(04:34):
became the seeds of a really robust community that was
also deeply segregated from the rest of Tulsa UH. It
in a way and a lot of ways, was really
self sufficient. It had two newspapers, the Tulsa Star and
the Oklahoma Sun. It also had its own library, branch, schools, hospital, theaters,
and lots of small businesses that were owned and operated
(04:56):
by the black community. There were also many many churches,
but most of its residents, while they were living and
conducting almost all their business in Greenwood, worked for white
employers elsewhere in the city, and this was the case
for a man important to our story by the name
of Dick Rowland. Dick Roland was a young black man
(05:17):
who worked in a downtown building shining shoes. Restrooms at
this point were segregated, and his workplace didn't have a
bathroom for black people, so his employer had arranged for
him to use one that was on the top floor
of the nearby Drexel Building. Sarah Page was a young
white woman who ran the Drexel Buildings elevator. An incident
(05:39):
passed between Roland and Page on May. Exactly what happened
is completely unclear. Her story changed at various points, and
there seems to be no testimony on record of Dick Rowland. However,
a clerk at a clothing store in the Drexel Building
thought he heard a scream and he saw Dick Roland
(06:00):
hurrying out of the building, and he called the police.
The story that spread through Tulsa was that Dick Roland
had either raped or tried to rape Sarah Page in
broad daylight in the elevator. Roland was arrested the next
morning and held on the top floor of the Tulsa Courthouse.
The Tulsa Tribune, which was an afternoon paper, covered his
(06:22):
arrest on the thirty first, and reported his crime as
a physical attack, quote scratching her hands and face and
tearing her clothes. The paper also reportedly published an editorial
calling for Roland to be lynched. However, no original copies
of these articles exist. There are pieces torn out of
the bound copies of the paper that were kept on record.
(06:44):
The text of the story reporting Roland's arrest is reprinted
from a ninety six Masters thesis. Yeah, there are multiple
eyewitness testimonies of people who who saw these articles in
the newspaper, but the actual copies of the note of
the news paper no longer exists. Before we talk about
how this turned the scene at the courthouse to one
(07:06):
of a mob scene, let's take a brief moment for
a word from a sponsor that sounds grand. By about
seven thirty in the evening on May the thirty one,
a lynch mob had started to gather outside the Tulsa
(07:26):
Courthouse and the mob was demanding that Roland be turned
over to them. The sheriff refused to do this, and
word spread to the Greenwood district about what was going on.
People were positive that Roland was going to be lynched.
There had been thirty three recorded lynchings in Oklahoma between
the time it had been declared as a state in
nineteen o seven and n and seven of the victims
(07:50):
of those lynchings had been black. They also had ample
reason to doubt that the courthouse was a secure place
to keep Roland safe. There had been a couple of
really dramatic jail breaks from the courthouse in the months
leading up to this event, and the black community was
quite positive that if they did not protect Roland, no
one would, and that he was going to be lynched. So,
(08:11):
with all of that in mind, about twenty five African
American residents, many of whom were veterans of World War One,
armed themselves and went from Greenwood to the courthouse to
offer their assistance in defending him. The sheriff refused and
insisted that Roland was safe, and so the men went
back to Greenwood. However, the arrival of twenty five armed
(08:33):
black men on the scene really stirred up a lot
of fear and anger among the white mob outside the courthouse.
Word got to Major James A. Bell of the National
Guard that things were starting to look really ugly, and
even though the sheriff told him things were okay, he
quietly sent word to the other National guardsmen in the
area to come down to the armory. This was fortunate
(08:53):
because some of the mob from the courthouse then went
to the armory to try to get rifles and ammunition
for themselves elves, and they were stopped by the National
Guard members that Major Bell had summoned. Tensions continued to
grow for another couple of hours. The crowd at the
courthouse got bigger and bigger. Small groups of Greenwood residents
(09:13):
started patrolling the streets, armed both as recon and to
try to show that Greenwood was not entirely defenseless, and
the white community began to fear that an uprising was imminent.
