Tulsa Race Massacre Part 1 Black Wall Street

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gasco and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast and program. I can't give you many names,
and you're a blacker. Hey look, I'm Raisling. I'm got

(00:24):
the bright Arrah. A long struggle for freedom, it really
is a revolution. Over the span of roughly sixteen hours
in nineteen twenty one, a thriving black community in Oklahoma

(00:44):
was utterly destroyed in one of the worst race riots
in American history, which is saying something considering our long
and violent history of race riots. In less than a
day than some nearly forty square blocks, which contained over
twelve thousand houses, multiple churches, schools, a library, hotels, all
manner of businesses, the offices of two newspapers, and even

(01:04):
a hospital were all turned to ash. Basically, the entire
community was destroyed, leaving some nine thousand residents homeless, and
Tulsa's African American commercial district, popularly known as Black Wall Street,
effectively wiped off the map. Meanwhile, even though the official
death county of these events say that only thirty eight
died during this ride, including ten whites, many believe that

(01:26):
the actual count is closer to three hundred. Yet first
before we get into the story of Tulsa Greenwood and
everything that led up to its violent destruction. First, like always,
I want to give credit to my sources, which include
Scott Elsworth's Death and a Promised Land, the Tulsa Race
Ride of nineteen twenty one, Randy Kreeble's Tulsa in nineteen
twenty one Reporting a Massacre, James S. Hirsh's Riot and

(01:49):
Remembrance the Tulsa Race Massacre and its Legacy, Brandy Colbert's
Blackbirds in the Sky The story and legacy the nineteen
twenty one Tulsa Race massacre, Tim Mandiiggins Massacre Destruction and
the Tulsa Race Ride of nineteen twenty one, are Jay
Young's Reek Wiem Frame Massacre, A Black History on the conflict,
Hope and Fought on the nineteen twenty one race massacre,

(02:11):
and the Charles River Editors Black Wall Street and the
Tulsa Race Massacre, the creation and destruction of America's wealthiest
African American neighborhood. And like always, these and any other
sources that I used will be posted on this podcast,
Blue Sky and Covie pages plus for anyone who doesn't
want to be bothered skipping through commercials. There is always
an ad free feed available to subscribe as at patreon

(02:32):
dot com slash Distorted History. And with all that being said,
let's begin to understand the how and why the Tulsa
Race massacre happened. We have to go back at the
beginning of the Oklahoma territory, which, mind you, as part
of the territory supposedly given in perpetuity to the various
Eastern tribes that had forcibly been moved west by the
Idiot Removal Act and others so called treaties which had

(02:54):
stripped them of their lands east of the Mississippi, events
which had led to the infamous Cherokee Trail of Tears
and any deaths of numerous members of other Native American
tribes had been forcibly relocated in a similar manner. Members
of these displaced tribes, and following the end of the
Civil War, were then forced to surrender swaths of these
new lands that were supposed to be theirs to the
US government. As a result of taking this land and

(03:16):
forcing the various tribes onto smaller and smaller reservations, the
federal government opened up these recently acquired lands to white
settlement starting an eighteen eighty nine through the land rush system,
where potential settlers would literally line up and wait for
the sound of a gun or a bugle which signaled
them to set off, with these various individuals rushing on foot, horseback,
and railcar to lay claim to forty acres of free

(03:38):
land simply by driving their stakes into the ground, as
the land was free at no cost whatsoever to those
who claimed it, a situation which, while it had its
roots in taking land away from people who already had
their land taken away from them, also offered an opportunity
for impoverished individuals who were struggling to carvat a living
for themselves in other regions to start over in these lands.

(03:59):
Among the people who participated in this land rush was
one Ottaway Gurley, the son of two former Says, who
had been born in Huntsville, Alabama, before being primarily raised
in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where he became a teacher and
eventually led it a fairly comfortable position working for the
US Post Office. Yet, despite this moderate level of success, Girly,
upon learning of the opportunities on offering Oklahoma, had it

(04:22):
off to wantimately stake out a piece of land just
outside of what would become the town of Perry, where
he would go on to become the principal of the
town school, in addition to owning and operating a general
store in town, which proved to be quite profitable. Now
Gurley was far from the only African American individual who
looked to take advantage of the opportunity that Oklahoma seemed
to present, as there would be a bit of a

(04:43):
concerted effort by African Americans to turn the territory into
a refuge of racial equality, a chance for a new
start in lands at wall still in the South had
not actually been a part of the Confederacy, lands which
the plague of Jim Crow had not infected. As you see,
the Jim Crow Laws, which took their name from a
minstrel show character, in which were designed to control blacks

(05:03):
and keep them separate and in their quote unquote to place,
were not a foregone conclusion. There was nothing prior to
the creation of these laws that said this was the
way life had to be. After all, Southern whites had
lived side by side with enslaved African Americans for generations.
Some in fact, had even been raised by black nannies.
The decision then to keep the races separate was a

(05:24):
choice that was made so as to prop up the
system of white supremacy, with the Jim Crow Laws designed
explicitly to control African Americans and to keep them as
a kind of second class citizen who didn't have rights
and who were effectively forced to work menial jobs so
as to maintain the white supremacist power structure and the
region's economy, with many of these laws being created and

(05:44):
implemented by former Confederate politicians, judges, and police officers who
were allowed to resume their positions of power with little
to no consequences for their actions. Plus, in addition to
these legal methods of control, there were also the extra
legal means in the form of organizations that the klu
Klux Klan, who will very likely get a series of
their own later this year. As to me at least,
they and their allies very much represent a strain of

(06:07):
people and an attitude that has never disappeared from this country.
They simply changed names and clothes. Meanwhile, the Jim Crow
Laws would prove to be supremely effective in keeping the
newly freed African Americans and their children trapped, thereby making
emancipation an extremely limited prospect, to the point that they
had no ability to escape from the type of agricultural

(06:27):
work that they'd been forced to participate in while enslaved.
The eighteen ninety census would illustrate dis quite succentlly, as
ninety percent of the nation's black population still lived an
the South, three quarters of whom lived in rural areas.
Given this, it's not surprising the fine that half of
all black men were farmers or farm labors, as were
thirty five percent of black women, with many of these

(06:48):
individuals more than likely being sharecroppers who did not only land,
which they weren't indeed, once for the census, owned homes
at twice the rates in African Americans did, as for
those who weren't for labor and agriculture, they were typically
restricted to low playing quote unquote unskilled jobs. Additionally, African
Americans in general were far less likely to attend school

(07:09):
than the children of white families, which was partially due
to the Separate but Equal doctrine, which was anything but
as it allowed for the creation of whites only in
blacks only schools, where most of the funding went to
the whites only schools. You can likely understand then, why
more than a few African Americans, when learning about the
potential opportunities that Oklahoma presented, then jumped at the chance

(07:30):
to leave the lands of Jim Crow behind. It also
wasn't just newcomers either, as some members of the so
called Five Civilized Tribes before their forced removal, had adopted
the whites policy of keeping slaves, which is actually one
of the reasons why the white Southerners in the East
were so eager to be rid of these tribes as
they were competition. So when the members of these tribes

(07:50):
were forced to move west of the Mississippi into the
so called Indian Territory, they brought their slaves with them,
with the enslaved people eventually being freed at the end
of the Civil Wars. Some of these formerly enslaved individuals
would then live among the various jobs for a while
before eventually going on the try and take advantage the
potential opportunities in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, helping to encourage other African

(08:13):
Americans to come to the Oklahoma territory and turn it
into a quote even from racism, was Edwin McCabe McCabe
was a politician and businessman who for a time was
considered to be the most powerful black man in Kansas. Indeed, McCabe,
who was an attorney in former Wall Street Clerk, had
successfully run to become the Republican candidate for Kansas State Auditor.

(08:35):
With the opening up of the Oklahoma territory, however, he
shifted to becoming land speculator who purchased large swassa len
in what would become Langston, Oklahoma, where he established Steve
Langston City Herald, a newspaper that he would use to
advertise the territory, which he called the quote Paradise of
Eden and the Garden of the Gods. With this message
specifically targeting Southern blacks, as McCabe would continue his sales

(08:58):
pitch quote the broken rest from mob law. Here he
can be secure from every ill of Southern policies, a
message that would very much be echoed by others like
Robert Reid Church and W. E. B. Du Boyce, who
also encouraged African Americans to leave the lands of the
former Confederacy following the failure of reconstruction to instead seek
better opportunities than Oklahoma, hoping as They did so that

(09:21):
if the black population in the territory became marge enough,
the whites would be left with no other choice but
to hand the territory over to them. With became personally
hoping that if enough African Americans were drawn to the
new territory, he would have the opportunity to become the governor,
a plan that for a while actually seemed to be working,
at least to some degree, as by the eighteen nineties

(09:43):
the black residents of the territory had more rights than
those who lived in the United States proper. The problem
was it wasn't just Southern blacks who had been drawn
by the opportunities offered by the new territory. Indeed, Oklahoma
had also attracted many Southern white and unlike wood Camp,
others had promoted and envisioned, they brought their racial prejudices

(10:03):
with them and were very much determined to replicate their
Jim Crow society in this new territory. In fact, an
eighteen ninety eight white sellar would warn that quote dead
and words make an excellent fertilizer, and if the Negroes
try to afroganize Oklahoma, they will find that we will
enrich our soil with them, meaning that should African Americans
trying to fight for their civil rights, he and other

(10:26):
racests like him were prepared to kill to prevent that
from happening. This Hayfield Races, who, to be clear, did
not censor himself, was apparently not alone in being alarmed
by the number of black settlers in the territory, as
The New York Times also an eighteen ninety would write, quote,
if the black population could be distributed evenly over the
United States, it would not constitute a social or political danger,

(10:49):
But an exclusively or overwhelmingly Negro settlement in any part
of the country is, to all intents and purposes, a
camp of savages. Ultimately, then, McCabe's vision would be done
by a combination of the land rush bringing a large
number of white son ners to the new territory, and
the simple fact that many blacks could not afford or
simply unable to make the journey west. As a result.

(11:11):
When in nineteen oh seven Oklahoma officially became a state,
legislation was quickly passed that disenfranchised African Americans and also segregated,
among other things, the state school system, and effort there
was largely led by former Texan enraging white supremacist Bill
Alfalfa Murray, a man who constantly peppertist public speeches with
racial slurs, a fact that led some to see him

(11:34):
as a bit of a clown, while newspapers took the
attact to portraying him as fulkesy and rustic. The most
important thing, however, was a significant number of white Oklahomas
responded to Murray's racist messaging. Indeed, the Democratic Party would
be swept to victory in the state's constitutional convention thanks
to their warnings that quote Republican success means African domination.

