AI
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 10:50:21 PM
pro_se -- ah yes -- bucolic Tulsa, Oklahoma:
*
The Tulsa Race Riot
http://www.tulsareparations.org/TulsaRiot.htm
*
As Survivors Dwindle, Tulsa Confronts Past
Wess Young, 94, fled with his mother and sister as armed white men rampaged through his neighborhood in 1921.
Brandi Simons for The New York Times
White men with bayonet-affixed rifles escorting black men.
"The Tulsa Race War of 1921"/R. Halliburton, Jr.
Buildings in the black neighborhood of Greenwood burned on June 1, 1921. An estimated 300 people were killed in the riot.
Tulsa Historical Society
The Greenwood Cultural Center is home to an extensive exhibit on the race riot, including a wall of photographs of survivors.
Brandi Simons for The New York Times
By A.G. SULZBERGER
Published: June 19, 2011
TULSA, Okla. — With their guns firing, a mob of white men charged across the train tracks that cut a racial border through this city. A 4-year-old boy named Wess Young fled into the darkness with his mother and sister in search of safety, returning the next day to discover that their once-thriving black community had burned to the ground.
Ninety years later, Mr. Young lives not far from where he lost his home that day. He is part of the dwindling ranks of the living who can recollect what may be the deadliest occurrence of racial violence in United States history — an episode so brutal that this city, in a bout of collective amnesia that extended more than a half-century, simply chose to forget it ever happened.
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.
Ever since the story was unearthed by historians and revealed in uncompromising detail in a state government report a decade ago — it estimated that up to 300 people were killed and more than 8,000 left homeless — the black men and women who lived through the events have watched with renewed hope as others worked for some type of justice on their behalf.
But even as the city observed the 90th anniversary this month, the efforts to secure recognition and compensation have produced a mixed record of success.
The riot will be taught for the first time in Tulsa public schools next year but remains absent in many history textbooks across the United States. Civic leaders built monuments to acknowledge the riot, including a new Reconciliation Park, but in the wake of failed legislative and legal attempts, no payments were ever delivered for what was lost.
Before becoming president, Barack Obama once met with some who lived through the riot “to thank the survivors for surviving.” But fewer are surviving each year; today the number is about 40. And before they die, some of their most dedicated advocates continue to fight for greater awareness and compensation, even as they lament that they no longer believe the effort has sufficient momentum.
“These people are still alive,” said Reggie Turner, who has toured the country with the survivors, showing his film about the riot and the failed federal lawsuit to win reparations from the city and state governments. “And despite their dwindling numbers — in fact, because of their dwindling numbers — it should be easy for us to take care of them.”
“They are just looking for a better life as they approach death,” he added.
Some, like Otis Clark, the oldest survivor of the riot at 108 and one of those who joined a federal lawsuit seeking compensation, are at peace. “God has a whole lot of good things lined up for us when we’re by his side,” Mr. Clark said. “It ain’t going to be very long before that is going to happen.”
Others, like Mr. Young and his wife, Cathryn, worry that their passing will simply make the riot easier to forget. “I think they are trying to keep this hidden,” Ms. Young said, referring to the white residents of Tulsa. “Don’t talk about it, don’t do nothing about it until all these people are dead. Then they think it’ll be over with. But it won’t.”
All that remains of that black community of 90 years ago, Greenwood, is a block of red-brick storefronts in a neighborhood transformed by a new minor league ball field, a university campus and an elevated highway. Metal plaques set in the sidewalk describe the hundreds of businesses that were there when the area was a bustling enclave in a statutorily segregated oil town. Within the black community, it was known as the Negro Wall Street.
Long before black neighborhoods erupted in rioting in cities across the country during the 1960s and 1970s, a string of violent riots were started by whites in the years after World War I. As with some of the others, the Tulsa riot seemed to have started with the explosive accusation that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. (The charges were dropped after the riot.)
On May 31, 1921, hundreds of armed white men gathered outside the courthouse where the man was being held, and a group of armed black men arrived to prevent a lynching. A shot was fired. The black men fled to Greenwood, and the white men gave chase.
