American History Tellers - Tulsa Race Massacre - Legacy and Lessons | 5

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

Nearly a century after a white mob leveled the affluent Tulsa district known as Black Wall Street, how is Greenwood faring? Mechelle Brown is the program coordinator for the Greenwood Cultural Center, which seeks to educate people about the rich history of the Greenwood District. She joins us to discuss why a race conflict in Tulsa was inevitable, the city’s ongoing struggle to fully acknowledge the history of the massacre, and what has — and still hasn’t — been done. Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's been a long day and you're tired to the bone. You just returned to Greenwood from the fancy Tulsa hotel where you work as a porter. There's a part of you that can't believe you're back at your job, working for the white folks after what they did, but you've got a family to feed. Tonight, though, you somehow found the energy to come out to the high school. The Greenwood Relief Committee and the pastors have called a meeting,

supposedly to discuss the offers all those white men have been making to buy up all of your neighbor's land. One of them came by your tent just last week, and you've been thinking about his offer ever since. In the crowd, you catch sight of your neighbor, Isaiah. He looks as tired and wrung out as you feel. Isaiah! How are you and Georgina doing, brother? Best we can, I guess. Sure glad it's dry today. We're sick of all this rain with the tent leaking and all.

How about you? I'm dying to know what this committee has to say. But I'll be honest, Isaiah. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sell. I don't like the pitiful amount they're offering. But even if we got that much, Mary and I could move and not have to work for those folks. I can barely stomach being in that hotel.

I know exactly what you mean. My poor Georgie is back doing laundry for Miss Ellen. She's even meaner now than she was before the trouble. But I don't know about selling. Then we'd be giving them exactly what they want. Yeah, I know, but... Just then, Pastor Whitaker steps up to the front of the crowd. There must be a couple hundred people here gathered in front of Booker T.

You haven't seen the pastor since Mount Zion burnt down. That huge, beautiful church only just finished a couple of months ago. You shake your head. The pastor greets the crowd and leads a quick prayer. Then he gets down to business. Now, as you know, brothers and sisters, I come before you with my fellow pastors, Reverend Abernathy and Reverend McLean,

to talk with you about how our community can stand up for ourselves and heal from this great assault. Around you, heads are nodding. Even the children are paying attention. And we are here as members of the Colored Citizens Relief Committee, which has been reaching out to our brothers at the NAACP And we are here as members of the Colored Citizens Relief Committee, which has been reaching out to our brothers at the NAACP and black churches all over the country to help rebuild, and to feed our families, and to fight back against this enemy that wants to banish us out of Greenwood.

We will not stand for it, but we must stay together because alone we will lose. Our strength comes from the community and from God. You're starting to suspect where the pastor is going. And you're right. Now I want to say this. Many of you have been approached by white salesmen claiming to want to help you by buying the land where your houses stood just a couple weeks ago. But their offers are no good because they want to pay you next to nothing for that land. Now that land is valuable

and it's just as valuable as it was before they burned down our houses and our churches. We say to you, do not sell. We know it will be hard to stay, to find a way to rebuild, but remember what the Bible says. It says, be steadfast. And the Lord said, stand fast and be not moved.

Around you, the crowd is getting louder, saying amen and agreeing with more energy and more conviction than when you first arrived. You too are doubting your decision to sell. Maybe Isaiah and Reverend Whitaker are right. Maybe you'll feel more pride as a man, as a member of this community, if you refuse their paltry offer.

As the pastor finishes and the crowd starts to disperse, you turn to Isaiah. What are you going to do? I'm staying right here, brother. I'm not going to let them win. And you shouldn't either. It's going to be hard, neighbor. But I guess you're right.

I'm going to stay tuned. We'll stick together just like we always have. I just hope this damn rain stops so we can rebuild fast. From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. Now streaming.

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Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. Today on American History Tellers, we're continuing our focus on the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. After the wealthy black neighborhood of Greenwood burned down, residents there faced a choice. The events of May 31st and June 1 had killed an estimated 300 people and destroyed 40 blocks, leaving thousands of people homeless. Now, they could accept their white neighbor's offer to buy their land for pennies on the dollar and start over somewhere else, or hold out and rebuild. White speculators were counting on most

Greenwood residents to choose the former. They hoped to build an industrial district and a train station on the burned-out land where Greenwood once stood, but they had underestimated the strength and resilience of the Black men and women that they were trying to drive out. Despite construction ordinances and police harassment designed to prevent rebuilding, the Greenwood community bound together and refused to sell their land. Within a few years, Greenwood was a thriving community once again, until desegregation in the 50s began a slow decline.

