Tulsa, Then and Now: Reflections on the Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
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Tulsa, Then and Now: Reflections on the Legacy of the 1921
Tulsa Race Massacre
Hannibal B. Johnson
Great Plains Quarterly, Volume 40, Number 3, Summer 2020, pp. 181-185
(Article)
Published by University of Nebraska Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2020.0031
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/766539
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]Tulsa, Then and Now
Reflections on the Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Hannibal B. Johnson
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it In 1921, Tulsa descended into madness.
bends toward justice. Some Tulsans preyed upon the least among
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. us. The hours spanning May 31 and June 1,
1921, became a tragic, but illustrative, case
N ext year, 2021, will be the 100th anniver-
sary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a
defining and defiling moment in our history.
study of the human potential for inhumanity.
Fear and jealousy swelled within Tulsa’s white
community as African American economic
An essential question for Tulsa, as well as the successes, including home, business, and land
USA, will be: What has Tulsa done in the inter- ownership, mounted. For some white Tulsans,
im between 1921 and 2021 to advance race rela- putting those “uppity Negroes” back in their
tions and to build a unified, just community? place became a rallying cry. Land lust set in.
White corporate and railroad interests coveted
Hannibal B. Johnson is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He
the turf on which the heart of the Greenwood
is an attorney, author, and independent consultant special- District sat.
izing in diversity, equity, and inclusion/cultural competence The Ku Klux Klan made its presence known.
issues. Johnson serves on the federal 400 Years of African-
American History Commission, a body charged with plan- This notorious white supremacist cult grew
ning, developing, and implementing activities appropriate to exponentially in Oklahoma during the 1920s.
the 400th anniversary of the arrival, in 1619, of Africans in
the English colonies, and chairs the Education Committee
Newspapers, the media of the day, fanned the
for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. flames of racial discord. One media outlet, the
[GPQ 40 (Summer 2020):181–185] 181182 Great Plains Quarterly, summer 2020 Tulsa Tribune, a daily afternoon newspaper, Massacre, this man-made calamity might more published a series of inflammatory articles and accurately be labeled an assault, a disaster, a editorials that denigrated Tulsa’s Black citizens massacre, a pogrom, a holocaust, or any num- and fomented anti-Black hostility among white ber of other ghastly descriptors. The Tulsa trag- Tulsans. edy would remain a taboo topic for decades. A chance encounter between two teenagers African American Tulsans faced institutional on an elevator lit the fuse that ignited the Tulsa resistance to rebuilding their beloved com- tinderbox and set Greenwood District alight. munity: rejected insurance claims, the arrests The girl, Sarah Page, recanted her original as- of Black men for “inciting” the violence that sault claim, refusing to bear witness against the leveled their community, efforts to take their boy, Dick Roland. Her recantation came too land, and media attacks on their humanity. Still, late. The Tulsa Tribune got wind of the incident. Black Tulsa rose from the ashes, reconstructed The paper’s May 31, 1921, edition ran an article with the sheer force of the indomitable human entitled “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an El- spirit. evator.” That piece painted a scurrilous portrait Tulsa’s African Americans resurrected their of an attempted rape on a virtuous white girl community. By the early 1940s, the Greenwood by a villainous Black boy in broad daylight in District boasted more than 200 Black-owned a public building in downtown Tulsa. businesses. In subsequent decades, integration, Authorities arrested Dick Rowland and held urban renewal, and a host of social, political, him in a jail cell atop the courthouse. A bur- and economic dynamics spurred a second de- geoning white mob threatened to lynch him. cline, but Greenwood District denizens held African American men, some armed, raced to fast to hope. Preservation, restoration, and Rowland’s defense, marching to the courthouse reconciliation became watchwords as healing on two separate occasions. Conflict ensued. history became priority one. A gun discharged. Chaos erupted. After an Who were the men and women who laid the overnight gun battle, thousands of weapon- foundation for the success of the Greenwood wielding white men, some deputized by local District? What, specifically, did they create? law enforcement, invaded and decimated the How might we leverage this history in service Greenwood District, employing a scorched- of our community today? Many of the Green- earth policy that left little unscathed. wood District’s early settlers traced their lin- After some sixteen hours, the National eage back to enslavement, sharecropping, and Guard quelled the violence and restored order. Jim Crow–style second-class citizenship in the Ultimately, “order” included a declaration of Deep South. Escaping that racial crucible, they martial law, the internment of Black Tulsans, found their Promised Land in Indian Territory, and some still-mysterious burial processes that only to be formally subjected to mirror-image may have included mass graves. Property dam- Jim Crow segregation at Oklahoma statehood age ran into the millions. Hundreds of people in 1907. They built a flourishing business and died, with still more injured. Some fled Tulsa, entrepreneurial community against all imag- never to return. inable odds. Initially dubbed the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, These community architects envisioned lives but now widely known as the 1921 Tulsa Race beyond the imagination of many Black folks of
Fig. 1. A Black man in Tulsa stands with his hands up as white men look on. This photo, part of an American
Red Cross photo album of pictures taken during the aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, is damaged, yet it is
symbolic of how race relations in the United States continue to be damaged. The Black man holding his hands up
is also symbolic of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement which continues to
fight racism and injustice in America. American Red Cross Tulsa Race Riot Album. 12/1921. National Archives.