The battle that ensued, enabled by the Tulsa police chief, who deputized hundreds of white men and commandeered gun shops to arm them, lasted through the night and well into the next day.
About 40 blocks were destroyed, including 1,256 homes, many of which had been looted before they were set alight. The death toll, most likely never to be fully determined, was estimated in the state report at 100 to 300. Survivors were rounded up and interned by the National Guard. Many of the homeless spent the following year living in tents pitched in the ruins of the neighborhood.
A grand jury at the time blamed the black community for the riot. No one was convicted of participating in the riot; no one was compensated for lost property. Soon after, the story essentially disappeared — buried so deeply that people who lived their entire lives here, including prominent leaders like mayors and district attorneys, said they had never heard of the riot until recent decades.
Don Ross is credited with helping to break that silence. A magazine he started published the first article in decades about the riot, written by a local historian around the time of the 50th anniversary. But it was not until 25 years later when Mr. Ross was a state representative that the riot garnered nationwide attention. He pushed for the formation of the riot state commission that produced the report and became an unrelenting advocate for payments to the survivors because, he explained, there is “no money in apologies.”
Since retiring, Mr. Ross has extracted himself from those efforts, believing that neither blacks nor whites were committed to the task. He no longer even speaks to the survivors. “I cut that connection,” he said. “It was too heartbreaking.”
The issue of payments to survivors, like those paid to the survivors of a similar riot two years later in Rosewood, Fla., was always difficult.
The Oklahoma Legislature refused, saying it was constitutionally prohibited. The federal courts dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims, saying the statute of limitations had expired. And efforts in Congress to remove that legal obstacle have repeatedly failed, partly because of concerns that it might open the door to reparations for slavery, though there are plans to reintroduce the bill. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who represented the survivors in the effort, called the case his “most disappointing and heartbreaking.”
Still, awareness has been growing. Three quarters of Tulsa residents in a recent survey described themselves as very or somewhat knowledgeable about the riot.
On a national level there is greater awareness, too. Of the three largest school textbook publishers, one of them, Pearson, now mentions the riot in its books; two others, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, do not, though Houghton Mifflin says it is planning to include the riot in future editions.
At the Greenwood Cultural Center [ http://www.greenwoodculturalcenter.com/ ], home to an extensive exhibit on the race riot, Mechelle Brown, the program coordinator, walks along the wall of photos of survivors and gestures despondently — almost every month another one dies.
“It seems at times that this is how it’s going to end,” she said, “with the survivors passing.”
This year, the center lost all of its state financing, which accounted for nearly half of its annual budget. Ms. Brown said it could be forced to close in a matter of months. Just blocks away is John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, which opened last year with state backing and has several memorials to the riot. (A center for racial reconciliation is planned for the grounds.)
But in a city still divided by those same railroad tracks, the theme of togetherness bothers Ms. Brown, who called it premature. “You can’t forgive until someone asks for forgiveness,” she said.
Sitting inside the park, Julius Pegues, head of the park’s board, defended the focus on reconciliation. He worried that in continuing to dwell on the riot — and the compensation that has not come — the black community risked settling into bitterness.
“If people have their heart in the right place, I think they could work out some fair compensation for the victims of the race riots,” Mr. Pegues said. “But that does not seem to be the case, so I’m not going to spend my life worrying about it.”
He added: “We intend to take the high road and move this city forward for both black and white.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20tulsa.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20tulsa.html?pagewanted=all ]
*
“The Eruption of Tulsa”: An NAACP Official Investigates the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Source: Walter White, “The Eruption of Tulsa,” Nation 112 (June 29, 1921): 909–910.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5119/
“Now Tulsa Does Care”: A White Tulsan’s Perspective on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Source: Amy Comstock, “Another View of the Tulsa Riots,” Survey, 2 July 1921, 460.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5118
*
Tulsa Race Riot
A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
February 28, 2001
http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.htm [Full Report http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.pdf ]
*
"A Black Holocaust in America"
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/
*
Tulsa race riot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot
*
Tulsa Race Riot Slide Show
*
The Tulsa Race Riot
http://www.tulsareparations.org/TulsaRiot.htm
*
As Survivors Dwindle, Tulsa Confronts Past
Wess Young, 94, fled with his mother and sister as armed white men rampaged through his neighborhood in 1921.