Over the past hundred years, the story of Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre has been kept fairly quiet. An Oklahoma state legislator named Don Ross brought these events to the world's attention in 1997 through the formation of a race commission. After the commission published a groundbreaking report in 2001, survivors sued the city for reparations, but lost. They took their fight to the Supreme Court, trying to get reparations there before the last of them died. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, citing the two-year statute of limitations on riots. Today, some Tulsa teachers cover the events of 1921 in their classrooms, but most students

don't learn about the massacre. My guest today is trying to bridge that gap. Michelle Brown is the program coordinator for the Greenwood Cultural Center, which seeks to educate people on the rich history of the Greenwood District and the violence that happened in 1921. Here's our conversation. Michelle Brown, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. So this moment in American history is one of many explosive moments that boil down to just a small incident, a glance, something that could have been completely innocuous in any other place in time. In the Tulsa Race Massacre, it started with a teenager who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and turned into something much bigger and much worse. He was Dick Rowland, a shoeshine boy, but he was living what was pretty much what was emblematic of black and white life in Tulsa.

Can you give me a description of what the city was like in these moments? Well, the city of Tulsa as a whole, Tulsa was considered the oil capital of the world. It was bustling. It was growing and going through this impressive explosive period where there was so much economic development and prosperity. And some of that trickled down into the Greenwood District. The Black community at that time existed in the Greenwood District. And during that time, Black Wall Street, as it came to be called, housed more than 1,000

Black-owned businesses, hundreds and thousands of homes, many wealthy individuals, many entrepreneurs. And so for Black Tulsa as well, this was a monumental time in their history because they saw so much prosperity in their neighborhood. Well, this is unusual, certainly for the time and the place. How did Greenwood become this burgeoning African-American community? Many African-Americans came to Oklahoma looking for opportunity. This was the promised land for them.

Many of them saw this as their opportunity to escape the oppressive South and to make a new beginning. There was a plea by those initial African-Americans who had moved here and began to set up their homes and businesses, recruiting other African-Americans into this area. Many, in fact, also came along with the Native Americans, the Cherokees and Creeks that came over when they were forced here. And some as slaves of Native Americans, some as freedmen. They were also given land allotments where they built their homes and businesses or chose to sell those properties. Many of them became wealthy because of those land allotments. And there was a sense of community among African Americans in Tulsa during that time. Of course, we know that the first law that Oklahoma passed when it became a state was the Jim Crow law, which segregated the races.

So African Americans were forced into their own community, but they had a sense of pride, a sense of brotherly love for one another, and a sense of community, something that we, I believe, have kind of lost along the way. Well, this community of Greenwood, tight-knit and purposeful and moving forward, certainly was a bit of an oasis in Oklahoma and in America at large. This was a time, of course, when lynchings of people of color was not uncommon. These lynchings were not just punishment. They were public messages. And I was wondering if you could perhaps give us some context of what this message was.

This was a message of intimidation. This was a message meant to send fear into the hearts of African Americans, men, women, and children. This was the message that said, you need to remember where you are, who you are, and you need to stay in your place. So this was all about evoking fear into the African American community. And that's probably one of the things that made Greenwood so infuriating is that these African-Americans were thriving. Although they had their own place, they certainly were doing well in it. Based on your research,

how were the members of Tulsa's white community processing this Black success in Greenwood? Well, there were many people that were angry and envious that African-Americans, some of them were so prosperous, so wealthy. Simon Barry, for example, was a private pilot who owned his own plane and owned a jet knee service and is rumored to have earned as much as $500 a day. There were other entrepreneurs like J.B. Stratford and the Williams family that owned multiple businesses. And so whites were angry and upset. Many of them, most of them were not doing quite as well as African-Americans in the Greenwood District. The African-American entrepreneurs, they were intimidated and they were somewhat fearful because there were African-Americans who were moving to the Greenwood District from all over the country that heard that you could get a job as a shoeshine boy and make really good money.

And that's, in fact, what Dick Rowland did. He worked in downtown Tulsa as a shoeshine boy, shining the shoes of rich white oil men who would come into downtown Tulsa and made so much money that he wore a diamond-encrusted belt buckle. So whites were not happy at all, but definitely were fearful and intimidated and angry, and even made comments such as, how dare these Negroes have a piano in their home, and I don't have a piano in mine. What's the difference in the feeling of envy, which one might be understandable? A poorer white would look at envy at almost anyone with more means than him, especially at the time, an African-American with more means.

But I'm getting at this question, what is the difference between just that envy and intimidation? The difference is that we can experience, we can feel envy and go on about our daily lives. Their envy turned into this need, this desire to intimidate the African-American community, to take away what they felt they did not deserve, what they had no right to. Their envy turned into hatred and anger and bitterness, and I think propelled them into the incidents that happened and led to, contributed to, at least, the events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Let's stick with this for a little bit, because I think we can certainly find many prominent white members of the Tulsa power structure who had no reason to envy what was going on in Greenwood,

probably profited from it. And yet this intimidation remained. Can you describe then how that intimidation manifested itself? What was the threat that Greenwood posed to this white power structure in Tulsa? Well, I think envy in itself is one thing, but when you pair envy with racism, which was evident, which was prominent in Tulsa, many of our city officials, our city leaders, in fact, some of our city founders were Ku Klux Klan members. We actually have a partial list of the Ku Klux Klan role during that time. And there were many professionals, police officers, city officials and employees, firemen on the list of Ku Klux Klan members. And so that envy, along with racism, there was really no logical reason even for prominent whites, wealthy whites, to be envious of the African-American community. But when you consider the fact that they were also racist, then that puts a whole different light on the situation.