Soon rumor reared its head again. At about ten PM,
word got back to Greenwood that a lynch mob was
breaking into the courthouse, and so this time it was
(09:36):
about seventy five armed African American men who made their
way there to once again offer their aid in keeping
Roland safe. So again the sheriff refused their help, and
as they turned to go back to Greenwood, one of
the white men tried to disarm one of the black men,
and in the ensuing scuffle, a shot was fired. It
(09:57):
was this spark that started the riot in Earnest. More
shots were fired in front of the courthouse, with as
many as a dozen people being killed there, and as
the dust settled, the black men, who were vastly outnumbered,
began falling back to Greenwood in a fighting retreat, with
the white mob in pursuit. Once the men were back
(10:17):
in Greenwood, things continued to get worse. Car loads of
white men started driving through black neighborhoods, just shooting and
discriminately into houses and at people on the street. White
vigilantes also broke into downtown Tulsas sporting goods stores to
steal guns and ammunition. Others went to some of the
white neighborhoods all night cafes and started a plan to
(10:39):
invade Greenwood the next morning. The law enforcement's action at
this point and Tulsa was to begin deputizing people, including
members of the original lynch mob. Soon the national Guard
was ordered to aid local authorities. They did this by
setting up a perimeter around the northern edge of Tulsa's
white neighborhood to send it against a counter attack, a
(11:02):
counter attack which never actually happened. People started setting fires
in Greenwood at about one am, and then the mob
prevented the fire department from trying to put the fires out,
so the fires spread really rapidly. Throughout the night. Both
the National Guard and local law enforcement wound up responding
(11:22):
to false reports of shots fired by black people in
white neighborhoods all over Tulsa, and they were doing this
rather than responding to the real reports of violence and
arson that we're going on in Greenwood. At one thirty
six am, the Chief of Police sent a telegram to
the state capitol which read race riot developed here, several killed,
unable handle situation, Request that National Guard forces be sent
(11:46):
by special train. Situation serious. This telegram was signed by
the Chief of Police, the sheriff, and a district judge.
A train was scheduled to leave Oklahoma City bound for
Tulsa at five am that morning, carrying about one hundred
additional National Guard troops. During the night, a lot of
Greenwood residents stayed behind to try to defend their homes
(12:08):
and businesses, but many others fled. They took cards, taxis,
and other transportation north out of the city. Greenwood was
on the northern side of Tulsa, so the smith that
they didn't have to go back through Tulsa to try
to get away. Some people were able to take refuge
with their employers or other compassionate citizens on the Tulsa
side of town, but a lot of people were really
(12:30):
left mostly defenseless. Before the sun came up on June one,
an armed mob had gathered around the fringes of Greenwood.
Some of them were carrying weapons that had been provided
to them by public officials. In addition to the deputized
members of the lynch mob, some of this crowd were
uniformed police officers and members of the National Guard. There
(12:51):
are also multiple eyewitnessed reports of airplanes in the skies
over Greenwood as their riot went on, although exactly what
was done from airplanes is a little harder to substantiate.
There are reports that bombs are dropped that there's not
clear evidence to support that. It's pretty likely that there
were definitely people firing their guns from the airplanes. Though
(13:12):
the train carrying the additional National Guard troops got to
Tulsa around nine fifteen am. These out of town troops
became known as the State troops, and this helps differentiate
them from the local National Guard that were part of
the rioting. But by that point most of Greenwood had
already been burned to the ground. Martial law was declared
at eleven am on June one, although by then the
(13:35):
riot had really mostly run its course. Once martial law
was declared, the state troops moved through Greenwood, putting out fires,
disarming the rioters who were still there, and forcing them
to go back to Tulsa. Order was restored around eight
pm on June one. The state troops also took custody
of African Americans who had been imprisoned by vigilantes during
(13:57):
the riot, but this was not exactly a rescue. The
State troops took every black person they could find into
custody in a mass arrest. People who had fled the
city were detained when they returned. It was supposedly for
people's own protection, but a clear part of the motivation
was the white community's ongoing fear of a black uprising.
(14:18):
In the end, about six thousand African Americans were held
at the convention Hall, and when they ran out of
room there at the fair grounds in the ball field.
Some black citizens were held for more than a week.
No one was released until a white person could vouch
for them and also take responsibility for their future behavior.
So before we talk about the aftermath of this riot,
(14:41):
let's take another brief moment for a word from a sponsor. So,
in this riot, Greenwood was virtually destroyed. Thirty five city
blocks were burned to the ground, and at least eight
(15:01):
hundred people sustained injuries that had to be treated. One thousand,
two hundred fifty six homes were destroyed, plus the hospital,
the library, some of the schools, and both of the
newspaper's offices. A couple of weeks after the riot, the
Nation reported that the damages totalled one point five million dollars,
(15:22):
although more recent estimates are multiple times higher than that.