(11:56):
Alfalfa Bill would then be opponent the president of the convention.
He set the tone of proceedings with his opening speech,
in which he declared, quote, it is an entirely false
notion that the Negro can rise to the equal of
a white man in the professions or become an equal citizen. Indeed,
he preferred dealing with African Americans who came to him
quote talking softly, in that humble spirit which should characterize

(12:18):
their actions and dealings with white men. Bill Alfalfa Murray's
influence on the new State didn't just stop with its
constitutional convention either, as he went on to become the
dominant political figure in Oklahoma for the first half of
the century. As an addition of being a major force
in draft in the states Constitution, he was also the
first speaker of the state's House Representatives. Would also serve

(12:40):
two terms in the US Congress representing Oklahoma in the
nineteen tens, and would also be elected governor twice in
nineteen thirty one and thirty five. In fact, his boss
still remains in the capital today as why wouldn't you
want to continue to honor a man who, even in
nineteen forty eight, in the wake of the Second World
War and the Holocaust, continued to praise Settler for quote

(13:00):
being right in his science. That being said, Oklahoma State Constitution,
other than segregating its school system, did not make any
other mentions of segregation. Now, this was not because this
was the extent of their segregationist aims, but simply because
they feared that if they pressed the issue too far,
Republican President Teddy Roosevelt might refuse to sign off from

(13:21):
the state's constitution. However, once they were officially estate, the
first thing the new legislature did was to pass quote
unquote emergency legislation that segregated railroads by requiring separate railcars
and winning rooms for blacks and whites. The legislature was
also quick to make marriages between black and white individuals
a felony, which was punishable by five years in prison,

(13:43):
not only for the couple in question, but also for
the minister who performed the ceremony as well. Then, in
nineteen ten, they would pass a constitutional amendment that effectively
stripped African Americans of their right to vote by requiring
literacy tests, which were administered by local officials who had
no interest in all life allowing black individuals to vote,
meaning that, regardless of the actual results of the tests,

(14:04):
anyone deemed to be not white would not be allowed
to vote. Oklahoma was so racist, in fact, that they
became the first state to adopt the law requiring separate
phone boosts for blacks and whites, meaning that with the
passage of that particular law, they were effectively out Jim
Crowing the Jim Crow South now Edward McCabe, the man
who hoped to turn Oklahoma into a refuge for African

(14:27):
Americans from this kind of racism, and by doing so,
become its governor would try to fight against this perversion
of his vision. In fact, he would even sell his
own house to fund the legal case challenging the state's
Jim Crow policies, but the Supreme Court would ultimately side
with the state legislature and their implementation of Jim Crow. Meanwhile,
some of the black residents of the New State held

(14:48):
meetings to express their anger over this betrayal. These protests, however,
would be aged with lynchings, which just further confirm their
status as second class citizens because of blacks and no
right to vote, and could not enter these same schools
or rail cars as whites. They were also, by that
same logic, to be denied any someone's a due process
before the law, and most certainly had no right to

(15:11):
protest against such treatment, a reality that led some black
residents of the New State to pack up and leave
in response to this transformation, with some moving to Alberta,
Canada to try their luck there, while others had it
in the opposite direction to go to Mexico. The makeup
of the state changed further by the nineteen tens thanks
to tractors and combines that took jobs away from many

(15:32):
farm hands. As a result, the residents off Oklahoma that
stuck around were increasingly drawn to cities. Also fueling the
growth of certain cities was discovery of oil, with the
most notable strike for our story at least coming in
nineteen oh five, a few years prior to Oklahoma gaining statehood,
as this was when the Glenn Pool oil field was
discovered just fourteen miles outside of Tulsa, a community of

(15:56):
not much note prior to this. Indeed, Tulsa had originally
been so back in eighteen thirty six by Creek Indians
had been forced to leave their homelands in Alabama the
Creek then the Creek then originally named the area Laja Poco,
or a place of turtles. When white sellars arrived in
the region in the eighteen eighties, however, they would rename
it Tulsa Town. It would then primarily serve as a

(16:19):
trading post for farmers, and into the early nineteen hundreds,
Tulsa was still effectively a cow town, as cows were
regularly driven through the center of town. Tulsa then was
very much not a city as you would think of it. Instead,
its roads were dirt, it had no sidewalks, street lights,
or even sewers. The discovery the glen Pool oil field, however,
changed everything, as Tulsa officials maj sure that they would

(16:41):
benefit from the wealth being generated by this and other
nearby oil strikes by transforming their town into one capable
of service any needs of the oil companies there are
workers and the oil barrens at the top. Indeed, by
nineteen oh seven, there were already some ninety five oil
companies work in the glen Pool field, which had over
a thousand wells pumped out nearly twenty million barrels of

(17:02):
oil in that year alone, and the industry was still
growing at that point, because it wasn't long after that
that some one hundred and twenty six oil companies were
operating in and around Tulsa. Tulsa then turned itself into
a railroad town so that the oil could be transported
through there. Plus they also said about building whatever the
oil companies and their employees needed so that all of

(17:23):
their money would be funneled into the town that, as
a result, was soon transformed into a full fledged city.
As oil barons made millions off of these fields, money
from them, their companies and their roughneck workers who had
a reputation for hard drinking, free spending, and gambling began
to pour into Tulsa. As a result, by nineteen fifteen,
the city's nine banks could each boast of having eight

(17:44):
million dollars in deposits. Tulsa then was constantly growing and
expanding as its struggled to provide all the businesses and
services to meet the needs not only of the oil
companies and their workers, but of its own growing population.
Tulsa then was a boomtown, as within five years of
the discovery of the Glen Pool field, the city suddenly
had a population of ten thousand. This rapid, nearly unprecedented

(18:07):
growth then led residents to dubbing it the Magic City.
Tulsa then had golf from being little more than a
frontier cowntown to being the home of grandiose, extravagant mansions
for the oil barons, and soon more signs of progress
and grandeur began to appear. For example, Main Street would
be paved in nineteen oh eight, with more and more
streets following suit in subsequent years. Meanwhile, jewelry stores, car dealers,

(18:30):
grocery stores, restaurants, and bakeries all started popping up around town.
Then there was the four story courthouse, which featured marble
and porter from Italy, the construction of the Tulsa Opera House,
and the opening of the ten story opulent Hotel Tulsa,
which all served to mark these Citi's arrival and its
an ambition to become one of the nation's great cities.
People from all over then would come to Tulsa looking

(18:51):
to take advantage of the opportunities that the city promised. Indeed,
the city's Chamber of Commerce would promote Tulsa as a
modern oil city whose residential neighborhood were among the most
modern and stylish in the country. As a result, by
nineteen twenty, the city and its surrounding region could boast
of a population of one hundred thousand. Yet for as
much as the city itself and a select few benefited

(19:13):
from the oil strike, many were still loved in poverty
thanks to the boom and boss nature of the oil
business and simply because many just weren't paid all that
well for working the wells. Tulsa then effectively became two cities, however,
and wasn't one divided simply between the rich oil barons
and their employees who were barely scraping by and regardless
of how much money they made for their bosses. Instead,

(19:34):
it became undivided primarily by race as African Americans settled
in a thirty six block section in northern Tulsa known
as Greenwood, many of whom came from Missouri, which had
a significant free black population even before the end of slavery,
while others came from where they were living among the
five civilized tribes had been exiled to this region. Yet,
regardless of where they came from, the automately turned Greenwood

(19:55):
into its own thermic community that would come to be
what many believed to be the wealthiest African American neighborhood
in the country, with Booker T. Washington himself calling it
Niger Wall Street, or as it would popularly come to
be known, Black Wall Street. That being said, Greenwood didn't
have any traditional banks or bugger chases to speak of. Instead,
it was simply more or less your standard downtown main street,

(20:17):
with the notable exception that all the businesses were owned
and operated by African Americans. Now, one of the main
driving forces behind the initial creation of the Greenwood district
was reportedly the aforementioned ow Gurley, who had first settled
in Oklahoma as a part of the initial land rush.
He however, would leave behind his initial holdings in Perry
to move to Tulsa following the discovery of oil. Gurley

(20:40):
then used a money had made in Peria to purchase
forty acres outside of Tulsa, just north of the rail tracks.
It was here where he opened up a grocery store
and partnered with John the Baptist Stafford, who went by
JB and who would also purchased significant tracks of land
north of the railroad. The two men then began subdividing
their land into lots for housing and businesses, land which
they then sold to other black individuals exclusively. Both men

(21:04):
then were reportedly crucial in shape in the district, as
while they had some differences, they had a shared distrust
of white people. Both men, it seems, strongly believed that
for their community to be successful, they had to pull
the resources and support one another, which was a primary
reason why they only sold their land to other African Americans. Meanwhile,
it would be Girly who would effectively give the district

(21:25):
its name, as he would dumb the road upon which
he built his first business, a rooming house for Black's
Greenwood Avenue in honor of the city in Mississippi. Now,
at this time, the city wasn't firmly segregated, by which
I mean there were several black owned businesses operating in
downtown Tulsa. Gurley and Stratford, however, believed that the best
chance African Americans had its success would come through pulling

(21:47):
their resources and supporting their own businesses, with the two
men sharing a vision of creating a district that was
isolated and protected from racial prejudice, as they recognized that
while they would always be kept out of white Tulsa society,
whites could not harm their businesses if they didn't have
to rely upon them as customers. Greenwood then began to
grow and take shape despite the fact that African Americans

(22:09):
were forbidden from working in the oil fields. Yet, even
though they had no opportunities to profit directly from the
booming oil business, that did not mean they did not
benefit as increasingly wealthy white oil barons setting up residences
in town men high weights for black domestic workers. Indeed,
just shy of forty percent of Greenwood's black male workers
were employed as domestic servants, while that numbers Scott rocketed

(22:31):
all the way up to ninety three percent when it
came to black female workers. As despite their racism, Rich
white Stone like to employ black servants for no other
reason than the fact that the overall racist atmosphere made
it so that their black servants could not gossip about
their employers with their white neighbors and friends. Plus, according
to one woman, quote, when we had a white mad,

(22:52):
it was always helping her. I found kind of sorry
for her and didn't want to see her work so hard.
But when we had a colored girl, I mind letting
her do all the work herself. The money made by
these black domestic workers, then, more author than not, was
spent not in downtown Tulsa, but in downtown Greenwood, a
phenomenon that was only further cemented with the passage of