Brandi Simons for The New York Times
White men with bayonet-affixed rifles escorting black men.
"The Tulsa Race War of 1921"/R. Halliburton, Jr.
Buildings in the black neighborhood of Greenwood burned on June 1, 1921. An estimated 300 people were killed in the riot.
Tulsa Historical Society
The Greenwood Cultural Center is home to an extensive exhibit on the race riot, including a wall of photographs of survivors.
Brandi Simons for The New York Times
By A.G. SULZBERGER
Published: June 19, 2011
TULSA, Okla. — With their guns firing, a mob of white men charged across the train tracks that cut a racial border through this city. A 4-year-old boy named Wess Young fled into the darkness with his mother and sister in search of safety, returning the next day to discover that their once-thriving black community had burned to the ground.
Ninety years later, Mr. Young lives not far from where he lost his home that day. He is part of the dwindling ranks of the living who can recollect what may be the deadliest occurrence of racial violence in United States history — an episode so brutal that this city, in a bout of collective amnesia that extended more than a half-century, simply chose to forget it ever happened.
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.
Ever since the story was unearthed by historians and revealed in uncompromising detail in a state government report a decade ago — it estimated that up to 300 people were killed and more than 8,000 left homeless — the black men and women who lived through the events have watched with renewed hope as others worked for some type of justice on their behalf.
But even as the city observed the 90th anniversary this month, the efforts to secure recognition and compensation have produced a mixed record of success.
The riot will be taught for the first time in Tulsa public schools next year but remains absent in many history textbooks across the United States. Civic leaders built monuments to acknowledge the riot, including a new Reconciliation Park, but in the wake of failed legislative and legal attempts, no payments were ever delivered for what was lost.
Before becoming president, Barack Obama once met with some who lived through the riot “to thank the survivors for surviving.” But fewer are surviving each year; today the number is about 40. And before they die, some of their most dedicated advocates continue to fight for greater awareness and compensation, even as they lament that they no longer believe the effort has sufficient momentum.
“These people are still alive,” said Reggie Turner, who has toured the country with the survivors, showing his film about the riot and the failed federal lawsuit to win reparations from the city and state governments. “And despite their dwindling numbers — in fact, because of their dwindling numbers — it should be easy for us to take care of them.”
“They are just looking for a better life as they approach death,” he added.
Some, like Otis Clark, the oldest survivor of the riot at 108 and one of those who joined a federal lawsuit seeking compensation, are at peace. “God has a whole lot of good things lined up for us when we’re by his side,” Mr. Clark said. “It ain’t going to be very long before that is going to happen.”
Others, like Mr. Young and his wife, Cathryn, worry that their passing will simply make the riot easier to forget. “I think they are trying to keep this hidden,” Ms. Young said, referring to the white residents of Tulsa. “Don’t talk about it, don’t do nothing about it until all these people are dead. Then they think it’ll be over with. But it won’t.”
All that remains of that black community of 90 years ago, Greenwood, is a block of red-brick storefronts in a neighborhood transformed by a new minor league ball field, a university campus and an elevated highway. Metal plaques set in the sidewalk describe the hundreds of businesses that were there when the area was a bustling enclave in a statutorily segregated oil town. Within the black community, it was known as the Negro Wall Street.
Long before black neighborhoods erupted in rioting in cities across the country during the 1960s and 1970s, a string of violent riots were started by whites in the years after World War I. As with some of the others, the Tulsa riot seemed to have started with the explosive accusation that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. (The charges were dropped after the riot.)
On May 31, 1921, hundreds of armed white men gathered outside the courthouse where the man was being held, and a group of armed black men arrived to prevent a lynching. A shot was fired. The black men fled to Greenwood, and the white men gave chase.