And from the Tulsa Daily World the next day is
this quote. Personal belongings in household goods had been removed
from many homes impiled in the streets. On the steps
of a few houses that remained sat feeble and gray
negro men and women, and occasionally a small child. The
(15:43):
look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication.
Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence
to them whether they lived or died harmless themselves. They
apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men
who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their
friends neighbors, and just as deliberately shoot them in their tracks.
(16:04):
Doctor Robert Bridgewater and his wife Maddie were two of
the fortunate few to have had their homes spared by
the fire, but they got to it to find that
their possessions had all been destroyed. Doctor Bridgewater wrote quote,
I saw my piano and all of my elegant furniture
piled in the street. My safe had been broken open,
all of my money stolen, also my silverware, cut glass,
(16:27):
all of the family clothes and everything of value had
been removed, even my family bible, my electric light pictures
were broken, all of the window lights and glass and
the doors were broken. The floors were covered literally speaking
with glass. Even the phone was torn from the wall.
And there's actually a photo that's part of the historical
(16:49):
record of this event, and it shows massive columns of
smoke rising from the Greenwood District. Written across it and
misspelled is running the Negro out of Tulsa. A photo
of the charred body of one of the victims was
also used as a postcard. At the time, official estimates
put the death toll at nine white people and twenty
(17:10):
six black people, but pretty much immediately everyone knew that
those numbers were way too low. We'll never really know
the official number because birth records at the time are
incomplete and many of the African Americans who were killed
were buried in unmarked mass graves or thrown into the
Arkansas River. Funeral Home records report burials of many people
(17:32):
identified only as quote unknown Negro in the days after
the riot. More recent investigations suggest that more like three
hundred people were killed, with the overwhelming majority of them
being African American, and the riot forced most of Tulsa's
African American population into homelessness. The city and its residents
(17:52):
made things hard on those who had lost their homes
in the hopes of forcing people to resettle elsewhere. They
even passed a fire ordinance cifically designed to keep people
from rebuilding, although it was overturned as unconstitutional about four
years later. Even so, Tulsa's black community set to work
rebuilding Greenwood, but it was a slow process, so many
(18:13):
of them spent the following winter living in tents. With
the exception of the Red Cross and white residents of
surrounding communities, the black community got very little help in
its rebuilding efforts. The city of Tulsa, as we mentioned,
actively discouraged the rebuilding effort. On the legal end of things, UH,
(18:33):
Dick Roland's charges were ultimately dismissed. A grand jury convened
to investigate what had happened UH, and they found Tulsa's
black population responsible for the riot. About seventy black men
were charged with inciting the riot, although none of them
were ultimately convicted. J. B. Stratford was one. He fled
Oklahoma for Illinois, eventually building a law practice in Chicago.
(18:56):
He died in five and in nine, allowing his family's
fight to clear his name, he was finally cleared of
all charges. No white person was ever tried for any
of the murders or arsons that took place, or with
any other criminal act associated with the riot. Immediately after
the riot, the event was international news, and in the
(19:18):
weeks that followed, papers across the US published scathing editorials
condemning what had happened. Journalists called it both a disgrace
and a horror. But then it really fell from view
for pretty much everyone who did not directly live through it.
History books that were published in Oklahoma made no mention
of it for more than twenty years, and even then
(19:39):
it was very brief and glossed over. People began to
investigate and write about this riot following the Civil rights movement,
although the first people to blaze this trail were really
met with threats of violence. Eventually in the state of
Oklahoma formed a commission that was meant to investigate what
had happened and to create clear documentation of the riot.
(20:02):
The commission was also to make a recommendation of whether
reparations should be paid to the survivors and their descendants.
