Deliberate destruction of an African American community: The 1921 massacre in Oklahoma

A  dead African American man lies on a flatbed truck as one of the "deputized" terrorists stand guard with a shotgun. The goal to destroy Oklahoma's "Black Wall Street" was successful.

Black history was not taught in public schools, private schools or universities. All textbooks were written from White authors points of view and interpretations. Even in all-Black schools' Black history was more mute than loud. All heroes in textbooks were White males, bearing tales of their exaggerated bravery and above average achievements.

In 1998 Hannibal B. Johnson wrote "Black Wall Street", that tells the history of Tulsa's Greenwood District, populated by African Americans. The district was representative of Black Americans who had achieved great wealth, owned businesses of all kinds. Like any normal community, not all Black residents achieved great wealth or lived upper-middle class lifestyles, but they were working class in and out of their community.

The District was its own city within the city of Tulsa. But history books did not reveal this great achievement. It took 100 years for Black Wall Street and its subsequent destruction to become a subject of interest. Suddenly, in 2021, there are panel discussions and documentaries made about the tragedy, as perpetrated by jealous White folks in Tulsa. The year was 1921. An accusation of rape initiated the deadly tragedy-in-waiting.

May 20, 2021, Ms Victoria Flecther, 107, and her younger brother, Mr. Hughes Van Elis, 100, and Ms Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, testified before the House Judiciary Committee. They recalled the day of the massacre.

Ms Fletcher: "I here seeking justice, and I'm asking my country to acknowledge what happened in Tulsa in 2921. The night of the massacre I was awakened by my family. My parents and five siblings were there. I was told that we had to leave, and that was it.

"We will never forget the violence of the White mob when we left our home. I can still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre everyday. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not. And other survivors do not. And our descendants do not". Ms Fletcher was seven years old at the time of massacre.

Mr Van Ellis: "We live with it every day, and the thought of what Greenwood was, and what is could have been. We aren't just black and white pictures on a screen. We are flesh and blood. I  was three when it happened. I'm still there.

"We are not asking for a handout. We are asking for a chance to be treated like first class citizens, who truly is a beneficiary of the promise that this is a land where there is liberty and justice for a lifetime. Harm is what that caused by the massacre".

Ms Randle: "It seem like justice in America is always so slow or not possible for Black folks. They owe us something. They owe me something. I have lived much of my life poor. My opportunities were taken from me, and my community, North Tulsa. Black Tulsa is till messed up today. They didn't rebuild it. It's empty. It's a ghetto".

Jealousy and rage: any old excuse will do

America has a very dark history created by her White inhabitants. One of the blots in America's past is the wholesale slaughter of African American men accused of raping White women. The accusations did not have to be true. All a White woman had to do was scream rape. Black men knew not to look suggestively at White women, or brush against them. The accuser could have been the town's whore, it doesn't matter to a murdering mob. In their eyesight she was superior to a Black man. Her "virtue" had to be protected from all Black beasts. 

As an extra bonus, angry Whites destroyed Black communities at will, knowing they would not be jailed or prosecuted, even if there were dozens of witnesses, none of whom dared come forward to identify the perpetrators for fear of reprisal. On the reverse side, White males could rape Black women and girls wherever they wanted. They were safe from prosecution and punishment. They could steal Black folks land and personal belongings and run them out of town, warning them not to return.

 In 1919 America witnessed an explosion of violence against African Americans. Realistically, there was never a time when violence against African Americans was less than furious and deadly. So horrific were the attacks by White mobs in 1919 that the NAACP’s James Weldon Johnson labeled it “Red Summer." Race riots were breaking out all over America.

A few years later mob violence destroyed a thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The year was 1921. Some historians said Whites were jealous of successful Blacks and the thriving businesses they owned. Whites hated their independence. They wanted a reason to destroy Oklahoma's Black Wall Street in Tulsa's Greenwood District. Fires and firebombs from planes annihilated the district in less than 24 hours. The attack began on the night of May 31, ending on the morning of June 1.

