On May 31 and June 1, 1921, mobs of White residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, some deputized by city authorities, descended on the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, also known as Black Wall Street. In the end, more than 35 square blocks of the city were destroyed, more than 200 Blacks were killed, and more than 6,000 Black residents were displaced. It is considered the single worst incident of racial violence in U. S. history.
What did the residents of the Lykens Valley area know about this horrific event and how did they respond to it? A search of local area newspapers of the time gives us some answers to these questions. What was discovered is that not only did the area residents know about the riots and massacre, but were also able to read editorials which condemned the acts.
Unfortunately, those who wrote the “official” history of our country chose to ignore events of this type having the effect of “erasing” them from our collective memory.
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From the Elizabethville Echo, June 9, 1921:
NEWS REVIEWS OF CURRENT EVENTS
Thirty Killed in Race War in Tulsa, Okla — Whites Burn All Black Belt
By Edward W. Pickard
Another of those sudden and terrible race conflicts which make all decent Americans blush with shame occurred last week, this time in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before the state troops that were called to assist the police had restored order at least thirty persons had been killed, hundreds had been wounded and the negro quarter of the city was in ashes. More than 5,000 negroes were rendered homeless and the property damage was estimated to be in excess of a million and a half dollars.
As so often is the case, the riots were due to an attack on a white girl by a negro. The offender was arrested and then someone started the rumor that he was to be lynched. Several hundred armed blacks gathered about the courthouse and jail, and one of them was killed by a police officer. That started the fighting, and within a few hours the city had become an armed camp. Both whites and blacks looted the stores for guns, and the negroes entrenched themselves in their quarter. An army of whites soon began the invasion of that region and driving back the blacks, set fire to the buildings as they advanced. Men, women and children were shot down mercilessly as they fled from their burning homes. Three local units of the Oklahoma National Guard were ordered out by the governor and they, with the help of the police and members of the American Legion, at last succeeded in controlling the situation. They were able to protect the business and railroad districts from further destruction, but the “black belt” was a smoking ruin.
The same old cries of “Shame!” will be heard, and Tulsa will be thoroughly scolded for this shocking affair, but the same causes will bring about the same results ever and again, almost anywhere in the United States, and the wisest social economists do not know where the remedy lies.
The exact same article appeared in the Pine Grove Press Herald, June 17, 1921, but the Lykens Standard and the West Schuylkill Press of Tremont were silent on the event.
However, the West Schuylkill Herald of Tower City on June 10, 1921, gave a brief account of the casualties:
The death toll in Tulsa, Oklahoma rioting reached 175 persons, and probably as many more negroes perished in the flames which razed the entire negro quarter. Hundreds were wounded, and property damage is estimated at more than $2,000,000.
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The fact that the Tulsa massacre saw only limited coverage in the local weekly papers in the Lykens Valley, did not mean that the residents of the area did not have access to more detailed accounts of what was happening. Two Harrisburg newspapers, widely circulated in the “Upper End,” gave front page, bold-headline coverage beginning on June 1, 1921.
From the Harrisburg Telegraph, June 1, 1921:
MANY KILLED IN OKLAHOMA RACE RIOTS
75 PERSONS ARE DEAD IN RACE OUTBREAKS, REPORT TO GOVERNOR THERE SAYS
Nearly Ten Square Blocks of Negro Section of the City in Flames — List of Dead and Wounded Feared to Be Growing
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma, June 1 [1921] – Seventy-five persons, whites and negroes, have been killed in the race outbreak in Tulsa, according to a telephone message to Governor Robertson here today from the chief of police at Tulsa.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1 [1921] — Nearly ten square blocks of the negro section of Tulsa, where race conflict has been in progress since early last night, were in flames today. The fire was reported spreading and threatening to wipe out a white residence section in the Stand Pipe and Sunset Hill additions.
Clashes between armed whites and negroes had resulted in a reported death list of at least six whites and fifty negroes and a rapidly increasing number of wounded.
Detachments o Guardsmen were scattered throughout the city with machine guns ready for action. Guards surrounded the armory while others assisted in rounding up negroes and segregating them in the jail, convention hall, baseball park and other places, which had been turned into prison camps.
State troops, under command of Adjutant General Barrett, arrived at 9 o’clock to take charge of the situation, augmenting local units of Guardsmen, who were called out last night. At this time there were reports of sporadic shooting, and the situation seemed to be easing.
The trouble is reported to have been the result of the arrest, late yesterday of Dick Rowland, negro, for an alleged assault on an orphan girl. The negro was spirited away from the county jail early today by deputies from the office of Sheriff McCullough, who refused to divulge his whereabouts.
The first attempts to fire the negro quarter were made about 1:30 o’clock this morning. Two houses, used by more than fifty negroes as a garrison, were set afire at that time and an alarm was turned in. efforts of the fire department to lay hose were stopped by a crowd of armed white men and the department returned to its station.