Calls for reparations had actually started almost immediately after the
riot was over. In Judge Loyal J. Martin, who had
been the mayor, said quote, Tulsa can only redeem herself
(20:22):
from the countrywide shame and humiliation into which she is
today plunged by complete restitution and rehabilitation of the destroyed
black belt. The rest of the United States must know
that the real citizenship of Tulsa weeps at this unspeakable
crime and will make good the damage so far as
it can be done to the last penny. The report
(20:43):
of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot
of one called the event quote late to be acknowledged
and still to be repaired, and the commission's report argued
really strongly in favor of reparations, including direct reparations paid
to the survivors who were still living in their descendants
(21:03):
at this point, though many of the people who had
lived through the riot had died. When the commission put
out its final report, the riot was almost eighty years
in the past, but still alive were the children and
grandchildren of the people who had survived the riot and
of some people who had been killed. The state legislature
established scholarships, a memorial, and an economic development initiative for Greenwood,
(21:25):
but it declined to make actual reparations to survivors and
their descendants. As sort of a side note, a lot
of articles about the Tulsa Race Riot and about the
destruction of what was known as Blackwall Street. Say that
the riot was a result of clan activity, and while
the Ku Klux Klan had been re established in Atlanta
(21:46):
in nineteen fifteen and it was definitely growing all around
the United States, there's not really evidence to suggest that
the Ku Klux Klan specifically was active in Tulsa or
was part of the riot. However, one of the consequences
or the ramifications after the riot was that the clan
(22:07):
really started to flourish in Oklahoma once the riot was over.
We've had so many people request this particular subject, and
it's one that, unsurprisingly, based on having learned that it
was so conscientiously not discussed for so many years, is
one that I was not really familiar with before doing
research on it. You and I have had several episodes
(22:29):
where we had to stop recording because the material was
upsetting and we needed to take a minute. And this
is one where I had to stop researching because the
material was upsetting and I needed to take like a
step away from it. Yeah, it's it's hard. I mean
I had to stop earlier while we were recording. I
(22:50):
know you and I had been talking about it while
you were researching, and you messaged me at one point
where like, I can't handle this right now. It's a
lot to take in, and it's hard to think about
sort of the mob mentality and how hurtful uh and
sort of dispassionate these situations become where people stop thinking
about other people as people and they just get in
(23:12):
that mode of like violence right well. And there's also
a lot of ongoing controversy about the idea of reparations
and when a government should pay reparations and how long
is too long, And this seems like a case where
there was a really clear case for reparations. It's argued
really strongly in the Commission's report, because it wasn't just
(23:36):
this happened. People's homes were destroyed. There's also the part
where the people who were meant to be protecting the
population were instead taking part in this violent activity. Uh.
People's insurance claims were not able to be paid out
because most insurance claims don't or most insurance companies don't
offer coverage in the case of civil unrest, which this
(23:57):
counted as so uh. Uh. I think the thing that
shocked me most about it was in the face of
all that evidence. The final decision was still that that
direct reparations would not be paid to the survivors and
their descendants. Thank you so much for joining us on
(24:22):
this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or
a Facebook you are l or something similar over the
course of today's episode, since it is from the archive
that might be out of date now, you can email
us at history podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
(24:45):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed
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How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple pod guests, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M
Happy Saturday, everybody. A few weeks ago, the TV series
Watchman debuted and it opened with a depiction of the
destruction of the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, And then
afterward there were a lot of folks talking on social
media about how, yes, this was a real event that happened,
not an alternate history that had been concocted for this
(00:23):
TV show. Greenwood was a black neighborhood that was destroyed
by a white mob during a period of mass anti
black violence. This was just two years after the wave
of racist violence known as the Red Summer that we
also talked about earlier this year. So since there's been
so much talk about this event recently, we thought we
would share our July episode on the subject. Welcome to
(00:50):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Trab Wilson and I'm Frying. And today we have
another frequently frequently requested episode. Lots and lots of people
(01:11):
have asked us to talk about the destruction of black
Wall Street. Black Wall Street was a nickname for Greenwood,
which was essentially a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was
destroyed in a race riot in nine So the name
black Wall Street makes it sound kind of like it
was a business district, but Greenwood was really a vibrant
(01:33):
neighborhood of businesses and homes and schools that even had
its own hospital. And race riot also makes it sound
as though it was a fight instigated by people of
more than one race. But while Greenwood's destruction was definitely
the product of racial tensions, the actual event was a
whole lot more one sided than that. This all happened
(01:57):
during a period of extreme racial tension in the United States.
Race riots and lynchings and vigilante justice were really widespread,
and the Tulsa race riot was one of the deadliest
and most shocking events from this era, and yet a
lot of people knew nothing about it until maybe twenty
or thirty years ago. It got brushed under the rug
(02:20):
for a long time. And to set the scene, the
economy of Tulsa, Oklahoma, really boomed during the nineteen teens
thanks to the discovery of oil in the area, and
the population in this area of Oklahoma grew very quickly,
including an influx of African Americans, many of whom were
leaving the Deep South in the hope that they could
build a life in a less pressive environment, and so
(02:43):
Tulsa's population actually grew tenfold in the span of ten years.