The battle that ensued, enabled by the Tulsa police chief, who deputized hundreds of white men and commandeered gun shops to arm them, lasted through the night and well into the next day.
About 40 blocks were destroyed, including 1,256 homes, many of which had been looted before they were set alight. The death toll, most likely never to be fully determined, was estimated in the state report at 100 to 300. Survivors were rounded up and interned by the National Guard. Many of the homeless spent the following year living in tents pitched in the ruins of the neighborhood.
A grand jury at the time blamed the black community for the riot. No one was convicted of participating in the riot; no one was compensated for lost property. Soon after, the story essentially disappeared — buried so deeply that people who lived their entire lives here, including prominent leaders like mayors and district attorneys, said they had never heard of the riot until recent decades.
Don Ross is credited with helping to break that silence. A magazine he started published the first article in decades about the riot, written by a local historian around the time of the 50th anniversary. But it was not until 25 years later when Mr. Ross was a state representative that the riot garnered nationwide attention. He pushed for the formation of the riot state commission that produced the report and became an unrelenting advocate for payments to the survivors because, he explained, there is “no money in apologies.”
Since retiring, Mr. Ross has extracted himself from those efforts, believing that neither blacks nor whites were committed to the task. He no longer even speaks to the survivors. “I cut that connection,” he said. “It was too heartbreaking.”
The issue of payments to survivors, like those paid to the survivors of a similar riot two years later in Rosewood, Fla., was always difficult.
The Oklahoma Legislature refused, saying it was constitutionally prohibited. The federal courts dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims, saying the statute of limitations had expired. And efforts in Congress to remove that legal obstacle have repeatedly failed, partly because of concerns that it might open the door to reparations for slavery, though there are plans to reintroduce the bill. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who represented the survivors in the effort, called the case his “most disappointing and heartbreaking.”
Still, awareness has been growing. Three quarters of Tulsa residents in a recent survey described themselves as very or somewhat knowledgeable about the riot.
On a national level there is greater awareness, too. Of the three largest school textbook publishers, one of them, Pearson, now mentions the riot in its books; two others, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, do not, though Houghton Mifflin says it is planning to include the riot in future editions.
At the Greenwood Cultural Center [ http://www.greenwoodculturalcenter.com/ ], home to an extensive exhibit on the race riot, Mechelle Brown, the program coordinator, walks along the wall of photos of survivors and gestures despondently — almost every month another one dies.
“It seems at times that this is how it’s going to end,” she said, “with the survivors passing.”
This year, the center lost all of its state financing, which accounted for nearly half of its annual budget. Ms. Brown said it could be forced to close in a matter of months. Just blocks away is John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, which opened last year with state backing and has several memorials to the riot. (A center for racial reconciliation is planned for the grounds.)
But in a city still divided by those same railroad tracks, the theme of togetherness bothers Ms. Brown, who called it premature. “You can’t forgive until someone asks for forgiveness,” she said.
Sitting inside the park, Julius Pegues, head of the park’s board, defended the focus on reconciliation. He worried that in continuing to dwell on the riot — and the compensation that has not come — the black community risked settling into bitterness.
“If people have their heart in the right place, I think they could work out some fair compensation for the victims of the race riots,” Mr. Pegues said. “But that does not seem to be the case, so I’m not going to spend my life worrying about it.”
He added: “We intend to take the high road and move this city forward for both black and white.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20tulsa.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20tulsa.html?pagewanted=all ]
*
“The Eruption of Tulsa”: An NAACP Official Investigates the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Source: Walter White, “The Eruption of Tulsa,” Nation 112 (June 29, 1921): 909–910.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5119/
“Now Tulsa Does Care”: A White Tulsan’s Perspective on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Source: Amy Comstock, “Another View of the Tulsa Riots,” Survey, 2 July 1921, 460.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5118
*
Tulsa Race Riot
A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
February 28, 2001
http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.htm [Full Report http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.pdf ]
*
"A Black Holocaust in America"
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/
*
Tulsa race riot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot
*
Tulsa Race Riot Slide Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHrOZjYP04w
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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