The burning of ‘Black Wall Street’

The below essay was transcribed from an episode of Extra Credits on Youtube (which… just does awesome stuff: check them out https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg). It was written by Steven van Patten.  I just transcribed it.

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The Drexel Building, Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 30, 1921: in the 3rd floor lobby stands 19 year-old Dick Rowland, an orphan, living with an adopted family who works at the white owned parlor down the street.  He comes here to the Drexel Building to use the restroom. Tulsa is a segregated city and he has walked down the street to the Drexel Building and has taken an elevator three floors to reach the closest colored restroom.

The door opens, and on the other side stands Sarah Page, the elevator’s 17 year-old operator. He must know that being alone with a white girl, in any capacity, is dangerous for a young black man.  But he has to get back to work. Rowland steps into the elevator not knowing that what happens next will provoke a white mob to kill over one hundred people and burn his entire town to the ground.

57 years after the United States abolished slavery, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma was a surprisingly prosperous slice of Americana. Greenwood’s population was comprised of blacks who had migrated there from the South seeking improved conditions, but found that better life elusive.  They originally tried to settle in Langston, Oklahoma, but were run off by racist whites before landing in Tulsa.

Despite the city’s strict Jim Crow style segregation laws Greenwood’s mostly black residents played an integral part in building up their neighbourhood. In fact, being isolated from their hostile white neighbors may actually have helped them build Greenwood into a prosperous district that civil rights activist and author Booker T. Washington nicknamed it ‘Black Wall Street.’

The state of Oklahoma, and Tulsa in particular, had done well financially largely due to a bustling oil industry that had caused a population boom around the turn of the century and made many fortunes. That success allowed white Tulsans to hire black people from nearby Greenwood as domestics. In turn, the Greenwood blacks save their money invested in their communities and started their own businesses.

And with those businesses came an opulence unheard of. It is said that on Sundays the women wore satin and diamonds, and the men wore silk and gold chains. Historian James S. Hersh reported teachers lived in brick houses furnished with Louis XIV dining room sets, fine china, and Steinway pianos. It was a monument to Black excellence.  Dr. A.C. Jackson, considered the most skilled black surgeon in America lived in Greenwood. There was not one but two movie theaters, and there was J.B. Stratford’s 54-room hotel, the largest in America owned by a black man, all the more remarkable considering Stratford had been born into slavery.

This was in contrast to other parts of the country, where American blacks were often forced to live in harsher conditions, especially in the Midwest and South, where the sharecropping system remained in place. There, they labored tirelessly on another person’s land, surrendering the majority of their crops to the landlord. As a result they were trapped in debt to white land owners, some of whom were former slaveholders. When blacks tried to improve their situation, white neighbours often responded with violence, whether individual or communal, and black men who showed ambition were often the target of lynchings.

But in early 1921 life was anything but bleak in Greenwood. The town had become a place of pride, hope and opportunity. For a time things were so good that others began to migrate there, including black veterans from World War One who were eager to start new lives in the country they had helped defend.  That nickname ‘Black Wall Street’ coupled with the success of Greenwood’s black inhabitants would feed a growing resentment among whites in the neighboring towns. By some accounts, the black residents of Greenwood had become relaxed and stopped caring about Jim Crow laws, or any other trappings of white supremacy because… well… why should they? Not only were they not doing anything wrong: they had earned everything they had through hard work and smart practical investments.

But that resentment was simmering when Dick Rowland stepped into the elevator in the Drexel Building

Now, this part gets hazy, because there are only two people who can tell us what really happened in that elevator: all we have are rumors. Later observers pointed out that the elevator was faulty and never stopped level on the third floor. They claimed Rowland must have tripped, and grabbed Page to prevent a fall. Some say he stepped on her toe. Another theory suggests that the two knew each other and something more personal was in play, though… that was never proven. But what we do know is that whatever happened, Ms. Page screamed, a building employee called the police and Rowland was seen running out of the Drexel. Police pursued Rowland for assault.

A local paper printed a story about the incident saying that Page’s dress was ripped, which was a common euphemism newspapers used to imply sexual assault. Details of the alleged crime swelled as the story travelled from person to person until it was so exaggerated that people said Rowland had raped Page in the elevator, and he was arrested the next day.

Vigilante justice was nothing new to Oklahomans, and after Rowland’s arrest, a mob of armed angry white men appeared at the courthouse with the intent to lynch him. Then black men from Greenwood arrived to protect young Rowland. Two dozen at first, but finally, around 75, some of whom were trained World War 1 combat vets.

Hotel owner J.B. Stratford tried to act as a peacemaker as racial slurs and threats filled the air. Then a gunshot. Returned fire. A running gun battle ensued as the black men retreated back home to Greenwood. What followed was a siege.

The men who had sought to protect Rowland took positions and readied themselves, but they would soon be overwhelmed. Tulsa’s white vigilantes were better armed, had them outnumbered, and now had official support from the police. Angry white men from neighbouring towns quickly answered the call to arms: many of them hastily deputized by local authorities, before indulging in the chaos.

During the attack, the whites deployed a machinegun on a hill and fired into a church, killing the people sheltering inside.  Cars filled with rioters drove through Greenwood firing from every window. White vigilantes dragged black men out of their homes to shoot them in the street or tie them to the back of cars and drag them through town. Mobs smashed windows and kicked in doors to loot personal items like jewelry, furs, and other valuables.  And as many as six airplanes flew overhead raining dynamite and accelerant on the entire area, destroying homes and workplaces, from attorney’s offices and beauty salons to hardware stores and funeral homes.

This went on until the next afternoon, when the Oklahoma National Guard arrived and declared martial law. It was too late: 10,000 black people were left homeless. The official death toll was 39, but later historians would put it between 75 and 300. Among the dead was surgeon A.C. Jackson. J.B. Stratford by contrast, survived, though his proud hotel was nothing more than rubble and it wasn’t alone. 35 blocks had been destroyed, with over $2 million in damage and property loss, roughly $33 million in todays currency.

Because local police told the National Guard that there had been a ‘Negro Uprising,’ 6,000 Greenwood Residents were arrested and detained for a week. Upon release, many joined the rest of the homeless living in Red Cross tents. With nowhere left to go, many stayed and suffered through a brutal winter under the canvas. Greenwood had been rendered unlivable, and Tate Brady, a Klansman in the local government, warded any plans to rebuild. 

Efforts were made to relocate the disenfranchised even further away, but the displaced of Greenwood dug in their heels and took the case to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. They won, but Greenwood would never be the same, and today much of whatever was left of ‘Black Wall Street’ has been paved over as part of Interstate 244.

J.B. Stratford and 20 others were wrongly accused of instigating the riots, but other than that there were surprisingly few charges brought upon anyone. Stratford jumped bail and later became a successful lawyer in Chicago, and the Tulsa Police Chief was relieved of duty. But neither he nor the rioters saw a day of jail time.

Yet perhaps the most startling part of the story is what happened to Dick Rowland. Sarah Page left town after the massacre, leaving written instruction not to press charges, and upon release, Rowland left Tulsa, and never came back.  Both disappeared from the pages of history. We don’t know where they went or what became of them. They were gone like Greenwood.

On a personal note, I find it incredibly distressing that this incident and others like it are not more widely taught in US schools. It’s hard to imagine how we’re supposed to progress as a society if we can’t own up to our transgressions and recognize wounds that need healing. Because while this is a terrible story, it’s also a necessary story: one that we cannot afford to forget.