Also growing during this time in Tulsa were crime and lawlessness.
A federal agent actually conducted an undercover investigation in April
of nine and found quote, gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution very
much in evidence at the leading hotels and rooming houses.
(03:06):
The bell hoops and porters are pimping for women and
also selling booze. Regarding violations of the law, these prostitutes
and pimps solicit without any fear of the police, as
they will invariably remind you that you are safe in
these houses. And that's where the quote ends. And in
addition to that, automobile theft was so common that insurance
(03:26):
companies started just canceling all their policies in Tulsa. And
at the same time, the suburb of Greenwood was really flourishing.
By there were about ten thousand African Americans living in
the Tulsa area, and the vast majority of them were
living in Greenwood. They fell all along the economic spectrum,
so you had everyone from doctors and investors worth hundreds
(03:49):
of thousands of dollars to families that were living in
extremely modest homes along dirt roads. Greenwood itself was simultaneously
the product of segregation the black entrepreneurship. O. W. Gurley
and J. B. Stratford were two prominent African American investors
who really get a lot of credit for making the
town what it was. In the early nineteen hundreds, Gurley,
(04:13):
who was a real real estate developer, bought some land,
plotted it out, and then sold it to other African Americans.
Stratford built a fifty four room hotel that was also
home to a restaurant, a banquet hall, and other amenities,
and Stratford's hotel was one of the largest black owned
businesses in Oklahoma at that time. These and other businesses
(04:34):
became the seeds of a really robust community that was
also deeply segregated from the rest of Tulsa UH. It
in a way and a lot of ways, was really
self sufficient. It had two newspapers, the Tulsa Star and
the Oklahoma Sun. It also had its own library, branch, schools, hospital, theaters,
and lots of small businesses that were owned and operated
(04:56):
by the black community. There were also many many churches,
but most of its residents, while they were living and
conducting almost all their business in Greenwood, worked for white
employers elsewhere in the city, and this was the case
for a man important to our story by the name
of Dick Rowland. Dick Roland was a young black man
(05:17):
who worked in a downtown building shining shoes. Restrooms at
this point were segregated, and his workplace didn't have a
bathroom for black people, so his employer had arranged for
him to use one that was on the top floor
of the nearby Drexel Building. Sarah Page was a young
white woman who ran the Drexel Buildings elevator. An incident
(05:39):
passed between Roland and Page on May. Exactly what happened
is completely unclear. Her story changed at various points, and
there seems to be no testimony on record of Dick Rowland. However,
a clerk at a clothing store in the Drexel Building
thought he heard a scream and he saw Dick Roland
(06:00):
hurrying out of the building, and he called the police.
The story that spread through Tulsa was that Dick Roland
had either raped or tried to rape Sarah Page in
broad daylight in the elevator. Roland was arrested the next
morning and held on the top floor of the Tulsa Courthouse.
The Tulsa Tribune, which was an afternoon paper, covered his
(06:22):
arrest on the thirty first, and reported his crime as
a physical attack, quote scratching her hands and face and
tearing her clothes. The paper also reportedly published an editorial
calling for Roland to be lynched. However, no original copies
of these articles exist. There are pieces torn out of
the bound copies of the paper that were kept on record.
(06:44):
The text of the story reporting Roland's arrest is reprinted
from a ninety six Masters thesis. Yeah, there are multiple
eyewitness testimonies of people who who saw these articles in
the newspaper, but the actual copies of the note of
the news paper no longer exists. Before we talk about
how this turned the scene at the courthouse to one
(07:06):
of a mob scene, let's take a brief moment for
a word from a sponsor that sounds grand. By about
seven thirty in the evening on May the thirty one,
a lynch mob had started to gather outside the Tulsa
(07:26):
Courthouse and the mob was demanding that Roland be turned
over to them. The sheriff refused to do this, and
word spread to the Greenwood district about what was going on.
People were positive that Roland was going to be lynched.