O.W. Gurley

Greenwood was named after a town in Mississippi, by wealthy businessman, O.W. Gurley, an African American. Upon moving to Tulsa, he purchased 40 acres of land, reserved only for "colored" people. In 1906 Greenwood was developed on Indian Territory when Native American Tribes were forced to relocate, settling in Oklahoma. Some Blacks, who were former slaves of the tribes, integrated into the tribal communities. Tribes were allotted land through The Dawes Act, a U. S. law that gave land to Native Americans. Many Black sharecroppers fleeing from oppression in their home states landed in Oklahoma.

The thought of Blacks seeking a better life did not sit well with White folks. In 1912 the Tulsa Democrat (which later became the Tulsa Tribune) boldly proclaimed: 'Tulsa appears now to be in danger of losing its prestige as the whitest town in Oklahoma.  Does Tulsa wish a double invasion of criminal Negro preachers, Negro shysters, crap shooters, gamblers, bootleglegs (sic), prostitutes and smart elecs (sic) in general'"?

  

"The Tulsa Tribune would later refer to the African American community in Tulsa--this city within a city--by the alternate epithets of 'Little Africa' and 'Niggertown'. Such utter disdain and disrespect for a whole class of individuals would shake any society to its very foundation". Black Wall Street

The great divider--railroad tracks--separated Blacks from Whites. Gurley built three, two story buildings and five residents, bought an 80-acre farm in Rogers County. He founded the Vernon AME Church. When Greenwood began to grow Gurley loaned money to anyone wanting to start their own businesses. Not all residents in the Greenwood District were affluent. Many of them worked as waiters, shoe-shiners, domestics, janitors, dishwashers. However, all of their earnings were spent in Greenwood. The Greenwood District came into being around 1905, starting with a grocery store, owned and operated by Gurley.

Hannibal B. Johnson, author of Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District, wrote: "In the loss of over 700 homes and 200 businesses the Negroes of Tulsa have sustained a loss of over four million dollars. Two of the finest hotels that the Negro owns in America went up in smoke. The Welcome Grocery Store carried a large stock of groceries as did any retail White store in Tulsa. Mrs. Williams, who owned the Dreamland Theatres in Tulsa, Muskogee and Okmulgee, was perhaps the one of the foremost Negro businesswomen in the United States.

"She has one of three-story brick businesses on Greenwood, which housed her big confectionery, and other floors were used for offices for the professional men of the race. Farther down the street was her theatre, the pride of the Negros of the city. The street had located on it three drug stores and two newspaper plants. The Tulsa Star had a plant worth fully $15,000. Fully 150 business and houses lined this street alone, that required Negro traffic officer to stand in the streets all day long, directing the busy activities".

In a February 2001 report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Riot of 1921–some 80 years after the race riot, historian Scott Ellsworth wrote: “Tulsa was in some ways, not one city but two. Practically in the shadow of downtown there sat a community that was no less remarkable than Tulsa itself. Some Whites disparagingly referred to it as ‘Little Africa’, but it became known in later years simply as Greenwood. In the early months of 1921, it was the home of an estimated 10,000 African American men, women and children”.

This bustling African American community also included two schools, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Booker T. Washington, two newspapers, three fraternal lodges, a hospital, two theaters, a public library, 23 churches and a bank. White rioters targeted the businesses and homes that they looted and burned down.

Ellsworth’s report continues: "Significantly, the violence in the state was part of a broader story of national intolerance that followed World War I. Yet the Tulsa riot represented a defining moment in Oklahoma's history, for it forecast the extent to which some White citizens would travel to achieve the ultimate subjugation of Blacks.

"Much like the other riots of the period, the Tulsa disaster developed from a number of immediate and remote causes, among them irresponsible journalism, rumor, racial fears, tensions related to urban migration, and weak law enforcement. Although historians cannot specifically indict the Ku Klux Klan in starting the riot, the organization created a spirit of lawlessness that made it easier for some citizens to engage in mob activity”.

