I never heard of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 until this week.

[milestogo]

Never heard about it in many years of school, never heard it mentioned.

The Tulsa race massacre (also called the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre) took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

Anyone else just hearing about this for the first time almost 100 years after it happened?

[grantcart]

1. I read about it when the Tulsa Race Riot Commission issued a report in 2001

I read a lot of history, it astonished me that anything that major was so successfully kept out of history books and the news.

I was impressed that the modern Tulsa was earnest in trying to find the truth.

[shanti]

2. PBS has a good documentary

if you'd like to know more.

[Nevilledog]

11. Looks like you have to donate in order to see full episode.

[shanti]

12. Seems like PBS

should make this program free for everyone.

[Nevilledog]

13. I agree.

[WhiskeyWulf]

28. Found this on YouTube:

[Nevilledog]

31. Thank you!

[Pachamama]

3. I learned about it about 20 years ago when a black friend said "Happy Juneteenth" & I had no idea

....what he was referring to or that it meant.

He explained and I was stunned and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t a National Holiday.

My excuse is that I was raised in Germany and I just assumed that I didn’t know because I didn’t have it in school like Americans....Wrong....turns out the “white” Americans never learned and didn’t know. Over the years it just became another thing that for me was a testimony to the fact that racism was alive and never went away and that equality in America was not true and that there was a class based system here and Blacks were not at the top. I also felt that the US education system was grossly lacking in its teachings and that politicians had failed in making this a National Day of Remembrance.

[JonLP24]

4. I heard of it for the first time from news articles referring to the HBO Show The Watchmen

Apparently the series is where a lot of people first heard of the massacre. It certainly wasn't taught in school.

[napi21]

5. Yes, me, & I'm ashamed to have to admit I never heard even a hit of something like that happening.

I'm nt a black woman but I've worked with many who became my friends. Something that awful should not have been forgotten by anyone, but especially be the people who did all the harm. It's really sad that we white people have done in our past and in many cases, are still doing. At least from me, I'M SO SORRY!

[TlalocW]

6. I lived in Tulsa for several years

And would not have learned about Juneteenth if I hadn't been hired to twist balloons for the celebration one year. I wouldn't have learned about the riots if I hadn't done decor for various events for the Greenwood Cultural Center, which has a lot of info on it.

TlalocW

[stillcool]

7. I didn't know about it...

it has made me realize how very little I do know. Growing up in the 60's-70's, and having my life experiences, convinced me that my knowledge of racism was accurate. Just today, my mind opened to the fact that I've never gone beneath the surface. Perhaps it's fear. There's so much emotion that bubbles up. It's like those people that go on tours of Plantations and don't want to hear about slaves. It bothers their perception.

[katmondoo]

8. A total shock for me, I never heard of it and I thought I knew about racist America.

[brush]

9. It wasn't the only one, in fact it was almost the norm towards black towns which prospered...

in those days. Rosewood, Fla, St Louis, Mo, Elaine, Ark, Chicago, Springfield, Ill (the Springfield riot itself spawned a host of imitators: whites shouted “Give ‘em Springfield!” during attacks on African Americans…the Illinois State Register reported, ‘At Auburn, Thayer, Virden, Girard, Pawnee, Spaulding, Buffalo, Riverton, Pana, Edinburg, Taylorville, Pleasant Plains and a score of other places in central Illinois) and others. Google them. And no compensation by insurance companies or cities or states. One reason why black families have a tenth of the wealth of white families. Millions of dollars of wealth that would've been passed down to children was destroyed by racists with no compensation.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/springfield-massacre/

Sorta like the 250 years of unpaid, dawn-to-dusk labor during enslavement. But that's another story, as are the jim crow years on up to Minn. and Atlanta right now.

Reparations, anyone?

[malaise]

10. THIS

[spicysista]

18. Exactly!

[brush]

22. This stuff burns me up. So much inhuman cruelty towards us has been "disappeared"...

from mainstream history, purposely of course.

[spicysista]

23. Of course!

How else would the myths created to protect the innocence of certain Americans survive? I've been in such a state as of late. Enraged doesn't begin to touch it. I hope you're taking care of your whole self.

[brush]

24. I am, and you do the same as the virus is not the only thing we have to deal with.

[uponit7771]

26. 👍

[SMC22307]

14. I learned about Juneteenth on DU. Last year I watched a PBS documentary...

that featured the massacre. Think it something like Boss: The Black Experience in Business but am not certain. Regardless, what happened was absolutely shameful.

[Initech]

15. I didn't know about it until I saw Watchmen.

But it did force me to read up on the subject.

[sweetloukillbot]

16. This

After watching it I told my wife and she said she had visited the museum in Tulsa, when she was there on business.

