Tulsa reckons with its racist past. What can America learn? (audio)

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob – enraged by a rumor that a young Black man had assaulted a white woman – attacked the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They set fire to the district, looted businesses, killed Black residents, and displaced thousands. 

It was one of the most devastating incidents of racist violence in U.S. history. And it stayed mostly unmentioned for decades.  

Today, nearly 100 years after what is now known as the Tulsa race massacre, the city is finally reckoning with its past. Tulsa is commemorating the centennial by opening a new museum dedicated to the Greenwood community, including the massacre in public school curriculum, and fast-tracking an investigation into the long-missing grave sites of those killed in the massacre. Few, if any, other U.S. cities have tried to come to terms with their racist histories.

But the process is raising difficult questions for Tulsa. Some residents say such a horrific event needs to be brought forward and understood. Others, however, ask why the memory needs to be relived at all. Why commemorate it? Can’t the city just move on?

In this episode of “Rethinking the News,” we look at how Tulsa’s struggle echoes America’s, as the country wrestles with race and racism ahead of a deeply divisive election. 

“Rethinking the News” is a podcast that aims to make room for constructive conversations across a range of perspectives, and bring Monitor journalism straight to your ears. To learn more about the podcast and find new episodes, please visit our page. 

This story was designed to be heard. We strongly encourage you to experience it with your ears, but we understand that is not an option for everybody. You can find the audio player above. For those who are unable to listen, we have provided a transcript of the story below.

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Samantha Laine Perfas: Welcome to “Rethinking the News,” a podcast by The Christian Science Monitor. Here, we create space for constructive conversations across a range of perspectives, to give you the information you need to come to your own conclusions.

I’m Samantha Laine Perfas, one of the producers, and today, we’re kicking off a three-part miniseries out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Tulsa was the site of one of the worst incidents of racist violence in U.S. history. White residents, enraged by a rumor that a Black shoeshiner had assaulted a white woman, attacked the Black neighborhood of Greenwood. They set fire to homes and businesses and displaced thousands of Black residents. Estimates of the number of people killed – a majority of whom were Black – range from 36 to 300. 

Tulsa is preparing for the 100-year commemoration of the massacre. I went there with my colleague Jessica Mendoza to find out how Black Tulsans are wrestling with their history even as we face a national reckoning around race and racism, and an incredibly divisive election. Over the next three episodes, we’ll be asking: What can Tulsa, especially Black Tulsa, tell us about our country today? Today’s episode, hosted by Jess, will paint a picture of Tulsa as it is and as it was – in all its complexity. 

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Just a warning. This episode contains descriptions of violence, including gun violence and trauma inflicted on Black Americans. Please be advised.

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Mechelle Brown: This is 1917 Greenwood. These are all Black-owned businesses lining the streets of the Greenwood District, 1917.

This is Mechelle Brown. She’s the program director at the Greenwood Cultural Center, which collects and exhibits local Black history in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the end of September, Mechelle took my colleague Samantha and me on a tour of

