“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
That quote from one of America’s most renowned Black authors and social commentators, James Baldwin, would be appropriate for hundreds of sinful scenarios perpetrated against African Americans during our 400-year sojourn in this country.
However, most fittingly, Baldwin’s quote has been chosen as the inaugural inscription on Greenwood Rising, a new African American historical center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, commemorating one of America’s bloody and dark (make that White) stains—the Black Wall Street Massacre (also known as the Tulsa race riots and Greenwood race riot) of 1921.
Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of one of the world’s most horrific illustrations of White Supremacy, judicial injustice, and bigotry run amuck.
On that day, hordes of vicious, hate-filled, and politically supported Whites invaded the Greenwood area of Tulsa known as Black Wall Street, intent on killing every creature they encountered.
It was a modern-day biblical Jericho massacre, this time with machine guns and bombs, executed (no pun intended) for similar reasons.
A terrorist mob estimated at over 10,000 participated in the orchestrated bloodbath. They were armed with an assortment of turn-of-the-century weapons, including truck-mounted machine guns, grenades, and an airplane that dropped bombs and other incendiaries on innocent men, women, and children.
Proudly, many of the Black men of Greenwood—led by WWI veterans– fought back and reportedly took a few whites with them.
But when the smoke cleared, the premiere Black American community was littered with over 300 ‘Hueman’ bodies.
Blood filled the streets and gutters, along with the remains of naked women (many raped and mutilated) and children, including babies whose heads were stomped on.
Survivors who successfully fled or hid were never able to shake from their memories of the horrors they witnessed. Those memories became a permanent mental imprint of evil they witnessed.
I’ve seen bodies mutilated by bombs and gunfire while serving in Vietnam. A part of me died there; the images never leave you.
Still, I can’t fully comprehend what the survivors—African American citizens living in a country of hope and supposed ‘justice’—witnessed that day.
According to various interviews conducted decades later, some survivors provided first-hand accounts of that horrific and ghastly event that apologies and monuments can never appease.
In fact, the entire scenario was covered up for decades. It was literally swept under the rug, not only by the racist WASPs who carried out their Satanic mission, but local and state government and the media.
It was several generations later that the sorted tale came to light.
And if you think such an event could not be covered up, think again.
It was 30 years before it was learned that Daniel Bell, a young Black Milwaukeean, had been murdered by Milwaukee police officer Thomas Grady. Coverup.
It was only recently that the police murder of Ronald Greene in Louisiana came to light.
You may recall why Barack Obama’s friend, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided not to run for another term in office. He, the city’s prosecutor, and the FBI tried to cover-up the police killing of Laquan McDonald until a judge interceded a year later. And let’s not forget Rosewood and the other all-Black communities and townships that were burned to the ground, its inhabitants suffering the same atrocities as those souls in Greenwood.
The Greenwood area of Tulsa had been dubbed ‘Black Wall Street’ because it was a mecca for African American entrepreneurship and a cultural hub for entertainers, the fine-arts, and cuisine.
It was home to Black millionaires and high society, as well as luminaries like John Hope Franklin.
Some believe the coordinated attack, commemorated this week in Tulsa, grew out of White jealously of Black progress. That’s true. But the catalyst was an incident so trivial, it is hard to link it to mass murder.
The consensus is the massacre grew out of an innocent mishap involving a Black teenager named Dick Rowland, and a White girl named Sarah Page.
But the spark wasn’t a rape, an assault, or the crime of looking a White person in the eye (which during my lifetime could get you killed in the south, aka Emmitt Till).
The ignitor was as simple as Rowland stepping on Page’s foot when the elevator they shared lurched forward.
That ‘trivial incident’ was enough to lead to Rowland being arrested and taken to the city jail.
Within hours, however, news of the accident had morphed into allegations that he assaulted the girl.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was an inflammatory editorial in the local newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, which implied the young Negro lad had sexually assaulted the white girl.
The newspaper went so far as to write an editorial with the inflammatory headline: ‘To Lynch Negro Tonight.’
As the white ‘hillbillies’ liquored up and talked of lynching the boy, Black army veterans marched to the jail, setting up a barricade to protect him.