(23:13):
the nineteen sixty Tulsa Ordinance, which quote for maade persons
of either race from living in or maintaining a public
facility and any city block in which three quarters or
more of the population was of the other rays, a
law which formerly codified what was already happening, but it
made the segregation mandatory instead of voluntary, a law that
j b. Strafford was especially outraged by because it had

(23:36):
been passed by Republican administration, who, keep in mind, were
supposed to have their backs in those days. Now, while
the ordinance was ultimately ruled on constitutional a year after
its passage, that really didn't change anything, as the black
residents of Greenwood had already increased their efforts to be
completely self sufficient. The residents of Greenwood then increasingly spent

(23:57):
their money exclusively in Greenwood. They saw black doctors bought
groceries and goods from black owned stores, all the while
also paying rent to black landlords, thereby ensuring that their
money circulated within their own community plaus In addition to
the regular injection of funds from domestic servants who were
paid by wealthy white families, the community also took in

(24:18):
additional funds thanks to one of the district's biggest money makers,
the Policy Wheel. This was basically a numbers game where
for five cents, individuals could bet on the three drugs
that happened daily, where the winner received five dollars in
return for their five cent bet. Notably, those who operated
the Policy Wheel then hired domestic servants and other working
class blacks to offer their one employers the opportunity to

(24:40):
also take part in this game, with the operators of
the wheel making some twenty to thirty dollars a day
off this recket, while their salesman could make two to
three dollars for their efforts. It was then, thanks to
this relatively safe and self sufficient environment that Greenwood's growth
actually started to outpace that of Tulsa. Now, to be clear,
Greenwood was not the largest Black community within the United

(25:02):
States by any means. Chicago, for example, had ten timesy
black population of Tulsa, while even smaller cities like Louisville, Cincinnati,
and Pittsburgh all had significantly larger Black populations than Tulsa. Plas,
Greenwood as a whole was not ridge compared to places
like Saint Louis and Atlanta, Bud Greenwood was unique because
there black people could live a fairly comfortable and respectable life,

(25:24):
even without being wealthy. That being said, it has to
be noted that not everyone shared equally in this prosperity,
as outside of its business district and a couple blocks
of prime housing, there was still a fair amount of poverty.
Plus Tulsa officials largely ignored Greenwood when it came to
stuff like bathing streets and laying sewage lines, only doing
so relatedly and while after white neighborhoods had received those

(25:47):
in other basic services. Indeed, in nineteen twenty, the year
before the riot, only six blocks of Greenwood were actually paved,
while the rest were simply dirt roads, and many houses
lacked indoor toilets thanks to lack of sewage connections. Yet,
despite this, Greenwood was still quite attractive to black residents
of Oklahoma, whose situations elsewhere in the state were generally

(26:09):
worse and also did not offer the same kind of
promise of opportunity that Greenwood did. The district, you see,
was a haven for the kind of opportunities that were
otherwise than nine to African Americans at the time, a
place where blacks could start their own businesses and be
successful as they did not have to worry about whether
or not they could attract a white clientele. The district
then was home to places like the Gurly Hotel, the

(26:31):
Red Wing Hotel, and the Midway Hotel, which were all
owned by African Americans. Then there was De Stratford Hotel,
which was owned by the aforementioned JB. Strafford, who had
started out life and saved in Kentucky, only to go
on to earn a college education and eventually become one
of the wealthiest men in Greenwood. Indeed, by the time
the hotel opened in nineteen eighteen, Strafford was already rich.

(26:53):
In fact, he was earning five hundred dollars a month
from his fifteen rental houses and various other sources, an
amount that, mind you, who was five times as much
as a white police officer made. With that walth, Strafford
then quote decided to realize my fondest hope, and that
was to erect a large hotel in Tulsa exclusively for blacks.
To that end, he constructed the three story, fifty four

(27:14):
room brick building that also contained a drug store, barbershop,
restaurant in Banquet Hall with an aisle, making it so
that its elegance rivaled that of the Hotel Tulsa. It
has to be said, though, that J. B. Strafford was
not just a rich man who was content on getting
his own. Asked a man who had graduated from the
University of Indiana as an attorney intent on specializing in
social justice and racial solidarity, was known to encourage his

(27:38):
fellows to demand equality. Greenwood, meanwhile, was home to numerous
black realtors, dentists, lawyers, and doctors, among whom was doctor
Andrew Jackson, the son of one Captain Townsend D. Jackson,
a former enslaved man turned highly respected black lawman and
militia leader. His son, Doctor Jackson, meanwhile, was a prominent
surgeon who worked at a Greenwood's Lincoln Hospital. Not only that,

(27:59):
but doctor Jackson was considered to be one of the
finest black surgeons in the entire country. The Mayo Brothers
of the Mayo Clinic, for example, would call doctor Jackson
the most able Negro surgeon in the United States. He
was so widely respected, in fact, that white surgeons consulted
him and he was able to treat both black and
white patients. The neighborhood, meanwhile, was also home to the

(28:20):
offices of two newspapers, The Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun,
with the Tulsa Star being the work of publisher and
journalist Andrew Jackson Smitherman. AJ. Smitherman had been born in
eighteen eighty three in Children's Burg, Alabama, before his parents
moved with him to what was at the time Indian Territory.
This then was where he grew up and where his mother,
a school teacher, made sure that AJ got an education

(28:41):
so that he would not be forced to work in
the mines all his life. AJ then would attend the
University of Kansas, Northwestern University, and LaSalle University's Law school
in Philadelphia, where he earned his law degree. Ultimately, though,
when he decided to start his own paper, AJ would
receive the funding necessary to launch his Tulsa Star from
none other than J. B. E. Strafford. Smithman would then

(29:02):
use his paper to promote not only black self reliance
but also self defensemen, necessary positions which J. B. Stratford
very much shared. To that end, in nineteen seventeen, Smithman
would investigate an incident in Dewey, Oklahoma, where a white
mob had set fire to the homes of some two
dozen black families. He would then not only publish a
story about this incident in his Tulsa Star, but would

(29:23):
also submit his report on his investigation to the governor,
actions which ultimately led to the rest of thirty six
whites who were involved in these crimes, including the mayor
of Dewey himself. Then the following year, in nineteen eighteen,
Smithman was actively involved in attempts to prevent a pair
of lynchings. Meanwhile, back to Greenwood in general, the district
was also home to some twenty two African American churches,

(29:45):
including the newly constructed Mountain Zion Baptist Church, which was
among the most notable of the district's religious establishments. The
church had originally been founded in nineteen oh nine by
fifteen African Americans who had decided to lead the First
Baptist Church, a group that would ultimately choose to name
their new institution Mount Zion rather than the Second Baptist Church,
as it did not want to be second in anything.

(30:08):
The new church then grew and flourished free of white influence,
growing to the point that they were finally able to
build a brand new three story brick structure that reflected
the growing affluents and prosperity of Greenwood, with the building
finally opening after five years of construction on the fourth
of April nineteen twenty one. Greenwood was also home to
all manner of black owned businesses, from grocery stores to restaurants,

(30:30):
and from barbecue joints to funeral parlors. There was even
a roller skating rink, all of which were again black owned,
which meant that the money spent there remained within the community.
Among these black business owners were John and Lula Williams,
who had come to Tulsa from Mississippi and Tennessee, respectively.
The couple had first arrived in Tulsa in Greenwood's population
was still relatively small. John, then, who had worked on

(30:53):
steam engines for railroads down south, got a job working
on the Thumbs and ice Cream Company steam powered machines
that apparently paid fairly well. Asie, Williams would become the
first black residence of Tulsa to own a car, a
vehicle which John soon became fairly adept and working on
thanks to his past experience with steam engines. Indeed, it
wasn't long before he became the man to go to

(31:14):
when other residents of the city, both black and white,
needed work done on their own automobiles. Soon John was
in so much demand that he was able to quit
his job at the ice cream company to open his
own garage, profits from which then allowed the couple to
build a three story brick building on Greenwood and Archer
Avenues in the heart of the business district. On the
first floor of this building, Lula would open a confectionery,

(31:36):
which soon became a massive money maker in its own
right as she sold ice cream, candy, and SODA's. The
confectionery then served as a prime gathering place and a
center for Greenwood's social life. Then, with the money from
this latest successful venture, the couple built another building, which
they planned to house an even larger garage. However, city
ordinances prevented such a move, so they instead opted to

(31:58):
turn the first flour of their new building into the U. S.
Dreamland Theater, the first black owned theater in Tulsa which
produced both live entertainment and showed silent films, with this
latest spot becoming yet another favorite destination for Greenwood's residence,
as the theatre's eight hundred seats were filled regularly. Now
it has to be sent there that Greenwood also had
its own prosperous red light district, which featured various whiskey

(32:20):
joints and speakeasies that had popped up in response to promission.
This included so called chalk joints, with chalk being a
chalk taw beer made from tree roots bootleggers and were
comedy in Greenwood's red light district, as were gambling parlors, brothels,
and opium dens. As a result, Greenwood would develop a
bit of a reputation for gun related violence, which was

(32:41):
the product of not just clashes between criminal elements, but
sometimes just normal citizens intent on settling disputes through violence, like,
for example, a woman trying to shoot her husband. Although
it doesn't sound like such incidents were all that much
more common in Greenwood than they were anywhere else, as
were not all that far removed at this point from
the days of the wild West. Still the fat in

(33:02):
the matter was Greenwood, for all its well earned reputation,
as Black Wall Street also had its seedier side, a
side that was very much deeply intertwined with the rest
of the district. Indeed, was said that on some streets, quote,
you could get the Holy Ghost on one quart or
in hero Wind on the other. Meanwhile, also inexorbly tied
and with such fice in the white minda least was

(33:22):
jazz music, there was increasingly being played in the district's
dance halls. Indeed, the Tulsa World, only thirty of Main
nineteen twenty one would publish an article titled quote Jazz
the evil Spirit of Music, in which the article's author
would write, quote rhythm and musical vibrations for the half
savage of voodoists like a powerful intoxicant. It shows extreme

(33:44):
to which human vibrations control human nerves when it properly employed. Now,
to be clear, the Tulsa World was not alone in
the sphere of jazz and its unique rhythms. This was,
in facty part of a larger moral panic, as jazz
was often depicted as being evil and having as to
the devil or evil mystical practices. Although underlying all this
spiritual stage dressing is just plain and simple racism, which