Blacks who had migrated to Oklahoma earlier did not go there in search of mayhem and hang-ready-mobs. In fact, thousands of African Americans, along with southern Whites, journeyed to Oklahoma during the start of a financial boom. It was an era when the population was steadily increasing.  By 1921 Oklahoma was considered the oil capital of the world.  African Americans, plagued by racism and segregation, settled in the northeast section of Tulsa. However, migration did not change the heart and minds of White people who refused to let go of their bigotry, and how they viewed African Americans.

Walter White, Atlanta’s NAACP secretary, was dispatched to Tulsa to cover the riots. White was a light complexioned man with "good hair", who could easily "pass" for a White man. Passing enabled him to walk freely among White folks without harassment or threats. In his report he asked, “What are the causes of the race riots that occurred in such a place"?

He answered his own question: “First, the Negro in Oklahoma has shared in the sudden prosperity in Oklahoma that has not come to many White brothers, and there are some Colored men there who are wealthy. This fact has caused a bitter resentment on the lower order of Whites, who feel that these Colored men, members of an inferior race, are exceedingly presumptuous in achieving greater economic prosperity than they, who are members of a divinely ordered superior race".

Tulsa was not a financial paradise without problems. There was talk of crooked police, political corruption, prostitution, gambling, murder, mob rule and robbery. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, “. . . [T]ulsa was also a deeply troubled town. Crime rates were sky high, while the city had been plagued by vigilantism, including the August 1920 lynching, by a white mob, of a White teenager accused of murder. Newspaper reports confirmed that the Tulsa police had done little to protect the lynching victim, who had been taken from his jail cell at the county courthouse.”

Historian tells who Dick Rowland was

Dick Rowland, a young African American teen, was the keg of dynamite that ignited the destruction and mayhem in Tulsa in 1921. An accusation of assault of a White woman is the reason for the subsequent burning down of the Greenwood District.

Scott Ellsworth, in an essay titled The Tulsa Race Riot reveals who Dick Rowland was. As Tulsa prepared to celebrate Memorial Day, May 30, 1921, something sinister was in the air. Talk of taking the law into their own hands began circulating among some Whites across the tracks from Greenwood. Blacks were more determined than ever that no African American would fall victim to mob violence. World War veterans and newspaper editors, common laborers and businessmen were just as prepared as they had been two years earlier to make certain that no Black person was ever lynched in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Precisely at this moment, in the highly charged atmosphere, Dick Rowland and Sarah Page, walked out of the shadows, and onto the stage of history. Although they played a major role in the single event that led to Tulsa's race riot, very little is known for certain about Rowland or Page. Rumors, theories, and unsubstantiated claims have been plentiful throughout the years, but hard evidence has been much more difficult to come by.

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When dick Rowland was born he was given the name Jimmie Jones. While it is not known where he was born, by 1908 he and his two sisters were orphans living on the streets of Vinita, sleeping wherever they could, begging for food. A Black woman named Damie Ford, who ran a tiny one-room-grocery store, took pity on young Jimmie, taking him in. "That's how I became Jimmie's 'Mama," she said in an interview. 

Approximately one year later, Ford and her adopted son moved to Tulsa, where they reunited with Ford's family, the Rowlands. Eventually, little Jimmie took Rowland as his last name, and chose his favorite first name, Dick. Growing up in Tulsa, Dick attended the city's separate all-Black schools, including Booker T. Washington High School, where he played football.

Rowland dropped out of high school to take a job shining shoes in a White-owned, White-patronized shine parlor located in downtown on Main Street, across from the Drexel Building. Shoeshines cost a dime. Shoe shiners--or bootblacks as they were sometimes called--were often tipped a nickel for each shine; sometimes more. Rowland earned five dollars a week base pay.