There had been thirty three recorded lynchings in Oklahoma between
the time it had been declared as a state in
nineteen o seven and n and seven of the victims
(07:50):
of those lynchings had been black. They also had ample
reason to doubt that the courthouse was a secure place
to keep Roland safe. There had been a couple of
really dramatic jail breaks from the courthouse in the months
leading up to this event, and the black community was
quite positive that if they did not protect Roland, no
one would, and that he was going to be lynched. So,
(08:11):
with all of that in mind, about twenty five African
American residents, many of whom were veterans of World War One,
armed themselves and went from Greenwood to the courthouse to
offer their assistance in defending him. The sheriff refused and
insisted that Roland was safe, and so the men went
back to Greenwood. However, the arrival of twenty five armed
(08:33):
black men on the scene really stirred up a lot
of fear and anger among the white mob outside the courthouse.
Word got to Major James A. Bell of the National
Guard that things were starting to look really ugly, and
even though the sheriff told him things were okay, he
quietly sent word to the other National guardsmen in the
area to come down to the armory. This was fortunate
(08:53):
because some of the mob from the courthouse then went
to the armory to try to get rifles and ammunition
for themselves elves, and they were stopped by the National
Guard members that Major Bell had summoned. Tensions continued to
grow for another couple of hours. The crowd at the
courthouse got bigger and bigger. Small groups of Greenwood residents
(09:13):
started patrolling the streets, armed both as recon and to
try to show that Greenwood was not entirely defenseless, and
the white community began to fear that an uprising was imminent.
Soon rumor reared its head again. At about ten PM,
word got back to Greenwood that a lynch mob was
breaking into the courthouse, and so this time it was
(09:36):
about seventy five armed African American men who made their
way there to once again offer their aid in keeping
Roland safe. So again the sheriff refused their help, and
as they turned to go back to Greenwood, one of
the white men tried to disarm one of the black men,
and in the ensuing scuffle, a shot was fired. It
(09:57):
was this spark that started the riot in Earnest. More
shots were fired in front of the courthouse, with as
many as a dozen people being killed there, and as
the dust settled, the black men, who were vastly outnumbered,
began falling back to Greenwood in a fighting retreat, with
the white mob in pursuit. Once the men were back
(10:17):
in Greenwood, things continued to get worse. Car loads of
white men started driving through black neighborhoods, just shooting and
discriminately into houses and at people on the street. White
vigilantes also broke into downtown Tulsas sporting goods stores to
steal guns and ammunition. Others went to some of the
white neighborhoods all night cafes and started a plan to
(10:39):
invade Greenwood the next morning. The law enforcement's action at
this point and Tulsa was to begin deputizing people, including
members of the original lynch mob. Soon the national Guard
was ordered to aid local authorities. They did this by
setting up a perimeter around the northern edge of Tulsa's
white neighborhood to send it against a counter attack, a
(11:02):
counter attack which never actually happened. People started setting fires
in Greenwood at about one am, and then the mob
prevented the fire department from trying to put the fires out,
so the fires spread really rapidly. Throughout the night. Both
the National Guard and local law enforcement wound up responding
(11:22):
to false reports of shots fired by black people in
white neighborhoods all over Tulsa, and they were doing this
rather than responding to the real reports of violence and
arson that we're going on in Greenwood. At one thirty
six am, the Chief of Police sent a telegram to
the state capitol which read race riot developed here, several killed,
unable handle situation, Request that National Guard forces be sent
(11:46):
by special train. Situation serious. This telegram was signed by
the Chief of Police, the sheriff, and a district judge.
A train was scheduled to leave Oklahoma City bound for
Tulsa at five am that morning, carrying about one hundred
additional National Guard troops. During the night, a lot of
Greenwood residents stayed behind to try to defend their homes
(12:08):
and businesses, but many others fled. They took cards, taxis,
and other transportation north out of the city. Greenwood was
on the northern side of Tulsa, so the smith that
they didn't have to go back through Tulsa to try
to get away. Some people were able to take refuge
with their employers or other compassionate citizens on the Tulsa
side of town, but a lot of people were really
(12:30):
left mostly defenseless. Before the sun came up on June one,
an armed mob had gathered around the fringes of Greenwood.
Some of them were carrying weapons that had been provided
to them by public officials. In addition to the deputized
members of the lynch mob, some of this crowd were
uniformed police officers and members of the National Guard. There
(12:51):
are also multiple eyewitnessed reports of airplanes in the skies
over Greenwood as their riot went on, although exactly what
was done from airplanes is a little harder to substantiate.