(34:08):
is made clear from statements like those made by an
episcopal rector in New York who would state that quote
jazz goes back to the African jungle and that it's
quote savage crash in bang is quote retrogression, and in
a similar veiny Brooklyn Daily News article in nineteen twenty
five would state that jazz had its roots in the
quote unquote jungle. That being said, more than any vice, crime,

(34:31):
or style of music, and was the success of the
Greenwood District that was the greatest threat to white supremacy,
as its businesses, its churches, and its educational institutions all
undermined the myth that African Americans were in some way
inherently inferior and that they could not be successful on
their own without any kind of white helper influence. Indeed,
the Booker T. Washington High School, which had been established

(34:53):
in nineteen thirteen, was at the center of black life
in Tulsa. The school, which boasted many prominent African American
luminaries among its former graduates, was not shy abound challenging
its students. For example, freshmen were expected to study English science, algebra,
ancient history, music, and Latin Now. Education had always been
very important to the black community in Greenwood. Indeed, as

(35:15):
early as nineteen ten, Tulsa had the second lowest Black
literacy rate of any county in the state, which was
due to more than three fourth of these cities black
school age children going to school. In fact, the community
prized education so highly that Greenwood's teachers were among the
most respected and highest paid members of their community. As
a resulted people had once been forbidden to read, were

(35:36):
now sending their children to such institutions of fire learning
as the Spielman College, the Tuskegee Institute, and Howard and
Columbia Universities. Again, though, the success at Greenwood schools, just
like the district's businesses, just served to illustrate the lie
at the heart of white supremacy, as without the interference
of racist policies, African Americans had created a Thurman community

(35:56):
that existed in contrast to the racial stereotype that Blacks
were in he and lazy, immoral and stupid, a group
of people supposedly incapable functioning on their own without what assistance,
and thereby and capable running their own businesses and the like,
which then justified the fact they were generally restricted to
menial work and not given the chance to advance. So,

(36:16):
with manche Greenwood flying in the face of their beliefs,
races instead chose to focus on the district's red light section,
its vice, and the poor conditions that existed, primarily because
the white Dulcin government had no real interest in paving
the district's roads or laying sewer lines. Indeed, Reverend James
McConnell of Tulsa, who would claim that African Americans had
it better as slaves, as they were treated humanly and kindly,

(36:39):
and had more to eat in better clothes than they
currently had, would go on to preach in nineteen fourteen quote,
the Negro has no conception of purity of chastity. They
have literally God for sanitation or anything that is clean.
And as a result of this impure, filthy, and temperate life,
the race is going to be extinct in a few
decades unless they can be rescued from the life they live. Yet, still,

(37:01):
as much as they wanted to focus on the most
negative parts of the district, the fact remained that Greenwood's
very existence challenged their core racist concepts. Indeed, the success
and growth of Greenwood was alarming to white Tulsa, as
the district alone was larger than most Oklahoma towns. Indeed,
the Tulsa Democrat would report that quote, Tulsa appears now

(37:22):
to be in danger of losing its prestige as the
whitest town in Oklahoma. Yet, despite these obvious signs of
racist backlash against their success, some within the district still
stock to the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, who believed
that the path to equality came simply through education and
living virtuously, which he believed would eventually earn the respect

(37:42):
and acceptance of whites, a belief how by some in Greenwood,
like doctor Andrew Jackson's father, the respected former lawman Captain
Townsend Jackson, who would proclaim in nineteen thirteen that quote
with money and property comes a means of knowledge and power.
A poverty stricken class or race will be in it
into spise class, and no amount of sentiment can make

(38:03):
it otherwise. If the time shall ever come when we
possess the colored people of this country, a class of
men noted for enterprise, industry, economy, and success, we shall
no longer have any trouble in the matter of political rights.
The battle against popular prejudice shall have been fought purth logic.
Then the success of Greenwich should not have fostered anger, fear,
and jealousy, but instead respect and a reconsideration of their

(38:26):
racist beliefs that clearly, however, was not happening. As such.
Others like JB. Strafford and A. J. Smithman, along with
many of the other younger residents of Greenwood, adopted the
attitude of w E. B. Doo boys who would write
in nineteen nineteen quote, today we raised a terrible weapon
of self defense. When the murderer comes, he shall no

(38:47):
longer strike us in the back. With the armliner gathers,
we too must gather armed. With the mob moves, we
propose to meet it with bricks, clubs and guns. The

(39:23):
spark for the Tulsa Ride came on thirtyeth of Main
nineteen twenty one Memorial Day. There were heavy rains that morning,
yet that did not stop the CS parade, as hundreds
gathered at ten am to watch World War One vets
march through the streets. Why band played military style music,
fall by cars bearing American flags, and even a tractor
that pulled a flag draped casket. The rain had cast

(39:45):
a bit of a pall over the day, but still
on the holiday offered a respite, albeit a temporary one,
from the fact that it was a rough time for
Tulsa asking boom and bust. Oil business was in a
down period. Unemployment in Tulsa then will sigh thanks do
sixty some of the oil industry and the state being
shot down, a reality that only served with fan racial
resentment as poor and out of work, whites couldn't help

(40:07):
a look over at the thriving Greenwood Main Street. This
presented a weird situation for Tulsa's races, as on one hand,
they loomed down on Greenwood for some like nature and
for being a den of vice, which in some ways
it admittedly was. As noted previously sections all, the district
lacked basic amenities due to the city's white leaders, and
it was also home to a certain degree of crime

(40:29):
and vice. Yet for as much as they wanted to
look down on Little Africa, as the Tulsa Tribune called it,
they also could not help but beat jobs of the
thriving businesses there and of the African Americans carrying around
cash and buying all manner of goods while they were
suffering due to this downturn in the oil business being
Maldy clowns and rain of the morning soon faded, and
the temperature in Tulsa climb up to ninety degrees in response.

(40:52):
Downtown then, despite the holiday, seemed to have been fairly busy. Now,
the incident that would unintentionally proved to be the spark
that ultimately led to the destruction of Greenwood happened around
four pm when a clerk at the Rendburg's clothing store
that set on the first floor the Drexel Building in
downtown Tulsa heard a woman's scream. The unidentified clerk then

(41:12):
reportedly responded by heading in the direction on the sound
of the scream. As he did, the clerk habine to
see a young black man running from the building. The clerk, though,
did not give chase, but instead continued on toward the elevator,
where he found seventeen year old white elevator operator Sarah
Page crying. This clerk, then, without any further evidence, simply
assumed that Sarah had been assaulted by the young black

(41:34):
man he had seen running from the building moments earlier.
It would later be revealed that the young man in
question was a nineteen year old shoeshine boy named Dick Roland. Now,
what if any relationship existed between the nineteen year old
black man and the seventeen year old white elevator operator,
we don't know. As for as forbidness such dallions as
were in those days, people are people, and a pair

(41:56):
of young attractive individuals might still be drawn to one another.
What society would say, plus young Sarah, despite being two
years younger than Dick, had already been married, but had
left her husband in Kansas City, an act for which
she was later served to vorce papers, which in those
days made her a bit of a notorious character. A
young woman then, who was likely already a bit of

(42:17):
an outcast from polite society might have potentially been more
act to be taken in by the charms of someone
like Dick Rowland. Indeed, it's quite n likely that she
and young Dick had encountered one another on multiple other
occasions as whal Dick worked about a block away. All
the other restrooms in downtown per Tulsa's and Oklahoma's Jim
Crow style laws, were for White's only. The one exception,

(42:39):
per negotiations undertaken by Dick's boss, was a restroom on
the fourth floor of the Drexel Building. As such, it's
quite possible that Dick made regular use of young Sarah
Page's elevator. That all being said, we don't know for
sure whether or not Dick and Sarah actually knew one
another or were simply two complete strangers who might have
regally encountered each other without incident. Until today, what we

(43:01):
do know is that Dick Rowland had actually been born
Jimmy Jones, but he had been orphaned around age six,
at which point little Jimmy had approached a young woman
named Dammy Rowland asking for food. Danmy fed the boy,
and after taking a shine to him, ultimately kind of
adopted him, and in turn, he took on her last
name and took to calling himself Dick Roland as the
young Boy for whatever reason, like the name now. Dick

(43:24):
early on had gotten very good grades, but as he
got older, school was no longer able to hold his attention. Instead,
he was far more interested in dancing, as he made
a bit of a name for himself in the local
jazz clubs. Dick then would seem the only stick it
out of school long enough to make the football team
and finish the season before more or less dropping out.
Now Danny, of course, tried to convince Dick to stick

(43:46):
it out so that he might have a chance at
becoming one of the affluent and respectable members of Greenwood. Dick, however,
could not be convinced, especially since he was already making
quite good money as a shoe shine when he was
primed to profit off the oil wealth and white Tulsa. Indeed,
Dick was making such good money off of tips from
mauthy whites. At one here he bought himself a diamond
ring as a birthday present, thereby earning himself the colorful

(44:09):
nickname Diamond Dick. Now, regardless of whatever actually happened in
the elevator that Memorial Day in nineteen twenty one, and
regardless of whether or not Dick and Sarah actually knew
each other or were simply strangers who potentially encountered each
other from time to time, as soon as Sarah, a
young white woman, let out a scream, the young black
man Dick Rowland knew he was not safe, and so

(44:30):
he ran. Indeed, Dick ran all the way back to
Greenwood into his adopted mother, Danny's house, begging her to
hide him, at which Pony told Danny his version of
what had gone down in the Drexel building. According to Dick,
he had taken the stairs up to deliver a customer's
shoes that had been left to get shined. Then, after
making his delivery, Dick had decided to take Sarah's elevator

(44:51):
down as he went to step inside. However, Dick claimed
to have tripped and fell to Sarah by accident. In
doing so, though he'd also inadvertently stopped on her toe, oh,
which was already sore from an ingrown toenail, at which
point Dick obviously tried to apologize, but Sarah had a temper,
so she started hitting Dick over and over again with
her purse, breaking his leather handles in the process. Dick

(45:13):
then tried to hold Sarah's arms back to stop her
from hitting him, but as he reached the ground floor,
Sarah let out a scream, which called the clerk's attention
from the nearby clothing store and caused Dick to flee
as he and just like every other black person, knew
what fatal witted any black man accused of assaulting a
white woman. Dick, though had apparently evaded pursuit, and nor
did the cops show up at any point during the night.