At approximately 10:30 p.m., an elderly white male racist, incensed at seeing Black men with guns, tried to take one of the brother’s rifles, resulting in a shot going off.
Other shots went off as White vigilantes confronted the Black militia, forcing them to return to the sanctuary of their Greenwood neighborhood.
They were followed shortly by over 10,000 armed White bigots intent upon seeking ‘Just-us.’
Even though many Black residents fought back, they were overwhelmed by the racist vigilantes who had everything from automatic weapons to machine guns.
The White terrorists even used a plane to bomb the neighborhood, indiscriminately killing anything darker than vanilla. It’s believed to be the only time the continental United States of America was bombed from the sky.
The screams of women and children filled the air as innocent Black families abandoned their homes seeking safety, which for hundreds did not exist.
Some half-naked families sought sanctuary in churches and theaters, which the mob burned down around them. Children were brutally murdered in front of their parents before they too were killed, many mutilated and dismembered.
Bodies filled the streets as bombs continued falling from the skies.
One account I read detailed the horrific scene in ghastly detail. It was sickening.
One article revealed the reaction of a 10-year-old White kid who days before had played with a Black friend.
Until the day that sympathetic White died, he could not block out an image of his childhood friend, his naked corpse sprawled on top of a dozen Black bodies on a flatbed truck.
When the vehicle hit a bump, the body turned over as the white kid starred into the face of his dead Black friend. The child’s expression was one of fear and shock, his eyes looking upward, maybe seeking help from God.
The day after the massacre, Black Wall Street was no more.
Not by coincidence, no one was ever charged for their roles in the slaughter, much less convicted.
Over 1,000 homes were destroyed. Hundreds vandalized. The damage was estimated at $200 million. But that does not include the lost hopes and dreams of thousands.
Among the destroyed buildings were eight doctor’s offices, 31 restaurants, two dozen grocery stores, four drugstores, a new school and library, and a half dozen churches.
Other examples of a middle-class neighborhood were also burned to the ground, including theaters, automobile dealerships, five hotels, and a confessionary owned by the parents of a youthful survivor who testified 90 years later.
Over 10,000 residents of the 35 square block neighborhood were displaced. Most never returned to the area.
Few whites were brave enough to condemn the perpetrators. The mayor of Tulsa did express shock and dismay, but that was the extent of political outrage.
The incident was buried along with the bodies of the victims. Many survivors can not to this day say for sure what happened to their lost relatives.
Interviews and testimony by survivors before a Congressional committee decades after the event revealed Whites were either ashamed of their peers’ conduct, fearful of criminal charges, or blind to the injustice.
Little information that reached the public’s attention blatantly lied about the extent of the carnage or twisted around facts to justify this horrific episode. One account blamed the Greenwood residents, calling the White bigots a vigilante attempt to quell a race riot.
But for the most part, the incident was merely dismissed from His-story books, covered up like so many similar atrocities committed against people of color in this country.
There was no local, state, or federal investigation until decades later, when it was politically advantageous to do so.
Nearly 50 years later, a White journalist learned of the event and wrote a series of stories and the book ‘Death in the Promised Land.’ The White world was finally made aware of the tragedy.
It is hard for many people of faith and consciousness to comprehend the atrocities committed under the banner of White Supremacy. The fact that the incident morphed from a simple accident is nonsensical to God-fearing people, which I assume most of the bigots were not.
One racist Christian (I believe you call an oxymoron) assessed the massacre was akin to Joshua’s battle over Jericho. The Hebrews killed every man, woman, child, and animal to cleanse the land of infidels.
They justified that unconscionable act as a mandate from God, although I’ve always had doubts about the Christianity practiced by racists.
Unquestionably, the God I worship would not have blessed the conduct of the devils who killed hundreds in Greenwood. Nor would Nyame have condoned a similar tragedy in Rosewood, Florida, or any of the other under-reported similar atrocities committed under the flag of White Supremacy by so-called ‘Christians.’
Indeed, some liberals and conservatives now oppose the memorial being put in place and the commemorations that will follow, bringing attention to America’s past and present.
The events will be analyzed in a History Channel special which will coincide with the week of events that will conclude with the dedication of Greenwood Rising (from the ashes).