There are reports that bombs are dropped that there's not
clear evidence to support that. It's pretty likely that there
were definitely people firing their guns from the airplanes. Though
(13:12):
the train carrying the additional National Guard troops got to
Tulsa around nine fifteen am. These out of town troops
became known as the State troops, and this helps differentiate
them from the local National Guard that were part of
the rioting. But by that point most of Greenwood had
already been burned to the ground. Martial law was declared
at eleven am on June one, although by then the
(13:35):
riot had really mostly run its course. Once martial law
was declared, the state troops moved through Greenwood, putting out fires,
disarming the rioters who were still there, and forcing them
to go back to Tulsa. Order was restored around eight
pm on June one. The state troops also took custody
of African Americans who had been imprisoned by vigilantes during
(13:57):
the riot, but this was not exactly a rescue. The
State troops took every black person they could find into
custody in a mass arrest. People who had fled the
city were detained when they returned. It was supposedly for
people's own protection, but a clear part of the motivation
was the white community's ongoing fear of a black uprising.
(14:18):
In the end, about six thousand African Americans were held
at the convention Hall, and when they ran out of
room there at the fair grounds in the ball field.
Some black citizens were held for more than a week.
No one was released until a white person could vouch
for them and also take responsibility for their future behavior.
So before we talk about the aftermath of this riot,
(14:41):
let's take another brief moment for a word from a sponsor. So,
in this riot, Greenwood was virtually destroyed. Thirty five city
blocks were burned to the ground, and at least eight
(15:01):
hundred people sustained injuries that had to be treated. One thousand,
two hundred fifty six homes were destroyed, plus the hospital,
the library, some of the schools, and both of the
newspaper's offices. A couple of weeks after the riot, the
Nation reported that the damages totalled one point five million dollars,
(15:22):
although more recent estimates are multiple times higher than that.
And from the Tulsa Daily World the next day is
this quote. Personal belongings in household goods had been removed
from many homes impiled in the streets. On the steps
of a few houses that remained sat feeble and gray
negro men and women, and occasionally a small child. The
(15:43):
look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication.
Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence
to them whether they lived or died harmless themselves. They
apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men
who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their
friends neighbors, and just as deliberately shoot them in their tracks.
(16:04):
Doctor Robert Bridgewater and his wife Maddie were two of
the fortunate few to have had their homes spared by
the fire, but they got to it to find that
their possessions had all been destroyed. Doctor Bridgewater wrote quote,
I saw my piano and all of my elegant furniture
piled in the street. My safe had been broken open,
all of my money stolen, also my silverware, cut glass,
(16:27):
all of the family clothes and everything of value had
been removed, even my family bible, my electric light pictures
were broken, all of the window lights and glass and
the doors were broken. The floors were covered literally speaking
with glass. Even the phone was torn from the wall.
And there's actually a photo that's part of the historical
(16:49):
record of this event, and it shows massive columns of
smoke rising from the Greenwood District. Written across it and
misspelled is running the Negro out of Tulsa. A photo
of the charred body of one of the victims was
also used as a postcard. At the time, official estimates
put the death toll at nine white people and twenty
(17:10):
six black people, but pretty much immediately everyone knew that
those numbers were way too low. We'll never really know
the official number because birth records at the time are
incomplete and many of the African Americans who were killed
were buried in unmarked mass graves or thrown into the
Arkansas River. Funeral Home records report burials of many people
(17:32):
identified only as quote unknown Negro in the days after
the riot. More recent investigations suggest that more like three
hundred people were killed, with the overwhelming majority of them
being African American, and the riot forced most of Tulsa's
African American population into homelessness. The city and its residents
(17:52):
made things hard on those who had lost their homes
in the hopes of forcing people to resettle elsewhere. They
even passed a fire ordinance cifically designed to keep people
from rebuilding, although it was overturned as unconstitutional about four
years later. Even so, Tulsa's black community set to work
rebuilding Greenwood, but it was a slow process, so many
(18:13):
of them spent the following winter living in tents. With
the exception of the Red Cross and white residents of
surrounding communities, the black community got very little help in
its rebuilding efforts. The city of Tulsa, as we mentioned,
actively discouraged the rebuilding effort. On the legal end of things, UH,
(18:33):
Dick Roland's charges were ultimately dismissed. A grand jury convened
to investigate what had happened UH, and they found Tulsa's
black population responsible for the riot. About seventy black men
were charged with inciting the riot, although none of them
were ultimately convicted. J. B. Stratford was one. He fled
Oklahoma for Illinois, eventually building a law practice in Chicago.