(45:34):
He spent hiding at a Damy's place. The following day,
though after leaving the house, Dick would be picked up
by Tulsa cops who hauled him off to jail. Now,
this apparent Elaine pursued is notable as it does not
fit with the expected behavior around an incident like the
one that was alleged to have happened. In fact, when
Demi went down to the courthouse following Dick's arrest, Sheriff

(45:54):
William McCullough would assure her that it was the opinion
of him and his officers that the page girl was
trouble and so they were skeptical of her version of events,
which was why there hadn't been a major man hunt
the previous day. The comps simply weren't putting a whole
lot of credence in her story, at least in part
because it was highly unlikely that a young black man
attempted to sexually assault a white woman in broad daylight

(46:17):
in a downtown office building which sat on a major
street on a fairly busy day. It seems that a
lot of things just weren't adding up, and so Sheriff
McCullough promised Damy that Dick would get his stay in court.
In fact, he even helped her get into contact with
prominent WEIT attorney Washington Hudson, who was considered to be
the best lawyer in Tulsa. The thing was, he cops

(46:37):
having doubts about what actually happened in that elevator did
not stop the Tulsa Tribune from running an article under
the headline quote now Negro for a teching girl in elevator,
an article which was as fair and balanced as you
might expect, as it described the accused as a quote
Negro delivery boy who gave his name to the public
as Diamond Dick, but who has been identified as Dick ruland,

(46:59):
with inc of this nickname seemingly being a purposeful move
to cast him as kaki and arrogant, the type of
black men who did not know his quote unquote plays
and the type of black men that racists were prime
to hate, and suspecting Medley of being guilty of quote
attempting to assault the seventeen year old white elevator girl,
with the obvious implication of assault being that he had

(47:21):
attempted to rape her, something that the white readers at
the time would have all understood. Additionally, the paper would
make sure to note that the girl in question was
a quote orphan who works as an elevator operator to
pay her way through business college. So we have this cocky,
arrogant black man who was charged with attempting to assault
this spoor in is an orphan was just trying to

(47:42):
make her way in the world. Then, as if to
further inflame the public's rage, the paper went on to
note how this poor orphan girl had quote noticeding Negro
a few minutes before the attempted assault, looking up and
down the hallway on the third floor of the Drexel
building as if to see if there was anyone in sight.
So not only had he attempted to assault her, which

(48:02):
the paper was just flatly accepting that was what happened,
but he also obviously premeditated this attack, which consisted of
quote scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes. Now,
the paper at this point would admit that Roland denied
the charge, while adding that he had quote admitted he
put his hand on her arm when he was alone,
which for many of the Tasa Tribunes white readers, was

(48:25):
likely seen as admitting to a crime. As a black
man daring to put his hands on a white woman, period,
and especially doing so wide they were in private, wasn't outrage. Now,
it has to be noted that we have no idea
where this information came from, as there is no account
of what Sarah had actually told the police, so this
could be the story she told them, or it's also
entirely possible that all this was made up wholesale by

(48:48):
the paper. Yet, regardless of the actual veracity of the story,
talk of lynching ran through Tulsa in the wake of
its publishing. The threat was so real, in fact, that
the chief of the Tulsa Police Force, John Gustafson, was
ordered by the police Commissioner to move Roland from the
city jail to the County jail, which sound atop the
County Courthouse, as that location was theoretically at least more secure,

(49:10):
a move which also meant transferring custody rollin to the
Tulsa County Sheriff William McCullough. Meanwhile, reportedly adding even more
fuel to the rumors that a lynching was set to
take place in Tulsa in the wake of the rest
of Dick Roland, was an editorial in the aforementioned Tulsa
Tribune that ran under the headline quote to lynch a
negro Tonight, an editorial reportedly published by the paper's publisher,

(49:32):
Richard Lloyd Jones, now curiously before purchasing The Tulsa Democrat,
renaming it the Tusa Tribune and subsequently turning into a
home for yellow journalism and photographs of beauty queens from
pageants that the paper had sponsored. Jones had spearheaded efforts
to preserve the farmer Abraham Lincoln had been born. Jones, however,
did not seem to see the dissonance between such an
act and his paper doing things like openly supporting the

(49:55):
KKK and Cohen Greenwood quote Little Africa, or quote Nwordtown
only using the actual word. Indeed, Jones would note that
all black people, who were hard working and most importantly
respectful of whites were perfectly fine. There was also the
reality that the quote bad enword is about the lowest
thing that walks on two feet. Gave a bad en word,

(50:18):
his booze and his dope and a gun, and he
thinks he can shoot up the world. And all these
four things are found in Nwardtown. Booze, dope, bad enwords,
and guns. Notably, though, for as much as Jones seemed
perfectly fine with fanning the flames of racial hatred prior
to these events, the Tulsa Tribune had been super focused
on Greenwood. However, about ten days before the riot, Jones

(50:40):
turned the attention of his paper and its readership to
stirring up outrage about the distric Key liked to call
Little Africa. Things started in ernest and on the twenty
first to May, when the People ran a story about
one Reverend Harold G. Cook leading other elite white men
on an undercover tour of the city's nightlife, a tour
which we poortedly saw them finding liquor on offer whrek
wherever they went into finds of the national prohibition law.

(51:03):
Where still, though, they claimed to have regularly found in
the various hotels and rooming houses around the city offers
of prostitution, with much of the booze and women being peddled,
but the black porters working in these establishments. However, potentially
the most alarming thing they found was in the roadhouses
just outside of the city, where they quote found whites
and negro singing and dancing together, a story that is

(51:25):
particularly notable because in men that calmed the thirty one
to May, the white population of Tulsa had only just
recently been outraged not only by general law breaking by
the black people living among them, but specifically by the
alarming erasure of the line protecting white women from African Americans.
With all this happening on the nose of the cops. Tulsa, then,

(51:46):
per the inflammatory coverage of the Tribune was a dento
vice crime and most importantly, Blacks overstepping their bounds all
the while the cops were doing nothing about it, a
situation that seemingly primely white population do not trust the
cops to quote unquote properly delivered justice to someone like
Dick Roland and thus encouraged them to take matters into

(52:06):
their own hands. You can guess, then, given jones past
writing and the type of yellow journalism, as paper regularly
indulged in what the editorial he wrote on this day
might have been like, which is the best that any
of us can do, because we don't exactly know what
it said. As despite multiple people both black and white,
attesting to the existence of this editorial and its inflammatory nature,

(52:29):
no copy of it exists. It seems that Jones's editor
had convinced him to remove the piece in question after
only a few hundred copies had gone out, as it
was to inflammatory even by their own standards. Not only that,
but when the paper was eventually archived, the copy from
the thirtieth of May appeared to have the section where
the editorial would have been torn out, which strongness suggests

(52:51):
not only the existence of this editorial, but its inflammatory
nature potential cover up aside, though it seems that what
copies of it did get printed on that day, they
only served to heighten the tensions in the city. The

(53:36):
reported headline of to lynch a Meager Tonight was seemingly
enough to cause anxiety among the Greenwood district, and even
if said headline didn't actually exist, the rumor swrolling around
Tulsa in the wake of the arrest of Dick Rowland
would have been enough. As such rumors had to be
taken seriously, given that in nineteen twenty one alone, there
were fifty nine documented lynchings in southern and border states,

(53:58):
and more importantly, Tulsa had its own history of extra
legal actions in just the past few years. One infamous
incidence started on the twenty ninth of October in nineteen seventeen,
when the home of j. Edgar Pugh was bombed. The
explosion was significant enough to destroy the house's front porch
and drive its front wall inward. However, Pew, his wife,
and his son would all manage to escape unharmed. Now,

(54:20):
a house being the target of an explosion is notable
in its own right, but this one was especially noteworthy
given that Pew was a wealthy oil man who was
the president of the Carter Oil Company, a significant subsidiary
of Standard Oil. Given the prominence of Pew and the
points of the oil industry in Tulsa, it should come
as no surprise that someone was quickly arrested in connection

(54:41):
with the bombing, with one WJ. Powers being taken in
within four hours of the explosion. The problem was, despite
being rolled by the Tulsa Police and detectives from Standard Oil,
it did not seem that Powers knew anything about the bombing. Meanwhile,
the chief of the Tulsa Police Force at the time,
El Lucas, was quick to declare without any evidence, that
the bombing was the quote first in a series of

(55:04):
depredations in a gigantic pot to destroy the property of
the oil companies and the residences of the leaders in
the oil businesses in the Big Continent field, a claim
that the Tulsa world would back up by saying that
they had evidence from quote unquote unimpeachable sources which implicated
the Industrial Workers of the World and the bombing. The
paper then went on to claim that agents of the IWW,

(55:25):
or the Womblies as they were also popularly known, had
been sent to Tulsa from all over the nation. The
world even suggested that they were one of the targets
of the supposed larger plot, as they had received four
letters of the past four weeks than each had mentioned
the quote certain downfall of capitalist newspapers, which was more
than likely not a threat but an expression that capitalists

(55:46):
should not control the news. Regardless, the Tulsa World was
now obsessed with the IWW. So home. While these cities
on their papers moved on from the bombing story because
nothing was happening, the Tulsa World continued with their fanatical
coverage pass Despine claims that the Pew explosion was just
the start of a larger terror campaign. No evidence of
a larger plot ever materialized. Despite this, the Tulsa World

(56:10):
would remain fixated on the IWW, as a ranon editorial
on the thirty first of October tunneled quote patients has
an end in which the paper endorsed vigilanti action as
the compared quote unquote political radicals to horse thieves, and
in doing so suggested that they should be dealt with
in the same way, basically endorsing lynching. Indeed, in this

(56:31):
very scene issue, the paper would write, quote right here
is a good place to disagree with these statement frequently
expressed by Oklahoma editors that the IWW's and other pro
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

(56:52):
is hemp worth now the long foot, basically saying that
members of the IWW and others who did not support
America taking part in the First World War should be
put in concentration camps or just outright killed. That being said,
at the heart of the paper's hatred toward the IWW
was the fact that they were trying to organize the
oil workers into the oil field Workers' Union, something which

(57:14):
the Tulsa world was firmly against. As you see, the
world fully supported the oil industry and the men who
were growing rich off of it. So when the IWW
and their allies blamed the skyrocketing cost of living not
on Mexican immigrants, but on the fact that they select
fewer making money hand over fist and building mansions while
the labors who did all the hard work saw none

(57:35):
of the profit. Mean men running the Tulsa World could
not handle it. They wanted to celebrate the wealth the
oil industry was generating. In the city's position as the
oil capital of the world, workers and asking for better
paying conditions threatened in their minds, at least to destroy
the oil paradise of their dreams. So partially in response
to the Tulsa World's ongoing campaign against the union, the

(57:57):
Tulsa Police, using the Pew bombing as a justification, conducted
a raid on the IWW hall in the city. Inside,
the cops found some men quote seated about the place,
playing cards and reading, which is to say they were
not doing anything suspicious, certainly not building bombs for some
fictional campaign. Meanwhile, upon barging in, the comps were confronted

(58:18):
by the union's secretary, who insisted that they needed a
warrant to search the building and its occupants, as he
were paying rent to be there. However, the head officer
on the scene simply declared that he would search them
whenever he felt like it. Eleven men inside the Union
Hall were then arrested and placed under the highest bond
allowed by Oklahoma law, even though the cops, with their

(58:38):
unwarded search, had found no incriminating evidence whatsoever. The Tulso World, meanwhile,
was more than happy to declare in response to the
raid that quote ar on the IWW was declared by
the city of Tulsa. Indeed, the paper scene was right
for a change, as police Captain Wilkerson would proclaim, quote,
regardless of the outcome of the cases, we are going
to arrest every man. Was found latering about the IWW headquarters.