What precipitated the Oklahoma massacre?

The Tulsa massacre began several hours after Rowland was accused of attempting to rape a White girl. On Monday, May 30 he stepped into the elevator at the Drexel Building. Sarah Page, 17, was an elevator operator. Reports are she lived in a rented room and was working her way through college.

Dick Rowland rode the elevator many times to get to the “Colored” restroom on the top floor of the Drexel Building.  This arrangement was made by his boss. There was no “Colored” restroom in the building where Roland worked. 

As he stepped inside the elevator it jerked, causing him to lose his balance. Page screamed, thinking Rowland was trying to attack her. Her scream caught the attention of a clerk working at Renberg’s Clothing Store, located on the first floor of the building. He rushed to help Page, and then called police. The clerk told police that he saw Rowland running out of the building after he attempted to rape the teenager. Rowland ran out of fear for his life, well aware of what happens when a Black man is accused of attacking a White woman.

The Oklahoma Historical Society has its version of what happened, as did others writing about the riot. “Eight months later an incident involving Dick Rowland, an African American shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a White elevator operator, would set the stage for tragedy. It is still uncertain as to precisely what happened in the Tulsa Drexel Building on May 30, 1921".

The Society report further stated: “The next day, however, the Tulsa Tribune, the city's afternoon daily newspaper, reported that Rowland, who had been picked up by police, had attempted to rape Page. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, the Tribune also published a now-lost editorial about the incident, titled 'To Lynch Negro Tonight". 

Rowland was arrested by the sheriff on Tuesday, May 31, 1921, booked in the city jail and questioned. Hannibal B. Johnson, author of Black Wall Street writes, “Roland’s flight seemed reasonable and rational under the circumstances. Sarah Page had initially accused Rowland of assault, but quickly retreated from the accusation. She told officers that Rowland had come close to her on the elevator, and that he had stepped on her foot. Of her own admission, she had panicked and overreacted. Page told officers that she slapped Rowland, at which time he grabbed her arm to prevent her from slapping him again. She screamed and he fled".

The damage, however, had already been done. Summoned to the jail, Sarah Page provided a statement corroborating Dick Rowland’s account of the incident. She admitted that her encounter with him had been "inadvertent and innocent”.

Robert Fairchild, Sr., who survived the riot, said he worked with Rowland. “Dick was a quiet kind of fella. Never no trouble. The Tribune called him ‘Diamond Dick.’ Me, or nobody in Greenwood ever heard that name for him before. They invented it (the newspaper). Neither one of us probably never saw a diamond”.

Scott Ellsworth wrote: “While it appears that the clerk stuck to his interpretation that there had been an attempted rape, and of a particularly incendiary kind–no record exists as to what Sarah Page actually told police when they interviewed her". Ellsworth noted that whatever Page said, the police did not reach the same conclusion as the clerk. The police initiated a low-key investigation into the affair.

Johnson wrote, "In the immediate wake of the Rowland-Page elevator incident, Sarah Page and Dick Rowland became the talk of the town. An unknown man called the police at about 4:00 p.m. Word on the street, according to the caller, was that a White lynch mob planned to take the matter into their own hands. Indeed, so concerned was Sheriff McCullough that he reportedly telephoned the offices of the Tulsa Star, Tulsa's African American newspaper".

Johnson wrote that McCullough intimated that he might "need the help of local African American men to protect Dick Rowland from certain death at the hands of a lynch mob".

Walter White wrote, “Sarah Page was of an exceedingly doubtful reputation. It seems to never have occurred to the citizens of Tulsa that any sane person attempting criminally to assault a woman would have picked any place in the world rather an open elevator in a public building with scores of people within calling distance”.

Riot survivor Binkey Wright said, “My daddy knew Dick was going with Sarah Page, the young White elevator operator. He met her when he stacked the concession stand where she worked”.

