Suppose ever there was an example to understand systemic racism in America. It is the case of The Tulsa Race Massacre of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a thriving segregated Black community, Greenwood, was burned and air bombed to the ground with a race riot from May 31 to June 1 in 1921. This horrific event checks all be boxes for destruction, hatred, jealousy, and violence against people because of their race. The Tulsa incident is a prime example of white males out of control, with the support of the government and the press, and none believed Black lives mattered.
And then, if you question why Black history should be taught in all schools, Tulsa appears again. The story of Tulsa has been, suppressed omitted, and covered up. It has been an oral history, and sometimes the family members of those who were affected don’t know the story that is painful to tell. Many Black families have stories too heartbreaking to say that elders have suppressed or chose not to know because of the horror.
The century-old massacre is surfacing now with documentaries and major news reports with families and some who recall the historical weekend holiday. Three are three survivors who surpass the century mark. Ms. Viola Fletcher, 107 years old, just testified for Congress. She said she still smells the smoke and sees the dead bodies. Her memory is vivid. She says she wants to see justice before she dies.
The Tulsa story should be in the history books; a Black history apart of America’s fabric is a story to be told. The omission of Black history is like telling just one side of a family’s ancestry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/arts/television/tulsa-race-massacre-documentaries.html
Reparations Are In Order…
If you question the idea of reparations for Black America, look once more to the Tulsa account where racism was on full display. Over 6,000 people were left homeless and had to live in tents for a year to regroup their lives. Hospitals refused medical treatment to the injured, and so many died, including a Black surgeon denied medical treatment.
Businesses were destroyed in a segregated community, where Black people conducted business with Black people. That means grocery stores, boutiques, barbershops, restaurants, lawyers, accountants, newspapers, movie theaters, and even hotels. The community was thriving and was one of the most prosperous Black communities in the country, so profitable that Booker T. Washington named it Black Wall Street.
So, the story goes, a Black 19-year-old shoeshine young man was on the elevator with a 17-year-old white female elevator operator. He was charged with attempted rape. A store clerk heard her scream, and the clerk called the police. She never pressed charges against him, but the white men in the town went mad. He was taken to jail, and a mob pursued a white newspaper headline, “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.” The accusation was false, and a relative of Dick Rowland, the young man, says they were romantically linked.
Rowland was removed from the jail cell for safety reasons. Black men, Black soldiers from WWI tried to defend him with their guns. White men were deputized and took the law into their own hands and came to lynch Mr. Rowland. The White crowd was estimated at 2,000. They began to burn the town; they destroyed 30 acres of land and the entire business community. Greenwood was home to 9,000 Black residents and 191 businesses.
The New York Times reports the statistics as: “35 blocks burned to the ground as many as 300 dead hundreds injured; 8000 to 10,000 left homeless; more than 1,400 homes burned or looted and eventually, 6,000 detained internment camps.” Fellow American citizens destroyed black success as though they were the targets of an undeclared war. The white mob males killed and stole. The night’s cry was the Whites were killing the “coloreds” as they told children to hide under the beds and in the closets. One church survived the massacre.
So many people died until they had to have an open gravesite. This was a mass murder of innocent people. No one was ever found guilty of a crime. No one. No insurance claims were honored. History reveals too many cases when White men assaulted Blacks with murders there with no consequence. White murder of Black males mainly was acceptable. The same innocent non-verdict is the effect of Black men who lynched in the south. Out of nearly 5,000 lynchings, not one White man was ever tried. The story of Tulsa is a whole community, was abolished, and no one was guilty. It’s crucial who writes the story, which controls the narrative. The white version of Tulsa is that the Black men “incited the riot.”
One of the three men accused was Mr. J. B Stradford. He was a landowner and the proprietor of the Stradford hotel. His daughter was Jewel Lafontant Mankarious, who became the highest-ranking Republican woman of her day and the first female to be deputy solicitor general of the United States. President Richard Nixon considered her for the Supreme Court. Stradford is the grandfather of financier John Rogers, President of Ariel Capital. Jewel worked a lifetime to pardon her father and the other men from the crime. They were pardoned from instigating a riot in 2007; Stradford’s holdings in 1921 valued at $2M, in today’s dollars, that’s about $21 million. Stradford left Tulsa and made a new life in Chicago.
Reparations…
Reparations are due for the people of Tulsa. A State Commission was formed, which decided that these people should be paid for the destruction done to their families. There were “roughly 135 survivors living at the time who were in their 80’s or older.” None of the survivors have received monetary restitution. The federal government should step up. They were involved in an undeclared war on Black Tulsans as they bombed the community of Greenwood with airplanes from overhead. Can you imagine? The United States Government sealed the destruction and devastated its citizens for what amounted to success and a fluke of a story. President Biden says, “It hurts to remember, and how do you heal?” You don’t. There is no justice. If these people receive riches, the pain remains and never goes away.
So today, a hundred years later, how do we handle the horrors of Tulsa? The activists suggest a million dollars for each living survivor. How do you pay, and what do you deliver? A million dollars equates to about $10,000 per year or $833 a month for a century. Not enough, not a good social security check. Insufficient funds.
There was to be a “celebration” of Tulsa this year. How do you celebrate this? At best, it is a memorial but not with music and dance. Some have proposed a museum to remember Greenwood; others a cultural center; the event was canceled because the young activist asked about distributing the $30 million raised? Where is it going? They made demands to start a fund with $50 million for scholarships and restoration. Rightfully so. The Tulsa Massacre should not be remembered with parties. It is too horrific even to understand a century later, other than hatred took over one Memorial Day in 1921.
Reparations NOW
And now, with a Black Vice President and 57 Black Congressmen and other Black elected officials and an empathetic President, perhaps we can all agree that America should make it right with the heirs of Tulsa with government funds. Reparations for Tulsa should be the clarion call of today’s Black leadership in the name of Black Lives Matter.
Never ever again.