(18:56):
He died in five and in nine, allowing his family's
fight to clear his name, he was finally cleared of
all charges. No white person was ever tried for any
of the murders or arsons that took place, or with
any other criminal act associated with the riot. Immediately after
the riot, the event was international news, and in the
(19:18):
weeks that followed, papers across the US published scathing editorials
condemning what had happened. Journalists called it both a disgrace
and a horror. But then it really fell from view
for pretty much everyone who did not directly live through it.
History books that were published in Oklahoma made no mention
of it for more than twenty years, and even then
(19:39):
it was very brief and glossed over. People began to
investigate and write about this riot following the Civil rights movement,
although the first people to blaze this trail were really
met with threats of violence. Eventually in the state of
Oklahoma formed a commission that was meant to investigate what
had happened and to create clear documentation of the riot.
(20:02):
The commission was also to make a recommendation of whether
reparations should be paid to the survivors and their descendants.
Calls for reparations had actually started almost immediately after the
riot was over. In Judge Loyal J. Martin, who had
been the mayor, said quote, Tulsa can only redeem herself
(20:22):
from the countrywide shame and humiliation into which she is
today plunged by complete restitution and rehabilitation of the destroyed
black belt. The rest of the United States must know
that the real citizenship of Tulsa weeps at this unspeakable
crime and will make good the damage so far as
it can be done to the last penny. The report
(20:43):
of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot
of one called the event quote late to be acknowledged
and still to be repaired, and the commission's report argued
really strongly in favor of reparations, including direct reparations paid
to the survivors who were still living in their descendants
(21:03):
at this point, though many of the people who had
lived through the riot had died. When the commission put
out its final report, the riot was almost eighty years
in the past, but still alive were the children and
grandchildren of the people who had survived the riot and
of some people who had been killed. The state legislature
established scholarships, a memorial, and an economic development initiative for Greenwood,
(21:25):
but it declined to make actual reparations to survivors and
their descendants. As sort of a side note, a lot
of articles about the Tulsa Race Riot and about the
destruction of what was known as Blackwall Street. Say that
the riot was a result of clan activity, and while
the Ku Klux Klan had been re established in Atlanta
(21:46):
in nineteen fifteen and it was definitely growing all around
the United States, there's not really evidence to suggest that
the Ku Klux Klan specifically was active in Tulsa or
was part of the riot. However, one of the consequences
or the ramifications after the riot was that the clan
(22:07):
really started to flourish in Oklahoma once the riot was over.
We've had so many people request this particular subject, and
it's one that, unsurprisingly, based on having learned that it
was so conscientiously not discussed for so many years, is
one that I was not really familiar with before doing
research on it. You and I have had several episodes
(22:29):
where we had to stop recording because the material was
upsetting and we needed to take a minute. And this
is one where I had to stop researching because the
material was upsetting and I needed to take like a
step away from it. Yeah, it's it's hard. I mean
I had to stop earlier while we were recording. I
(22:50):
know you and I had been talking about it while
you were researching, and you messaged me at one point
where like, I can't handle this right now. It's a
lot to take in, and it's hard to think about
sort of the mob mentality and how hurtful uh and
sort of dispassionate these situations become where people stop thinking
about other people as people and they just get in
(23:12):
that mode of like violence right well. And there's also
a lot of ongoing controversy about the idea of reparations
and when a government should pay reparations and how long
is too long, And this seems like a case where
there was a really clear case for reparations. It's argued
really strongly in the Commission's report, because it wasn't just
(23:36):
this happened. People's homes were destroyed. There's also the part
where the people who were meant to be protecting the
population were instead taking part in this violent activity. Uh.
People's insurance claims were not able to be paid out
because most insurance claims don't or most insurance companies don't
offer coverage in the case of civil unrest, which this
(23:57):
counted as so uh. Uh. I think the thing that
shocked me most about it was in the face of
all that evidence. The final decision was still that that
direct reparations would not be paid to the survivors and
their descendants. Thank you so much for joining us on
(24:22):
this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or
a Facebook you are l or something similar over the
course of today's episode, since it is from the archive
that might be out of date now, you can email
us at history podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History, and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
(24:45):
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed
in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple pod guests, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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