(59:03):
If they get out of jail and go back there,
we will arrest them again and again and again, which
they did as it would raid the Union Hall again,
ultimately arresting another man, thereby bringing their total up to twelve.
When they then brought these twelve IWW members to trial,
the prosecution attempted to position the defendants as traitors to
the government. Yet when they asked about their opinion of

(59:25):
the government, the defendants gave statements like quote, we are
not interested in that, we are interested in raising wages,
a statement that was supported by another man who informed
the court at eighteen years ago he earned three dollars
a day working in the oil fields, and he still
made that exact same amount despite nearly two decades having
gone by, which is to say that the prosecution didn't

(59:46):
exactly get what they wanted, and thus nothing dramatic happened
on the first day of the trial, much to the
dismay of the blood thirsty Tulsa World, which, in addition
to running that quote nothing sensational had happened, also ran
an edit satorial titled quote get out the Hemp, which
again encouraged the lynching of union members, as it made
things quite plain by writing quote, the first step in

(01:00:09):
the webbing of Germany is to strangle the IWW's kill
him just as you would kill any other kind of stake.
Don't scotch them, kill him and kill him dead. It
is no time to waste money on trials and continuances
like that. All is necessary is the evidence and a
firing squad, a stance at the man overseeing the case.
Judge td Evans likely agreed with in general, as a

(01:00:31):
judge who would be the mayor of the city within
a few years, not only found a dozen union men guilty,
finding them one hundred dollars the agent sending them to jail,
but he also had the five individuals who had served
as witnesses for the defense arrested, tried on the spot,
and declared guilty as well. This, however, was far from
the final act in this miscarriage of justice, as between

(01:00:52):
eleven and midnight that very night, while the seventeen prisoners
were being escorted to jail by nine police officers, they
would be stopped in by a group of forty to
fifty armed men wearing long black robes and black masks
who called themselves the Knights of Liberty. The so called
knights then proceeded to tie the hands and feet of
the seventeen prisoners while the comps just kind of watched on,

(01:01:14):
at which point the knights and had the comps drive
them all out to a ravine west of the city. Now,
if you're thinking that the police sound awfully cooperative, while
several of these seventeen men, when all was said and done,
would state that the cops who were supposed to be
escorting them to jail that night had in their possession
gowns and masts identical to the men kidnapping them. Meanwhile,
The secluded area outside of town where the prisoners were

(01:01:36):
brought to was illuminated by a bonfire and the headlights
of automobiles that had been arranged in a circle. These
seventeen in prison and now kidnapped Union men were then
one by one tied to a tree and whipped with
a hemp rope until their backs were lacerated and bloody,
and which point their backs, complete with open wounds, were
tarred and feathered, with some being whipped a second time

(01:01:57):
after being tarred and feathered, because it can you need
to probably declare their loyalty to the IWW proceedings, which,
according to the kidnapped individuals, were overseen by Tulsa's Chief
of Police, who they recognized as being the one dictating
how many times each one of them was whipped. Then,
once the so called Knights were done with their torturing,
these seventeen Union men were pointed toward the Osage Hills

(01:02:19):
outside of town and told to leave, with their flight
being encouraged by gunfire. Meanwhile, following this, all around Tulsa's
sides started appearing thanks to this quote unquote vigilance committee
that read quote notice two IWW's don't let the suns
set on you in Tulsa, basically threatening their lives should
they remain in town. Meanwhile, as you might expect given

(01:02:41):
the individuals involved, no investigations into this incident were ever
carried out, and none of these so called Knights of
Liberty were ever punished for their crimes. Indeed, the Tulsa
World would praise them as patriots, while the Tulsa Democrat
would describe the scene that night as a quote real party,
a real Maria party. Now for the Wobblies, this incident

(01:03:02):
would basically put an end to the IWW efforts in Tulsa. Additionally,
this was a lesson for the residents of Greenwood that
the people of Tulsa were more than willing to take
the law into their own hands, especially if an individual
or a group found themselves the targets of the city's newspapers.
And indeed, the vigilante spirit demonstrated against the IWW members

(01:03:23):
would continue to manifest in the coming years. As while
these self proclaimed knights never reappeared, other similar vigilante efforts
did take place in the city. This included the American
Protective League, a nationwide group dedicated to spying on their
neighbors and crushing any form of so called disloyalty Mike, say,
being an immigrant, being a unionist, or being anti war

(01:03:45):
in any way a group that I have already done
a series on, but might revisit and expand upon due
to you know, circumstances. Regardless, it was clear that, especially
during America's involvement in the First World War, anyone who
stepped outside the acceptable bounds of society was liable to
be either turned over directly to vigilante forces by the police,

(01:04:06):
or otherwise conveniently released in such a way so as
to enable their capture in extra legal punishment. Those who
would be handed over to such vigilante groups ran the
gamut from drug dealers to wife beaters, to adulterers and
even simply immigrants. As you might expect. Then, when the
second version of the clan rose up, it found fernal
ground in Tulsa. Indeed, it's been estimated that by December

(01:04:29):
nineteen twenty one, there were some thirty two thousand clan
members residing in the city. Now, it's believed that the
clan first started appearing in Tulsa' as early as nineteen eighteen,
with some joining the organization not just on a fear
of African Americans rising above their so called place, but
because the Klan was also against things like bootlegging, prostitution,

(01:04:50):
and other forms of vice that were perceived to be
plaguing the town. For some then the clan was a
force of order and a corrupt city. Murmur then had
it that it was in law before all district judges,
the county sheriff, the court clerk, and all jury commissioners
were clan members, which, while that might have been true eventually,
might not have been the case quite yet, as it

(01:05:11):
seems that much of the clan's growth came after the riot.
So while the clan likely wasn't responsible for the riot,
its subsequent growth is yet more proof of the kind
of attitudes and atmosphere than existed in Tulsa at that time.
You can understand, then, given the nation's history and the
history of their own town, why the residents of Greenwood
would be concerned about talk of lynchings. You can also

(01:05:34):
likely understand, as well, given everything they had built, why
the residents of Greenwood were especially determined to not allowing
lynching to happen in their city. An attitude that was
demonstrated following the events of the seventy to the March
nineteen nineteen. As you see, it was on that day,
Saint Patrick's Day, that Ow Leonard, a white iron worker,
was confronted by a pair of armed men. These men

(01:05:55):
then ordered Leonard to put his hands in the air
and whin he failed to acquiesce, the men shot the
iron worker in the back. Leonard, though, would linger for
another twelve hours before dying in the hospital, during which
time he said that the two individuals responsible were black,
and then gave the authorities a minimal description of what
they looked like. When three black men were subsequently arrested,

(01:06:17):
as you might expect, rumors began to swirl that the
three would be lynched. On the night of Leonard's funeral.
In response to such rumors, and possibly because they were
aware of what had happened to the IWW men two
years earlier, fifteen armed African Americans drove down to the
city jail wanted to see for themselves that the three
defendants were actually safe within their jail cells. These fifteen

(01:06:38):
armed men, though, were not alone in their concern as
more and more black individuals from Greenwood headed down to
the city jail until there were reportedly some two hundred
black individuals surrounding the jail, all simply wanted to make
sure that a lynching hadn't and would not happen. There
was no violence, and indeed, as soon as one of
the original fifteen men was allowed to go in and

(01:06:58):
see that the three defendants were in fact still safe,
the crowd was satisfied and dispersed. Now, the news of
this incident was the talk of the town the following day,
with many a white resident of Tulsa not taking too
kindly to the idea of African Americans standing up for
themselves in such a way, an attitude surprisingly echoed by
one Reverend J. H. Abernathy of the First Baptist Church

(01:07:20):
in Greenwood As. Abernathy, who disapproved of the previous night's actions,
would tell his congregation quote, I don't think that the
white citizens of Tulsa would be guilty of the crime.
This mob was afraid would be committed, something which he
was incredibly wrong about, a fact which would be illustrated
fully even before the riot. Indeed, the events of August

(01:07:41):
nineteen twenty would demonstrate the power of the local press
and the tendency of those in Tulsa to four mobs
to take quote unquote justice into their own hands. It
all started when a pair of white men and a
white woman hired a cab to take them out to
a dance in Red Fork. Before reaching their destination, however,
one of the two men in the backs, twenty five
year old way taxi driver, homer Nita in the head

(01:08:03):
with a revolver. This man then pulled Nita into the
back of the cab while the other man took control
of the car to keep them from crashing. Nino was
then subsequently shot in the stomach and thrown from the
car before it sped away. Nina, however, was not dead
and would be found and hospitalized. The twenty five year
old would then linger for several days before succumbing to
his injuries. Before he did, however, Nita would not only

(01:08:26):
relate everything that had happened, but would also give a
detailed description of the trio responsible, noting as he did
that the woman who was with him did not seem
to have been involved. The TOASA papers and lashed onto
the story, choosing to cover it extensively, all the while
ignoring a fairly similar story from just a week earlier,
where a truck driver named Walter Allen had been fatally stabbed,

(01:08:46):
and even like Nita, would linger in the hospital for
some time before ultimately succumbing to his wounds. The press,
for whatever reason, though, chose to ignore the Allan story
and focus exclusively on Nita's stirring up the public's passion
as they did. Now, why this crime in particular was
highlighted over the other I can't say. However, the fact
that it was highlighted was in part a result of

(01:09:07):
a perceived crime wave that had struck the city, a
crime wave that was of special interest to the head
of the Tulsa Tribune, Richard Lloyd Jones, who had decided
to make it his mission to go after city officials
for what he saw as the outrageous amount of crime
and vice in the city. Now, as I mentioned with
Greenwood being in some ways a haven for prostitution, gambling,
and bootlegging, the same was apparently true for white Tulsa

(01:09:30):
as well. Indeed, charlesea Post, a federal narcotics officer, would
proclaim that Tulsa was quote overrun with narcotic peddlers. The
focus though, as you might expect was put upon Greenwood
as being the haven for these vices, with the greatest
fear of being that black pimps, drug dealers, and bootleggers
would corrupt pure innocent young white individuals and young white women.