Mechelle: This exhibit itself is about 15 years old. These were survivors who were living during that time that were willing and able to share something that they remembered about the massacre or something that their parents shared with them. Mechelle: Definitely Ernestine Gibbs, because – she was born in 1902, she was here during the massacre – she was the first woman that I can remember really coming forward and telling her story. Mechelle: Ernestine Gibbs. “A family friend came from a hotel on Greenwood where he worked and knocked on our door. He was so scared he could not sit still nor lie down. He just paced up and down the floor talking about the mess going on downtown and on Greenwood. When daylight came, Black people were moving down the train tracks like ants. We joined the fleeing people. During this fleeing frenzy, we made it to Golden Gate near 36th Street North. We had to run from there because someone warned us that whites were shooting down Blacks who were fleeing along the railroad tracks. Some of them were shot by whites firing from airplanes. On June 1st, 1921, we were found by the guards and taken to the fairgrounds. A white man who mother knew came and took us home. Going back to Greenwood was like entering a war zone. Everything was gone. People were moaning and weeping when they looked at where their homes and businesses once stood. I’ll never forget it. No, not ever.”Scott Ellsworth: You know, the origins have to do with an incident in an elevator where a young African American shoe shiner stepped on the foot, from what we can tell, of a young white female elevator operator. She screamed. He ran out of the building. We don’t really know what happens.Scott: This was a time of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. There was very much a very militant white racism during the era. There were many of these so-called race riots that happened nationwide, where there’d be some sort of an incident and then mobs of whites would invade Black communities.Scott: But the next day on May 31st, 1921, the Tulsa Tribune, the city’s afternoon white daily newspaper, published this scandalous front page article about how Roland had basically stalked this young elevator operator and clearly tried to rape her. There was also an editorial in that paper that has since been destroyed. And it was titled, “To Lynch a Negro Tonight.” After the Tribune hits the streets, there’s lynch talk within a half an hour.Scott: The white mob just became enraged by this. They then – those who were not armed – went and got guns from their homes, brought them back to the courthouse. Another group tried to break into the National Guard armory to get the rifles there.Mechelle: And I envision this group approaching a sea of white men who are angry and upset, who are ready to take matters into their own hands. Mechelle: And I thought for a moment, How could they continue to go forward to protect this one man, knowing that they were putting their own lives at risk? And yet they proceeded. And a white man approached a Black man with a gun. The gun goes off. And at that point, there’s an all-out battle in front of the courthouse. Scott: The Tulsa police, which had been absent the entire time, show up. They start deputizing members of the lynch mob, giving them special deputy badges and ribbons, and start handing out guns to members of the mobs.Scott: We don’t know how big this crowd of white rioters were. Maybe as many as 2,000, 3,000, 5,000. But shortly after dawn, an unusual siren blew, like a factory whistle, which was apparently a sign for the whites to invade the community. The siren goes off and the invasion of Greenwood begins. Hannibal Johnson: – beauty salons, barber shops, theaters, pool halls, dance halls, restaurants, grocery stores, haberdasheries, furriers, and pharmacies. Hannibal: Service providers like doctors and lawyers and dentists, all concentrated in a single community. It was a sort of a unified community by and for Black folks.Scott: Whites would break into stores and homes, loot them, and then set them on fire. African Americans who resisted were killed. Others were taken away. And so by the end of the day on June 1st, when the state troops from Oklahoma City finally arrived to restore order, Greenwood’s been destroyed. It’s been burnt to the ground. Greenwood is gone. Hannibal: The better part of the story, actually, is post massacre. It’s the indomitable human spirit that was exhibited by the Black folks in Tulsa, many of whom vowed, ‘We shall not be moved’ – even after this violent onslaught.Mechelle: The Greenwood District would be rebuilt. And we saw the return of the grand hotels and restaurants and movie theaters and all of the things that they worked so hard to build.Hannibal: The Black business community in Tulsa really peaked in the early to mid-1940s. There were well over 200 documented Black-owned and -operated businesses in the community at that time.Hannibal: The Tulsa City Commission, the Tulsa Chamber, the Tulsa mayor – all those folks characterized what happened in 1921 as a ‘Negro uprising.’ They really painted a portrait of these uppity Black folks not knowing their proper place. G.T. Bynum: I have the mistaken thought, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. Surely we would have heard about it if there were mass graves. There’s no way that a city in the middle of the United States of America, people are going about their lives every day, driving back and forth and walking back and forth right by potential mass graves, and nobody ever bothered to see if they were there.’ And in fact, that turned out to be exactly what had been happening in Tulsa.Phoebe Stubblefield: I have a personal investment, but I don’t pretend that it’s the same personal investment as someone who grew up there. My stake in it is to deliver my part of the story involving what actually happened to these individuals.Phoebe: Specifically gunshot trauma –Phoebe: – breakage to bone –Phoebe: – and/or burning, because it was a rampage. And so I expect to find remains that demonstrate those features.Phoebe: We can add to unity by saying, Hey, we’re not going to keep trying to pretend this didn’t happen and we’re not going to fail to contribute in a way that creates a stronger record of what happened. I’m hoping that we’re creating a shared narrative that Tulsans will take with them, and I am here to provide this story even when it’s hard to hear. Mayor Bynum: When I announced that we were going to do this, the recurring thing I heard from people in all parts of the city was: ‘It’s about time. We want to know if they’re there or not. So thank you for doing this.’ I’ve had some people, as you always do, who say that it’s a waste of money and that we ought to just move on, that, you know, we’re spending money on this when we’re not fixing enough potholes, stuff like that. But for the most part, people have been very supportive.Mayor Bynum: The city has earned zero trust with African Americans and Black Tulsans by waiting 98 years to start this investigation. And so there’s a lot of, I think, earned distrust of the process overall, regardless of the good intent of those of us who are trying to do it today.Mechelle: You have to give our mayor respect for the things that he’s done right. He courageously stood and said, we are going to reopen the mass graves investigation. Many people spoke out against him on that. And he listened to the African American community and how important it was to them. And we’ve hit a lot of roadblocks along the way, a lot of snags. The African-American community has not always agreed with the mayor’s office or the scientific team that has been formed. But I think that we can acknowledge what he has done right.Mechelle: ‘My dad told her to run to join the crowd. He said he would be coming right behind us, but he never did. My mother never forgot that day as long as she lived. She said she ran nine miles with me, a nine day old baby, in her arms, dodging bullets that were falling near her. After the riot was over, my mother looked and looked for my father, but she never found him. His loss haunted her for the rest of her life, and it ruined my life, too. I believe my father was killed in that riot. I just wish I knew where he was buried. I would just like to pay my respects to him.’So that’s what we think about when we think about the mass grave sites and the people that are buried somewhere and not being able to pay respect to them, to them being buried in open graves with no headstones, no recognition. We just want some closure for their descendants.Mechelle: We’re hoping at this point that the testimonies, the stories, the oral histories that we’ve heard will be proven to be true. And yet whatever is found, I think, will contribute to the healing process that has to take place in our community. Mechelle: To have someone hate you and to have such a disregard for your life and your children’s lives simply because of the color of your skin, when you have done absolutely everything that they have asked you to do. You follow the laws, you obtain a job, you pay your bills, you do everything that you’re asked to do. And yet they destroy your community.Mechelle: Some of the images that you see from 1921, there are images of Black men being marched through the streets with their hands in the air. And some of the images from 2020 are the same images of African Americans being marched through the streets with their arms in the air, when they once again have tried to do everything that we thought would keep us safe. You get a job. You stay out of trouble. You follow the laws. And yet that does not guarantee that we will not be murdered if we’re pulled over by a police officer. It does not guarantee that my sons can live healthy, safe, happy lives if they just follow the rules. Because we live in a society where our history has not meant much at all, where our rights do not matter, where our lives do not matter, where it doesn’t matter what type of job you have or how law abiding you are or how respectful you are.Mayor Bynum: The issue for us really became very much a legal one. Painting messages on streets in Tulsa is not legal and it’s not legal for anybody, for any message. And we cannot treat one message differently than others, even if we may completely agree with the message that was displayed. Mareo Johnson: I mean, we can’t let the nation see us removing Black Lives Matter murals.Mareo: People see it being removed, and they perceive it as, it’s trying to remove us. If there is any other place that it should be, it should be right there, where the worst massacre happened in the history of Tulsa. That’s the most important place that it should be, if any place in Tulsa. So for anyone to have a problem with it being there, something is very wrong. And that shows us that we have a lot of work to do with dealing with our racist past.Rev. Robert Turner: There is no expiration date on morality. If it was wrong in 1921, it’s still wrong in 2020.Rev. Turner: I think we have become accustomed to a negative peace, in not just Tulsa but in America, where as long as Black people are OK with their lot in life, then we fine. You know, as long as they are OK with being killed by the police, we’re fine. As long as they are OK with, you know, not having access to capital and given high interest rates, we’re fine. But the minute we start speaking up about it, oh it’s a problem. They’re the rioters. They’re the problem makers.Rev. Turner: I hope what it will achieve is, is justice. Delayed, but still justice. I hope it will help actually bring the city together by winning the lawsuit. Some people don’t see it as such. But if we’re going to live as a family, then we have to be honest about the relationship dynamics. Their blood still speaks, their blood is still crying out. There’s this old Hebrew philosophy that the shedding of innocent blood curses the land. And it cries out to God until it is atoned. They were children of God. They were created in God’s image. And they never saw justice. And I still feel their pain.There can be no reconciliation, period, without reparation.Mechelle: I went through this range of emotions. I remember as I looked at the photographs and I heard about what happened here, I didn’t realize that my hands were balled into a fist. And I just wanted to fight. I just was so angry. And then I felt so hurt, so sad at the number of people who had lost their lives. I felt so heartbroken for what those people went through. And then I felt just confused, at how the 1921 Tulsa race massacre could have happened in my community where I was born and raised, and no one ever talked about it.  Mechelle: I see African Americans who come and learn about it, experience it the way that I did. But I’ve also experienced whites who have accused us of exaggerating the history even as they are looking at the actual photographs. They are denying that this happened, that the Black community is only concerned about money, that we’re thinking that we’re going to get something out of this. They have rolled their eyes, been completely unattentive while I’ve given tours, from school groups to adults who you would think would be more sensitive to this history. People have been very disrespectful.If anything, it’s gotten worse. I think people are bolder than they once were. I think because of our current political climate, people are much more vocal than they used to be. They’re a lot less respectful than they used to be. And we’ve seen quite a bit of that since the summer.Mechelle: I think that my emotions are the same. I don’t think that I feel any more hopeful today than I did then. Reading some of the comments that you can read online, whenever the Tulsa World publishes an article dealing with North Tulsa or race relations or Black Wall Street or the commemoration or reparations, the comments that follow by hundreds of white Tulsans that I live with, that are part of my community. These aren’t people from around the world. These are people that live in my community. Realizing how racist and insensitive some people still are today doesn’t give me much hope. Mechelle: And it brought me to a place where I realized that there were white people who really didn’t understand. And they wanted to. They really hadn’t connected with Black people before or with the Black community. And they wanted to. And I think it’s going to be more of those small group discussions and conversations, where real relationships can be built, that will initiate real change.