[SMC22307]

17. For anyone interested, Black Wall Street (Durham, North Carolina).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wall_Street_(Durham,_North_Carolina)

The Past, Present And Future Of Durham’s Black Wall Street
https://www.wunc.org/post/past-present-and-future-durham-s-black-wall-street

[spicysista]

19. The History Channel has a good documentary.

Black Wall Street

This is a good lecture on the history of Juneteenth, if you're interested.

[ret5hd]

20. Seems there MAY be some confusion here. Just to clarify,

if in fact there is any confusion, Juneteenth and the Tulsa Race Riot are two different things.
If there was no confusion, carry on and ignore this post.

Juneteenth: Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth;[2] also known as Freedom Day,[3] Jubilee Day,[4] Liberation Day[5], and Emancipation Day[6]) is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Originating in Texas, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States, with varying official recognition. Specifically, it commemorates Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were free.

The Tulsa race massacre (also called the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre)[9][10][11][12][13][14] took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[1] It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."[15] The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".

[milestogo]

30. Yes, I could see that in some of the responses.

I had never heard of the Tulsa massacre till this week, but I knew of Juneteenth because I used to live in Chicago and there was a parade there every year.

[sanatanadharma]

21. It was 1968, MLK had been recently killed, I was in college

I was in college in 1968 when MLK was killed.
Many cities saw riots.
I wrote a class project paper about race riots.
I hope in my research (pre-internet) I learned of and wrote about the Tulsa massacre in that paper about numerous white race riot/ massacres of black neighborhoods.
American history.

At 74 years I am so sad.

[roamer65]

25. I've often wondered what would happen if whites from America...

were kidnapped and enslaved by a foreign power. Then they were beaten, raped, tortured, sold like cattle and worked to death by that foreign power.

All the while there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Makes one wonder, doesn’t it? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

[Igel]

33. The US did something to stop it, that's what. Why wonder? Just read history.

We had the Barbary Wars. That was the first few years of the 19th century, but for a lot of the time the US was occupied with the British and its own internal problems ... And didn't have a navy worth crap for projecting force and bringing the human piracy to a halt. There was a genre of Americans taken as white slaves with the concomitant outrage, but not much to do about it but be outraged. Until we had a navy.

But that wasn't a new thing. It affected Americans more than most because we were weak at the time and didn't put an end to it--or institutionalize the payment of ransom. Did you know that Miguel Cervantes was held as a prisoner, and the options were to sell him as a slave or treat him nicely in exchange for ransom? Again, the Barbary "pirates" (who made it a point of faith--jihad, they called it--to not attack Muslim ships, just Xians.) Or that there were slave raids up into Ireland? Slavs are called "Slavs" because they were a frequent target of raids for slaves. There are books on the history of Europeans and Americans being taken as slaves in North Africa. (People are very careful at this point to not confuse black sub-Saharan Africa with Africa that was Muslim, largely Berber and Arab by ancestry.) There was nothing special about whites that kept them from being enslaved. (More than a few Slavs were held as slaves by whites. Racializing the practice came late in the slave "game." Before that there was superiority of culture or of religion or just taking slaves because they could with no justification except might and "need". American exceptionalism has more than one application.)

They were mostly men who were held, but it stands to reason some were raped. And some women, depending on the circumstances, were certainly captured and carried along--sometimes few, if ships were raided, sometimes more if villages were rounded up and either killed or hauled away as booty. That would have included kids.

Life was brutish.


Then again, if you count pressing sailors into military service as "kidnapped and enslaved", then we had one contributing cause of the War of 1812.

[PTWB]

27. I have known about it for many years.

In fact, one of my favorite YouTube channels was recently discussing it (in the last few months). There is a current effort to try to locate some of the mass graves.

[smirkymonkey]

29. I am ashamed to admit I have only learned of it recently.

It is not something that was ever in our history books, but should have been.

[ibegurpard]

32. I don't know for sure how long i've known about it

Definitely more than a year or two but certainly not long enough that something of this magnitude warrants.
And I'm over 50.

[wellst0nev0ter]

34. I heard about it 2 decades ago

When Oklahoma decided to deny reparations to living survivors of the Tulsa massacre.

[mantis49]

35. I just learned about it last year.

It was featured as the opening scenes on HBO's The Watchmen. The way it was portrayed struck me as possibly historical, so I looked it up and OH MY GOD, it really happened.

I'm 66 years old, had no clue about it. I'm an avid reader and have learned much history since my school years and learned that much of what I was taught was BS. But this had totally escaped me until the opening scenes of that series!

[blitzen]

36. NBA superstar Russell Westbrook is producing a docuseries about it...

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/russell-westbrook-stanley-nelson-tulsa-race-massacre-docuseries-1234629368/