(01:09:52):
In particular that being said as alarmist and racially basis.
Some of these concerns were investigations would uncover actual corruption
within the local government, like, for example, police Chief John
Gustafson firing a black police officer for poking around an
arrangement the chief had with a black drug dealer. As
for the murder of Homer Nitta. The day after the shooting,

(01:10:14):
an eighteen year old white former telephone company worker, Roy Belton,
would be rested in Owada, Oklahoma, in connection to the crime.
As you see, the criminal genius behind what the Tulsa
police chief called the quote arch murder plot of the
city had, while hitching a ride out of town, upon
hearing another passenger read an article considering the shooting, instead

(01:10:34):
of keeping his mouth shut, had writed that he knew
the woman involved and had even overheard those responsible talking
about the incident, a statement that seemed highly suspicious to
the other people in the car. Especially since Belton was
visibly carrying a revolver in his pocket. The cops were
then called. Belton was arrested and was then taken in
Nita's hospital room, where the dying man identified Belton as

(01:10:57):
the individual who had shot him. Additionally, Marie H. Harmon,
a white woman in her twenties, was arrested and, after
confessing to having been in the car with Belton and
another man named George Mason, most importantly, also identified Belton
as the triggerman. Belton himself then confessed by claiming that
the shooting had only been an accident. He had intended
only to rob and hijack the cab driver, but his

(01:11:18):
gun had gone off accidentally. Meanwhile, the press continued to
store up the public's outrage. Indeed, the Tousa Tribune, which
usually did not have photographs on its front page, made
upon it printing photos of these three suspects on page
one so that everyone knew what they looked like. The
paper also looked to crack up the outrage by suggesting
that Belton planned to quote escape on a plea of insanity,

(01:11:41):
strongly suggesting then that justice for this crime would not
be found in the courts Homer. Nina, meanwhile, would die
on the same day that Roy Belton was arragned and
pleaded not guilty. A coincidence had only stoked the flames.
It had been ignited by the press coverage that very night. Then,
at eleven o'clock, white men and cars began gathered in
front of the courthouse. The crowd soon grew to hundreds,

(01:12:03):
with some being armed with pistols and shotguns. Some even
purposely covered their faces with handkerchiefs, strongly suggesting that they
plan to do something that they didn't want to be
identified with. Eventually, representatives for this mob entered the courthouse
and amnuted the be given Belton. Now. Sheriff Foolly, who
was in charge of the prisoner, responded to this demand
by saying, quote, let the law take its course, boys.

(01:12:25):
The electric chair will get him before long. The mob, though,
were two stirred up to simply let the courts take
their course. They wanted to take quote unquote justice into
their own hands. And since Sheriff Wully, despite widespread rumors
that this very thing was going to happen, had only
posted an additional two guards, the mob was able to
force the sheriff and his men to release Belton. The

(01:12:46):
crowd outside them upon seeing the prisoner let out and
placed in a knit as taxi cab let out a chair.
The cab, which had been stolen from the cops earlier
that night, then drove through town with the prisoner in
the back and a line of cars reportedly a mile
long following behind. Belton, then, with a reported thousand cars
in tow, was driven out to the spot where Nita
had been shot. A mob which included women and children,

(01:13:08):
then gathered round to watch as Belton was questioned about
why he committed the crime. Belton, though not only denied
shooting Nitta, but also making the confession of the cops
that he had. Any further questions, however, would be cut
off as the blue thirsty mob cried for the robe,
as not only were they impatient, but were hated that
the sheriff and the cops were in pursuit and were

(01:13:28):
obviously intend on putting a stop to the lynching. Yet,
when Tulsa's police force arrived on the scene, Chief Gustafson
would order his men not to interfere, later claiming to
have done so because quote any demonstration from an officer
would have started gunplay and dozens of innocent people would
have been killed and injured. Instead, then his officers simply
directed traffic and kept onlookers from getting too clothes, which

(01:13:50):
means that the cops did nothing as Belton was hanged
for eleven minutes, with one of his captors telling the
others to not shoot so that he might suffer like
Nitta had. Then, when the body was finally cut down,
the mob searched forward and in effort to take a
souvenir from the event in the form of a bittle
robe or even pieces of the dead man's clothes. In

(01:14:10):
the wake of these events, Police Chief John Gustafson would
declare that quote, I do not condone mob law. In fact,
I am absolutely opposed to it, which might have been
an acceptable statement had he stopped there. Instead, he kept going,
adding that quote. But it is my honest opinion that
the lyging of belt it would prove a real benefit
to Tulsa and vicinity. It was an object lesson to

(01:14:32):
hijackers and auto fees, a statement that Sheriff Woolly would
echo as he declared that the lynching quote chose to
the criminal that the men of Tulsa mean business. The
Tulsa World also applauded the lynching, writing that quote, there
was not a vestige on them Bob Spirit in the
act of Saturday night. It was citizenship outraged by government
inefficiency and too tender regard to the professional criminal, which

(01:14:55):
is a ridiculous proclamation given that everything was moving fairly, swiftly,
Belta and had been arrested and formally charged within days
the shooting. There had been no delay or anything else.
The Tulsa World, however, was not done, as when state
officials like the governor and Lieutenant governor both condemned the lynching,
the paper responded by declaring that quote, it is not

(01:15:15):
government we have here in Oklahoma but a hideous trepsty.
The paper would then go on to suggest and unless vague,
unspecified conditions were improved, then what happened to Roy Belton
quote will not be the last by any means. Events
and statements that the black residents of Greenwood could not
help but take note of, as it had shown once
and for all that their white neighbors were not only

(01:15:37):
more than capable of carrying out a lynching, especially if
they were stirred up enough by the local press, but
also that they were willing to lynch a white man,
which meant that a black man accused of a crime
was virtually fair game because if they were willing to
lynch one of their own with no consequences, then there
was nothing stopping them from lynching a black man, no
questions asked. Indeed, AJ Smitherman, the editor of the Tulsa Star,

(01:16:00):
would write, quote, the lynching of Roy Belton explodes the
theory that a prisoner is safe on top of the
courthouse from mob violence, as it was supposed to be
a secure location where prisoners could be kept safe from
such attempts, which you'll note is the same place that
Dick Roland was taken after being arrested. It was and
Smitherman's conclusion that quote, it is quite evident that the

(01:16:22):
proper time to ford protection to any prisoner is before
and not during the time he is being lynched, meaning
that there was no way to save someone once the
mob had them. So to make a difference and to
save a life, the residence of Greenwood had to be proactive,
a lesson that would be taken the hardest. Rumors swirled
about plans to lynch young Dick Rowland in fact, the

(01:16:43):
police commissioner even received a call from an unidentified man
who declared that, quote, We're going to lynch that negro tonight,
that black devil who assault that girl. The commissioner, then,
taking the threat to heart, advised Sheriff William accollaugh to
get Roland out of town. However, they sheriff responded that
such a move wasn't possible, possibly because a crowd, likely

(01:17:05):
fueled at least in part by the Tribune's coverage, had
already begun gathering outside the courthouse. Indeed, three men from
this crowd would head into the courthouse to meet with
Sheriff McCullough to demand that they get to see Roland. McCullough, though,
was not about to allow that to happen, instead telling
the three that they should get going because quote, no
one is going to get that negro. Indeed, McCullough, who

(01:17:27):
had not been the sheriff nine months earlier when Roy
Belton was lynched, had no interest in allowing that same
scene to play out again. In fact, during McCullough's first
in a sheriff back in nineteen ten, one of the
first jobs he was tasked with was the legal hanging
of a black man who had been convicted of killing
a deputy, a duty which McCullough would describe as being

(01:17:47):
quote about the worst job I ever had to do.
The sheriff, then, was not a fan of hangings in general,
and certainly had no interest in allowing an extra legal
lynching to happen on his watch. Meanwhile, even if some
in Tulsa were preparing themselves to lynch Dick Roland, the
actual case against him was actively falling apart, as Sarah Page,

(01:18:07):
when speaking with the cops, not only hedged her accusation
but also suggested that she was not going to press charges,
which of course did not matter to the nine hundred
or so whites were gathering outside the courthouse at nine
that night. That being said, Sheriff McCullough actually seemed to
be well prepared to make sure there was a repeat
of nine months earlier, as he had the lone elevator

(01:18:28):
that went all the way up to the top disabled,
leaving a narrow, winding staircase as the only way to
reach the top floor, which was then guarded by a
half dozen deputies. Meaning then it seemed that the authorities
actually had things well in hand that being said, the
residents of Greenwood did not know this, and even if
they did, it would be hard to trust the authorities,

(01:18:48):
especially given what happened to Roy Belton less than a
year earlier, which was crucial as many were determined to
not allowing black man to be lynched in Tulsa, none
more so than J. B. Strafford, the owner of the
Strafford Hotel and one of the richest men in Greenwood,
who was known to a Sowre that if a black
man were ever lynched in Tulsa, he would see to
it that these streets were drenched in blood. Indeed, through

(01:19:09):
his and Auther's leadership, Greenwood was not a place where
racism was tolerated. White visitors, in fact, were said to
be quite surprised when their typical offhand racist remarks and
surs were not just meekly accepted like they were used to,
and were sometimes even liable to be met with violence.
For example, one time a white delivery man shouted something
racist and offensive du Strafford in the street. Yet instead

(01:19:31):
of getting that swell of confidence that presumably comes from
saying something offensive that someone who has no recourse to respond,
the racist delivery man soon found himself thrown to the ground. Indeed,
Stratford was soon straddling his prone form as he rained
down punches on the white delivery man's face until he
left him bloody. Now, granted, Strafford would be charged with
assaw for this incident, but he was fairly quickly acquitted.