On Tuesday, May 31, without fanfare, Rowland, hiding out in his mother’s home in Greenwood, was arrested by Det. Henry Carmichael, a White officer and patrolman Henry C. Park, a Black officer. Rowland was booked and jailed. Rushing to write a story without the facts, the Tulsa Tribune published an inflammatory story in its afternoon edition. The headline read: "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl on Elevator". An editorial in the same edition suggested lynching Rowland. 

“Talk soon turned into action. By 7:30 p.m. hundreds of Whites had gathered outside the Tulsa County Courthouse, demanding that the authorities' hand over Dick Rowland. The sheriff refused. At about 9 p.m., after reports of the dire conditions downtown reached Greenwood, a group of approximately twenty-five armed African American men, many of them World War I veterans, went down to the courthouse and offered their services to the authorities to help protect Rowland. The sheriff, however, turned them down, and the men returned to Greenwood.

"Stunned, and then enraged, members of the White mob then tried to break into the National Guard armory but were turned away by a handful of local guardsmen. At about 10 p.m. a false rumor hit Greenwood that Whites were storming the courthouse. This time, a second contingent of African American men, perhaps seventy-five in number, went back to the courthouse and offered their services to the authorities. Once again, they were turned down. As they were leaving, a White man tried to disarm a Black veteran, and a shot was fired. The riot was on”. (Oklahoma Historical Society)

“Fearing for the worst,” writes Johnson, “the Tulsa National Guard mobilized at 11 p.m. on the eve of the destruction, Tuesday, May 31. Meanwhile, the Tulsa police began deputizing White men–some of the very same men who had actively participated in the courthouse disturbance only hours earlier. Bands of White men in search of firearms and ammunition for the impending civil war looted hardware stores and pawnshops, seizing some $43,000 in guns and ammunition".

The Chicago Tribune reported that private airplanes were used to drop kerosene fire bombs and dynamite on businesses and homes in Greenwood. Whatever was used to burn down Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, it was evident the next morning. The African American residential and business districts were piles of ashes.  Not one White person was accused of any wrongdoing, much less arrested.

"Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, took imprisoned Blacks off the hands of vigilantes, and imprisoned all Black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days. Twenty- four hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, over 800 people were treated for injuries and estimated reports of deaths began at 36". (Oklahoma Historical Society)

The sheriff protected them from the mob. Around 9:30 p.m. over 30 armed African American men stepped up to the courthouse, offering to help Sheriff McCullough. Tulsa police convinced the men to return to the Greenwood District. The men were assured there would be no lynching. Months prior to this night a young African American man was jailed for allegedly raping a White woman. He was taken from the jail in Holdenville, Oklahoma. The mob tied him to a telephone pole, hanging him.

Dick Rowland was exonerated. Sarah Page did not file charges, nor would she write or make a statement against Rowland. Despite overwhelming evidence that Whites initiated the destructive riot, none of them were arrested or sent to prison.

Because the 1921 Tulsa massacre was so sparsely covered, information and facts are just as sparse. Decades later when the Oklahoma Commission researched the riot it found that news pages covering the story had mysteriously disappeared from the files of defunct newspaper. The other daily paper did not cover the story in full. The Commission discovered the story in a 1946 master’s thesis written by Loren Grill.

The Greenwood District still exists today, but due to urban renewal and prior neglect, the area's demographics have changed. African American business owners in Greenwood said they want to return it to a thriving district. There is still a search for mass graves that some survivors reportedly said they were aware of.

A lone Greenwood resident walks among the burned ruins, observing the willful destruction of 

his once thriving Black Wall Street community.

African American residents--who were outnumbered by an army of angry White people in and around Oklahoma--are rounded up at gun point, arrested, and held in detention for an indefinite period of time. White looters and terrorists were among those deputized to
 keep the peace and make arrests.

One of many charred bodies of African American

residents that were incinerated during massacre.

  

           Little girl packs her sister or brother after the
               massacre in which her parents might have
                       been killed by the White mob.