The attempt to destroy the negro quarter by fire was resumed five hours later, when almost simultaneously fire began to burst forth from the doors and windows of frame shacks along Archer Street. Soon dense clouds of black smoke enveloped the location. Under cover of the smoke screen, armed men in motor cars and afoot threw cordon about the place where the negroes were stationed, and occasional shots gave warning that the conflict was…. [Note: Article was cut off at this point].
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From the Harrisburg Evening News, June 1, 1921:
Rioting Death List Grows to 75
Ten Blocks of Tulsa Buildings Burned
1500 Participate in Bloodiest Race War of Southwest
By United Press
TULSA, Oklahoma, June 1 [1921] — State troops, armed civilians and the fore department, combined under the leadership of Adjutant General Charles F. Barrett, brought order out of chaos after hours of hard work.
The total number of dead was raised to seventy-five when additional bodies of dead negro men, women and children were found in the riot area.
The riot started last night when a mob tried to liberate Dick Rowland, a negro held on a charge of assaulting a white girl.
The Casualties
A check of the morgue, hospitals, and through the smouldering ruins of the fire swept black belt, placed the toll of the rioting as follows.
Whites dead, seven.
Whites injured, approximately sixty.
Negroes dead, sixty-eight.
Negroes injured, more than 200.
Fire loss – practically the entire negro district of ten square blocks.
The city was under martial law.
State troops patrolled the streets.
Nearly the entire negro population or 10,000 was under guard in public buildings and improvised stockades.
Scores of stores were looted for arms.
Fire Burns Out
The fire which started after the rioting had been in progress throughout the night and early morning, was allowed to burn itself out.
Although the charred and blackened ruins of hundreds of negro homes still smouldered, authorities were confident the fire was under control.
The fire had the effect of calming the hundreds of rioters. They soon devoted their attention to protecting their homes.
Five companies of National guard were believed to have the situation fully under control.
2500 in Riot
Authorities estimated 1500 armed negroes and 1000 whites participated in the battle which raged through the streets for nearly twelve hours.
Pawn shops, hardware stores and other places where firearms and weapons are sold were closed by the military forces.
Smashed windows of shops were boarded up.
Governor to Investigate
Governor Robertson, of Oklahoma, trained for Tulsa at 1:45 to investigate personally the situation there, it was announced at the Capitol.
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From the Harrisburg Telegraph, June 2, 1921:
TULSA DEATHS NEAR 100
PROBE IS BEGUN
BEGIN TO CHECK UP DEATHS AND RUINS OF RACE RIOT AREA
Military Forces, Having Control of Affected District, Search Negro Quarter
By Associated Press
Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 2 [1921] — With daybreak today this city under the control of strict martial law began a systematic stocktaking of the death and ruin which a few hours of race rioting spread in the past Tuesday night and yesterday morning.
The military forces, headed by Adjutant General Barrett, started a checkup of the list of dead which unofficial estimate placed somewhere near 100, most of them negroes. Relief was expressed by all officials that the disturbance would not recur.
Adjutant General C. F. Barrett announced that the number of state troops here would be reduced today to 250.
As the situation rapidly quieted down today, the estimates of killed and wounded dwindled. Nine white men dead had been identified today and fifteen negroes were accounted for.
Estimates still ranged as high as forty negroes dead with the possibility of an unknown number of bodies having been destroyed when the torch was applied to the negro residence district.
Burned in Homes, Belief
Belief was expressed by officials that the bodies of all the negroes killed would not be found, as it was thought that a number were burned in their homes. The too, reports were received at military headquarters that a number of negro bodies had been thrown into the river and others buried outside of the city.
Physicians, treating wounded negroes at hospitals, said a score could not recover.
Military patrols and guards at every principal street corner kept a firm grip on the situation today.
Stores Permitted to Reopen
Business was virtually suspended last night, under a general order issued by Adjutant General Barrett, but stores were permitted to open at 6 o’clock this morning.
Citizens were not permitted in the streets last night, under the order, and it was strictly enforced by the guardsmen. Anyone who ventured in the streets without a military pass, was taken to the guardhouse.
A sweeping investigation of the cause leading up to the rioting was expected to get under way during today.
Governor Robertson, who came here yesterday, planned to take an active hand. A military commission had the task of fixing responsibility for the outbreak.
Thousands Are Homeless
Outside the horror of killing and wounding in the series of race battles, the situation of thousands of homeless negroes presented the most serious condition. All that was left this morning of the hundreds of negro homes bunched in the section fired by white rioters was a blackened waste.
The burned area is more than a mile square, and virtually no building escaped. Many were cheap frame dwellings, but more than a score of them were substantial brick business houses. A negro church, recently completed at a cost of $85,000, was consumed by the flames.