(01:19:54):
The situation in Greenwood only thirty first of May then
became a bit of a divide between the older and
wealthier residence and the younger, more militant members of the community,
with the older, more established, and wealthier residents of the district,
while obviously being against the lynching, they were a bit
more trusting of the authorities, potentially in part because they
feared the consequences of such a clash, while those who

(01:20:16):
had less to lose had far less patients or even
trust for the white authorities, and was than the younger
and poorer residents of the district, who were the ones
primarily responsible for rounding up gods and ammunition in response
to the rumors of lynching. Indeed, when ow Gurley tried
to assure the crowd that had gathered in front of
his hotel that the authorities had promised him they would
protect Roland. Many were not interested in listening to him,

(01:20:39):
with one even reportedly shouting quote, you're a damned liar.
They took a white man out of that jail a
few months ago, so they saw no reason to believe
they weren't going to do the same to this young
black man. Meanwhile, also in green With that Nightwarrey pair
of world were vets, one black and one white, who
were firing up a crowd by telling combat stories and
talking about how tactics can overcome numbers. The white veteran

(01:21:03):
at one point even suggested that they should set strategic
fires around Tulsa so that the National Guard would be
called out because otherwise, he warned that quote, they're going
to burn you out before this thing is started. In
Responseller B. C. Franklin stepped in to warn the crowd
that doing so would surely guarantee the destruction of Greenwood,
which was apparently enough to disperse this particular crowd. Now J. B.

(01:21:26):
Strafford might have had a bit more standing with the
more militant elements of the community than ow Gurley had,
what with this promise to see to it that the
city streets were bathed in blood. In response to a lynching,
and that he was willing to quote, if I can't
get anyone to go with me, I will go single
headed and empty my automatic into the mob, and then
resign myself to that fate. His words and might have

(01:21:47):
carried more weight as he urged the crowd to only
go to the courthouse if they knew that Roland was
in danger or if the sheriff specifically called for their assistance,
a stance that Andrew Smitherman echoed as he urged the
agitated crowd to not start trouble, but to instead be
prepared to respond if necessary. Yet reliable information about what
was actually going on would be hard to come by

(01:22:09):
that night, as there were repeated rumors of a mob
either breaking into the courthouse or the sheriff calling for assistance.
In response to such rumors, volunteers were gather from all
around the district carrying garden hose, rakes, axes, pistols, shotguns
and rifles, with each and every one of them ready
to go and prevent a lynching from happening. As the
crowd's regularly broken the chance of it'll never happen here

(01:22:31):
as a kind of battlecry and mission statement as they
were intent on never allowing a lynching to happen in
their city. These rumors then rerely led to groups heading
downtown in response. For example, around seven thirty that night,
about thirty African Americans, some of whom were carrying weapons,
headed down to the courthouse, telling Black Deputy's share of
Barney Cleaver upon arriving that they had come to quote

(01:22:53):
see about the lynching, to which Deputy Cleaver responded, quote,
now this boy is upstairs in the cape, which is
locked upstairs, and there is no way anyone can get
to them. The group from Greenwood then left, but still
the white crowd that had gathered outside the courthouse was
not only allowed to remain there, but it grew even
larger and more aggressive as young, angry, transient working classmen

(01:23:15):
swelled their ranks. Meanwhile, bafflingly, only five Tulsa police men
were on duty around the courthouse. Despite everything that was
going on, passy Tulsa police did not seem particularly interested
in doing anything about the white mob, a situation that
then did nothing to call the rumors in Greenwood that
a lyging was about to take place. Indeed, false rumors

(01:23:36):
began to spread again that the courthouse had been stormed,
leading once again to Greenwood residents heading across the tracks
into white Tulsa. At nine fifteen. Then twenty five armed
black men are right at the courthouse in two cars.
This group, though, would be met by Sheriff mccull himself,
who told them, quote, go home before a lot of
people get hurt. You have no business coming up here

(01:23:57):
and parading around with guns like that. If you are
law binding people, you will go home before real trouble starts,
to which one of the black men from the crowd responded, quote,
we'll go home when we get that Negro boy you
want to lynch, declaring and no on certain terms that
they would not be leaving without Dick Roland. Sheriff McCall, though,
continued to insist that no one was going to be
lynch that night. In fact, he added, quote, there is

(01:24:19):
not going to be a charge against a young man.
The white girl has admitted. He did not harmor. She
said she was nervous and scared, and so she screamed
when he grabbed her. He then gave the group out
of Greenwood his word that Rowan would be released in
the morning. Yet still some of the Greenwood residents weren't
satisfied because they could not but wonder that if everything
the sheriff had told them was true, then why not

(01:24:41):
just release him now? As the obviously did not trust
the white crowd gathered any street outside to actually care
about whether the young men was actually going to be
charged with a crime or not. The sheriff that would
explain that only a judge could or the release of
a prisoner once they had been charged with a crime.
Therefore he had to win into the morning. The group
from Greenwood then talked amongst themselves and left peacefully, heading

(01:25:02):
back to their community. The problem was the angry white
crowd had seen this confrontation and were enraged by the
audacity of this group of black men. Plus they were
also now terrified as he had just seen a group
of armed black men, and because at their hearts, racists
are always cowards. Indeed, while one man from the crowd
had shouted quote, get those end words out of here,

(01:25:24):
many others had not joined in, as even though they
had outnumbered the black group, the fact that the matter
was in that moment they were actually out gunned, meaning
the angry white crowd had been intimidated by this comparatively
small group of black men, and they could not let
that stand. So in response, some headed back to their
homes to get their own guns, while others decided to

(01:25:44):
head down to the National Guard armory nine bucks away,
as inside they knew there to be numerous Springfield rifles
called forty five automatic pistols and Browning automatic rifles, weapons which,
to be clear, were under lock and key. But the
white mom very much seen thing that didn't matter for them,
an opinion which was not cheered by Major James A. Bell,

(01:26:04):
the one hundred and eightieth Infantry, who, in response to
rumors that there might be a lynching and that the
residents of Greenwood were arming themselves to prevent that from happening,
warned the head of Tulsa's National Guard and suggested that
their men should report to the armory quickly and quietly
before the other National guardsmen could arrive. Though Bell would
spawn members of the white mob attempting to pull out

(01:26:25):
the window grating on the armory. Upon seeing this, Bell
grabbed his pistol and ran out to stop them, only
to find three hundred more whites gathering outside. Bell, however,
was insistent, as he warned the mob off, telling them
that they couldn't just take weapons out from the armory.
The mob, though, apparently wasn't inclined to take no for
an answer, and even began searching forward like they were

(01:26:45):
going to break through the front door of the armory
and take whatever they wanted. Bell stood his ground, though,
and even pulled out his pistol as he warned the
mob that there were more men inside who were all
armed and prepared to shoot whoever attempted to break into
the armory. This was apparently enough, and the mob finally
backed off. Meanwhile, even though the Oklahoma National Guards Commanding

(01:27:07):
General Charles Bennett was informed about the incident at the
armory involving the white mob, he would also receive a
report about groups of trucks and cars loaded with black
men who were driving toward the courthouse, firing bullets into
the air as they went, which seems to have been
a flat out line or at least an exaggeration about
the occasional group of black men who were heading downtown
fearing a lynching was taking place. Barrett, then, likely taking

(01:27:30):
the second false report more seriously, would order Bell to
mobilized Company B so as to assist in maintaining law
and order back in Greenwood. By ten PM, more had
reached the district that some fifteen hundred whites, more than
a few of whom were armed, were gathering at an
intersection near the courthouse, which certainly looked like they were
planning on doing something, namely lynching the young man they

(01:27:50):
had in jail and so at abound. Ten after ten,
some seventy five armed African Americans walked into downtown Tulsa,
heading for the courthouse. As a did so, they walked
right through the crowd of angry Wines who had assembled outside. Now,
according to a Black tossa police officer statement from after
the riote, some of the men from Greenwood who headed
down to the courthouse at this point were drunk, a

(01:28:12):
statement in which to me feels spurious and a way
of blaming the residence of Greenwood for what was about
to happen, when in reality, these were simply brave citizens
who were willing to put their lives on the line
so as to protect a young man from mob violence. Regardless.
Upon arriving at the courthouse, the group out of Greenwood
would be met by Sheriff McCullough, who, while making sure
to warn them that quote, violence is easy to start,

(01:28:35):
but hard to stop. Also assured them that young Roland
was safe. Indeed, he made a point in demonstrating just
how well protected Rolin was by pointing up to the
windows on the top floor of the courthouse and asking, quote,
see those gun barrels pointed at you. They will cut
down the first person that makes a move to take
this courthouse. Over the fact that the sheriff did not
specify their group in particular, but instead made the point

(01:28:57):
of saying the first person likely much as anything else,
encouraged they group from Greenwood to head back. Yet, even
as a relieving a white man from the mob outside
approach one of the African Americans who was carrying an
army revolver. The white man was reportedly one as McQueen,
a former investigator for the county attorney who had run
for sheriff in nineteen twenty but had been sadly defeated

(01:29:19):
by McCollough and the election, which is to say, he
had no authority whatsoever. Yet, in his arrogance, his racism,
or perhaps his eagerness to prove himself as a lawman,
even though he was by definition not one. McQueen looked
to take charge as he barked out, quote and word,
what are you doing with that pistol, to which the
black man, who was reportedly identified as Johnny Cole, responded

(01:29:42):
by saying that he was prepared to use it if
he had to. Not to sway, and McQueen demanded the
coal hand his gun over, which, as you might expect,
Cole refused to do. McQueen then attempted to graft the
other man's gun, and in the ensuing struggle as the
two men fought over the weapon, the gun as it
was pointed up into the air off the sound of
the gunshot then seemed to bring everything to a halt

(01:30:04):
free moment, until all of a sudden, per Sheriff McCullough quote,
all hell broke loose. It is then with that aaron gunshot,
which was the result of arrogance and racism, that the
Toussa Race massacre was started. Yet the story of the
riot and the sheer destruction that was wrought on Greenwood
will have to for now remain a story for another time.

(01:30:29):
Thank you for listening to distorted history. If you would
like to help out, please rate and review the podcasts
and tell your friends if you think they'll be interested.
If you would like ad free in early episodes, I
set up such a feed over at patreon dot com
slash Distorted History. By paying ten bucks a month, you
will gain access to the special ad free feed available
on Spotify or likely through your podcast app as long

(01:30:51):
as it uses an RSS feed. I will continue to
post sources on koffee and Twitter, though, as it's just
a convenient place to go to access that information regardless.
Once again, thank you for listening and until next time,

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