General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBefore Ferguson, There Was Tulsa
The role of robust, state-sponsored force in Americas racial conflicts, which so shocked the country in Ferguson, Missouri, this month is far from unprecedented. In just one but by far the bloodiest example, the Tulsa race riot of 1921, the local police armed and enlisted white men to fight groups of blacks who had taken up weapons and called in the National Guard to restore orderwhich at the time meant rounding up black men en masse and putting them in detention camps. When a rumor started that men were coming from a nearby Oklahoma town to help defend Greenwood, the besieged black community, Tulsa authorities put out a machine gun crew to stop them.
The result was the largest civil disturbance in American history, claiming 300 lives and destroying more than 1,200 homes in a prosperous community known as Tulsas Black Wall Street. Then, for the next 80 years, Tulsans both black and white did their best to ensure that the horror disappeared into history.
Tim Madigan is a writer living in Texas and the author of The Burning: Massacre, Destruction and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers. You can follow him on Twitter at @tsmadigan.
More about the Tulsa Race Riots:
The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a group of whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It resulted in the Greenwood District, also known as 'the Black Wall Street'[1] and the wealthiest black community in the United States, being burned to the ground.
During the 16 hours of the assault, more than 800 people were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries (the two black hospitals were burned down), and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities. An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.
The events of the riot were long omitted from local and state histories. "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place."[4] With the number of survivors declining, in 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report to establish the historical record of the events, and acknowledge the victims and damages to the black community. Released in 2001, the report included the commission's recommendations for some compensatory actions, most of which were not implemented by the state and city governments. The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park to the victims in Tulsa. The latter was dedicated in 2010.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)I can, and do, believe that the riot was omitted from history books and "polite conversation", and I can believe that white folks grew into middle age unaware of it; but, I doubt there was a single Black person, born or with family, in Tulsa that didn't know about it.
There is a difference between not knowing about something and being unwilling to talk about that something ... I've seen it a hundred times, among my family's elders.
Another tid bit of history ... Black Wallstreet was one of the few American Cities (at the time) with an "airport" (actually, just an air field) because an inordinate number of Blacks that flew for the French (and Canada) during WW I, settled there. Ironically, Black Wall Street was the first, and only, time a US civilian population was bombed from the air by the US government.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)the air.
Don't forget the Philly police and MOVE in the mid-80s.
The resulting explosions ignited a fire that eventually destroyed approximately 65 nearby houses. The firefighters, who had earlier deluge-hosed the MOVE members in a failed attempt to evict them from the building, stood by as the fire caused by the bomb engulfed the first house and spread to others, having been given orders to let the fire burn. Officials feared that MOVE would shoot at the firefighters, as they had done before.[5][14][15][16] Eleven people (John Africa, five other adults and five children aged 7 to 13) died in the resulting fire and more than 250 people were left homeless.[17] Ramona Africa, one of the two survivors, stated that police fired at those trying to escape the burning house, while the police stated that MOVE members had been firing at police.[18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing (Emphasis Added)
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)I had forgotten about MOVE. Curious that the two instances, share a single commonality.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)bombing its own people, even if the explosives used came from the FBI. Nope, this was all Philly's finest at the direction of Commish Sambor. I shall never forget it, because I was teachiing English at a French residential high school at the time and watched the news about it with my students on the television. (The looks of horror on the faces of some of my young female students are etched upon my mind to this day.) I did not feel too good about the USA during this time.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I'm white and I knew Jack Shit about Tulsa until I read about it on the web, but having lived through the race riots of the 60s and the Rodney King riots with Darryl Gates too I thoroughly believe Tulsa.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)as well as white families have been able to. They work hard, accumulate some wealth, and throughout history things have happened where their wealth has been taken in some way. There are tons of towns across the US where there were race riots where African American families were driven from their homes in the middle of the night under threat of death, and sometimes to death, with their homes, sometimes farms, and everything they owned lost to them. Often with their primary wage earner killed. When people talk about racism causing wealth inequity, it isn't just about slavery. It's happened in a number of ways.
http://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2014/09/17/forgotten-white-race-riots-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them-n1893122/page/full
http://mediadiversified.org/2014/12/01/a-history-of-white-race-riots-in-america/
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:White_American_riots_in_the_United_States (Some of these were riots against other minority groups - not necessarily still considered people of color.)