183184 Great Plains Quarterly, summer 2020 that era. Some possessed a distinct econom- assertiveness, took center stage. These brutal ic advantage: land ownership. The Freedmen acts targeted and meted out ghastly vigilante in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), violence against individuals not simply to pun- persons of African ancestry who were part of ish them, but also to send a message about the the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Muscogee prevailing social order. [Creek], Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole), Against these seemingly insurmountable received land pursuant to their tribal relation- odds, the Greenwood District flowered. Despite ships. The post–Civil War treaties of 1866 ne- cycles of prosperity and decline, it yet lives. No gotiated between the Five Civilized Tribes and longer a Black business and entrepreneurial the federal government facilitated the process. haven, its new iteration melds living spaces, Later, the Dawes Commission allotment system business, education, recreation, culture, and broke up communal tribal lands. These Freed- entertainment in the place that birthed Tulsa’s men and their descendants used that relative Black Wall Street. The lessons and legacy of the wealth to propel the fortunes of places like the Black Wall Street builders, both before and after Greenwood District in Tulsa, the bustling Black 1921, offer a springboard from which to em- business enclave in Muskogee, and the dozens power youth and young adults, promote self- of all-Black towns in Oklahoma. development and self-sufficiency, and launch The Greenwood District place- makers a new corps of Black business owners. Histor- saved money and built economic enterprises, ical role models matter, not as replacements many not just once, but twice: pre- and post- for such paragons in the here and now, but as massacre. They thrived amidst deep-seated, supplements to them. race-based hostility. Sometimes bloodied, Successful twenty-first-century businessper- but always unbowed, they raised the social, sons and entrepreneurs have not been bound political, and economic bars during a period by the binary racial equation of the past. At characterized not just by bleak race relations, the community, state, national, and global lev- but also by profound anti-Blackness, a marked els, racial and ethnic diversity abounds. Our antipathy toward all people of African ancestry. challenge is figuring out ways to leverage that In early twentieth-century America, sys- diversity for mutual advantage. Diversity, and temic, anti-Black racism continued unchecked. the related concepts of equity and inclusion, “Race riots,” typically mob invasions of Black rest on the fundamental proposition that our communities, proliferated. Indeed, in 1919 shared humanity trumps all that might other- alone, America witnessed more than two doz- wise separate and divide us. How we treat the en such events. James Weldon Johnson of the least among us defines us as a community. Tulsa NAACP called 1919 “Red Summer,” red being failed that challenge in 1921 in an immeasurably a metaphor for the blood that flowed in the traumatic way, the effects of which extended streets of New York, Philadelphia, Memphis, over time and through generations. Such is the Chicago, Omaha, Washington, DC, Longview case in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District. (Texas), Elaine (Arkansas), and so many other In the decades since, economic and educa- communities. Equally horrifying, lynchings, tional opportunities have expanded for some, acts of domestic terrorism designed to effect albeit too few. While not ubiquitous, open, white supremacy in the face of increasing Black honest dialogue, particularly around race,
Tulsa, Then and Now 185
no longer occurs in mere whispers. Progress, turn, depends on community stewards willing
yes. Parity, no. Persistent disparities in virtu- to help heal the wounds of trauma that contin-
ally every realm—social, economic, political, ue to shorten lives, disable otherwise healthy
educational, and healthcare, among others— people, foster addictions, and, too often, cre-
offer overwhelming evidence that foundational ate narratives of despair. When our dream be-
fissures in the Tulsa community, caused and comes the shared script of brotherhood and
sustained by intergenerational traumas, require sisterhood, of shared humanity, then we will
much more in the way of repair, much more have moved closer to the “one Tulsa” many of
investment by each of us. us have so long awaited.
Segregation remains firmly ensconced, As the five-score anniversary of the Tulsa
even if not legally required, not de jure. Ra- tragedy approaches, let us exhale, and then let
cial disparities—breathtaking differences in us breathe freely, oxygenating our efforts on
life outcomes—endure. Race-based distrust three fronts: (1) healing our history; (2) making
lingers. The Tulsa Equality Indicators, work an appreciative inquiry into our past, ferret-
done by our Rockefeller Foundation–funded ing out what worked and leveraging it; and (3)
Resilient Cities initiative, confirm this. Tulsa committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
experiences what most cities do—the unfin- If we do this, we will have honored the mem-
ished business borne of historical racial trauma ory of one of our darkest days by illuminating
linked to slavery, peonage, Jim Crow, lynching, it with a bright new light. Dr. Martin Luther
“race riots,” political oppression, economic ex- King Jr. captured the profound truth of our in-
ploitation, social isolation, and mass incarcer- terconnectedness when he noted that we will
ation. Nonetheless, we cling to one thing that come together as brothers and sisters or we will
makes working toward an improved, shared perish together as fools. Exceptional leaders
future in Tulsa worthwhile: hope. With that recognize the shared fate that should unite us
hope as a fulcrum, we have done and continue all. They build on that commonality of interest
to do remarkable things that, over time, build in ways that bring us together and embolden
the ties that bind and the bridges that connect. us to confront the challenges we face head-on.
Recovery from trauma presupposes an end to Have we, Tulsans, made firm commitments
traumatic events, the capacity for resilience, the to and sustainable investments in diversity, eq-
embrace of security measures, the installation uity, and inclusion? When we can answer in
of protections, and, finally, the maintenance of the affirmative, we will have found a power-
hope that a different narrative for the future ful response to the question, “What has Tulsa
may be adopted and sustained. done in the interim between 1921 and 2021 to
The return of hope—of a widespread belief advance race relations and to build a unified,
in justice—depends on our ability to mitigate just community?”
the effects of historical racial trauma. That, inYou can also read