I honestly don’t know if I can watch it. Instead, I might sit up with Snoop Doggy Dud and deny natural history.
Some ‘liberals’ believe acknowledging America’s past evils will only anger and further divide the country along racial lines. They fear African Americans will see through the fog of ignorance, political posturing, and missionary politics.
It’s not coincidence the same people who have led campaigns to tear down Confederate monuments, and other commemorations of America’s racist past, also want to ignore Greenwood?
These so-called progressives have reasons to erase history and insert ‘Their-story‘– to sweep it under the rug and convince Black America they are doing so for our own good.
They don’t want you to know the perpetrators at Tulsa were Democrats, as were most slave owners.
Abe Lincoln wasn’t a liberal Democrat. He was a Republican who freed southern slaves as a military tactic. And the Great Emancipator was a racist; read his September 18, 1858 speech.
Many conservatives fear such revelations—evidence of White supremacy and apartheid—will fuel discussions about reparations for victims of oppression. For the record, Greenwood survivors, who lost everything, including family members, only received a plaque and an apology for their loss.
They should have given them the entire state of Oklahoma!
Most of us don’t fully comprehend what is happening around us today and why the Tulsa massacre is an essential page of history (vs. ‘His-story’) that must be understood in its proper context, for it will explain much of what we currently face.
As we study Tulsa, we should also analyze the history of Oklahoma’s path to statehood.
Did you know a coalition of Black and Native Americans predicted the Tulsa massacre years before it happened as they petitioned Congress and then-President Teddy Roosevelt not to make Oklahoma a state?
Before the civil war, Oklahoma was a territory known for being the ‘settlement’ for the five major Native American tribes that were uprooted from their homes as part of the American genocidal law referred to as the ‘Indian Removal Act’ (instituted by Donald Trump’s favorite president, Andrew Jackson).
Most of the Five Tribes held African slaves—albeit treating them far better than White plantation owners.
With the emancipation proclamation, those tribes did something Confederates refused to—admit their mistake and allowed the newly freed Africans to miscegenate within their tribes.
Thus, Oklahoma because of the first ‘integrated’ Territory in America.
However, that unique status did not continue for long as White settlers moved into the Territory, lured by the availability of free land and with the knowledge that the federal government would prioritize their economic and political growth.
They wasted no time in introducing a system of apartheid to the land.
Foreseeing a future marred by White Supremacy, a group of Native Americans, including African Indians and freed former slaves, went to Washington, D.C. in 1907 to request President Roosevelt to oppose Oklahoma statehood.
Representing the ‘Twin Territories’ of Oklahoma, they expressed fear that when the Indian Territory was combined with the Oklahoma lands to form a new state, Uncle Sam would leave open the door for Jim Crow and a new era of White Supremacy.
In the months preceding the application for statehood, Oklahoma legislators had installed apartheid legislation within the territorial constitution, which foretold what was to come.
Roosevelt, out of either naivete or ignorance, refused to accept the coalition’s position and thus set into motion the events that culminated with Black Wall Street’s destruction.
Believe it or not, there are some local Coloreds and Negroes who actually get mad at me for revealing these truths through this column. A couple of years ago, a white teacher told me that my corrections of His-torical ‘facts’ hinder the educracy’s socialization process. I pose a threat to the status quo. Instead, Black America should forget and forgive to move forward.
The problem beyond the obvious is the link between the Greenwood massacre and the murder of dozens of innocent Black men and women by police and others, culminating in nationwide demonstrations last year.
We should never forget. And like the Jews, use our examples of the holocaust to ensure they are never repeated. And hopefully, like the Jews, those images will bind us together so that we can create a new Black Wall Street, this time with guards to protect and visionaries to expand.
As 107-year-old Greenwood survivor Viola Fletcher said during testimony before a congressional committee recently: “I am 107 years old, and I have never—seen justice. I pray that one day I will.”
Sadly, she won’t. Neither will her grandchildren until the government provides her, and us, with reparations.
And who knows, maybe had she received justice 100 years ago, we wouldn’t have to commemorate the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd today.
Hotep.
Leave a Reply