The property loss, according to real estate men, will total well over $1,500,000.
5,000 Camped on Fair Grounds
Five thousand negroes were camped in the fair grounds, under protection of the militia, and thousands of others who fled out of the city, came trickling back.
Citizens were called upon to contribute bedding and clothing for relief of the refugees. A civilian committee and the Red Cross provided food and other comforts.
Since martial law was declared, late yesterday, there has been no indication of further conflicts, and observers expressed the belief that the flare of race feeling had died out.
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Then the commentary and editorials were published. The Harrisburg Telegraph, under editor-in chief E. J. Stackpole, wrote the following on June 2, 1921:
TULSA IN DISGRACE
Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been one of the most persistently advertised cities in the United States, but the good name it made for itself over a long period of years has been besmirched by the first page advertising of another sort which it received yesterday and today. Tulsa sits in disgrace because a parcel of hot-headed citizens started out to wreak vengeance upon a whole race because one individual had gone wrong.
We rave over the pogroms of Poland, but what is the difference between massacring Jews in Europe and murdering negroes in America? Only a matter of place and race, and we in America claim to be an enlightened people, with far less excuse than can be claimed for the ignorant wretches who have covered themselves with blood in the Russian and Polish cities the past few years.
Good people of Tulsa, who no doubt regret this horrible incident as much as anybody, must share the disgrace which has descended upon the whole community as a result of the lawlessness of the few. But there is a way in which Tulsa can in some measure set herself aright before the world. She can see to it that the guilty are sought out to the last man and properly punished. Otherwise Tulsa will stand convicted before the world as in a class with Poland and Russia.
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Then, on June 4, 1921, Stackpole followed up with a second editorial in the Harrisburg Telegraph:
DOING THE RIGHT THING
Tulsa is apparently trying to make the best of a very bad situation. It has called a special grand jury to investigate the race riots there and a relief committee will build anew the houses of the negroes rendered homeless by the fires started by the ruthless mobs.
Thus Tulsa is repenting in sackcloth and ashes for the crime her people committed against many helpless and blameless negroes whose only offense was the color of their skin.
What is there in community life that causes otherwise law-abiding and orderly citizens to occasionally go stark, staring mad and run amuck for a few crazy hours which afterward they would give anything to blot from the memory of man?
Race prejudice is the old answer, but in Europe it is white against white and in China yellow against yellow. Here is a problem that psychologists would do well to study, for unless science can trace bob outbreaks of the Tulsa kind to some weakness, some diseased condition of the individual mind, then we must admit that we are much nearer to savagery, much closer to primeval man that we like to confess. It was Kipling who said that “the Colonel’s lady and Susan O’Grady are sisters under their skin,” and perhaps the application may be made as well to civilization and barbarism.
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The final editorial found in a Harrisburg newspaper was in a column of the Harrisburg Evening News entitled “Digest of Editors’ Views,” and was from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reprinted on June 6, 1921:
The Reproach of America
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Tulsa race riot started with a lynching mob, prolific source of disorder, lawlessness and murder — the reproach of America.
The deaths are estimated at 100 — they may be a few less or many more. Until the ruins of the burned negro quarters are searched the precise number cannot be ascertained. Ten blocks of negro homes and shops were destroyed by fire. About 13,000 negroes are homeless and many are fugitives in the country.
The one bright spot in the dark drams of prejudice and madness and lawless, murderous violence was the conduct of Sheriff W. W. McCullough, who refused to surrender the prisoner to the mob. He and his deputies protected the accused negro and drove the mob from the jail. Sheriff McCullough’s courage and firmness in defense of law shine like beacon lights in the storm of lawlessness.
The offense of the white mob in trying to lynch was supplemented by the mistake of a negro mob in arming and opposing the white mob, whose effort had been defeated by the Sheriff. The rest was a hell of passion, prejudice and blood thirst. The pogrom of darkest Europe was duplicated.
The worst result was not the destruction of life and property, but the blow at law and order and the inflaming of race hatred. The spirit of race hatred, lawlessness and blood lust has possibilities of destruction which far exceed the deeds of incendiarism and murder that marked the Tulsa riot. It threatens the worst of wars, the overthrow of law and order and the destruction of civilization itself.
The negro problem cannot be solved by riot, by burnings and killings, these lead to a solution of the problems but the dissolution of orderly society. It must be solved by legal methods but the sure punishment of brutal crimes which arouse murderous anger by the stern repression and punishment of disorder and violence. The spirit of law and reason must be pitted against the spirit of lawlessness and madness at every point. We cannot longer dally with the problem.
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The photo at the top of this post is from Wikipedia and shows the aftermath of the riot and burning of the Greenwood District of Tulsa. The front pages of the Harrisburg newspaper and the articles from the local area and Harrisburg newspapers were obtained through Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.
[African American]