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life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So we have a town in which several things are happening at once. There's a great and immediate and sudden rise of wealth due to the oil boom. There's an influx of professional, educated, entrepreneurial African Americans who arrive in Tulsa and succeed. There is a structure of city officials and police officers who

not only might be envious or intimidated by this success in Greenwood, but also have ideological opposition to it. So it sounds like if it weren't young Dick Rowland, it was going to be someone, something that would have ignited almost this exact same massacre. Oh, absolutely. We truly believe that that is the case, that if there had not been an incident between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page in the elevator, that some type of incident would have occurred between blacks and whites. And part of that is due to some of the oral histories of our survivors. Between 96 and 2001, we identified 162 race-private survivors. And when we began the discussion about reparations right around that same time, I had a couple of individuals to contact me and want to speak anonymously. And there was a white man in particular who called. He was an elderly white man when I spoke with him. And he said that as a young boy,

he had accompanied his dad to downtown Tulsa, where they sat in on some good old boy closed door type meetings where whites that were present talked about Little Africa, which is what they referred to Black Wall Street as, the cesspool of iniquity and what and the sheriff, that they hadn't done anything about it. Nothing was being done. And there's, in fact, a couple of newspaper articles, at least one that is on display at the Greenwood Cultural Center, that says something very similar. This article was published immediately after the massacre had taken place and basically said that the massacre was the fault of the Black community, that they had brought this on themselves, and that whites, good white people, had followed the proper channels and went to city officials and the mayor's office and the sheriff's department and spoken to them about what needed to happen and nothing had been done. So this, in fact, was inevitable. So truly, we believe that there would have been something

else, some small incident that would have escalated into an all-out massacre of hundreds of people. Let's talk about the residents of Greenwood. We've mentioned quite a few of the more prominent ones, the doctors, lawyers, and hoteliers, and other entrepreneurs. But it was a community of almost, what, 11,000 people at the time? Yes. So obviously they weren't all white collar workers. And in fact, many of them were returning veterans who had seen service in World War I. Yes. I think this had probably a profound impact on the incident. Can you tell me why? Yes, absolutely. And in country, after experiencing this respect, and then coming back to their own community and realizing that they weren't being treated with respect here. Even as soldiers, even having went and volunteered and fought for their country, they weren't being treated as equals. They weren't being respected. And yet they still felt this sense of courage. And they were determined that they were not going to stand for the same thing that they had stood for before they went to fight for their country. determined to protect the community where their families lived. They were willing to risk their

lives to protect the young man that they believed was innocent and willing to do so because they were soldiers and because they felt that as men, they had a right to defend their homes and businesses. And then we come to the day of the massacre itself. In just two days, 300 Greenwood residents were killed. Many, many, many more fled the city. 40 blocks were burned to the ground, and that left 10,000 homeless. Now, the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce on the south side of town met shortly after the massacre. Apparently, we only now know what was discussed. What was discussed and how did we find out? So recently, the Tulsa Chamber held a press conference and they presented the Greenwood Cultural Center with a copy of those minutes from 1921. And they were prompted to do so by a former employee, Bill White, who's an African American,

who up until recently was also employed at the Greenwood Cultural Center as our director of development. And when he discovered those minutes during his time at the chamber, he asked that they be released to the public. And the chamber took some time to discuss how they wanted to do that because they knew that this was a sensitive topic and this is a sensitive time for us as we approach the 100-year commemoration. And the minutes essentially say that immediately following the massacre that a committee was formed to, and they decided that there should be some reparations, that they should assist with the reconstruction of the Greenwood District. That initial committee was fired,

and they brought in a new committee of individuals who were not at all in favor of reparations or reconstruction or assisting the Black community at all. So everything that the chamber initially said that they were going to do for the Black community through this committee that had been founded and formed, they did not do. They did not do any of the things that they initially stated that they were going to do. So the African-American community, without any assistance from the chamber or the city of Tulsa, was forced to, in many ways, fend for itself. What did the chamber do if they didn't meet their own objectives? What did they do then was to make efforts to take the land that belonged to African-Americans

where their homes and businesses were housed, which is what we think contributed to the climate between African-Americans, the dissension between the two whites and blacks. We believe that as downtown Tulsa exploded and there was this need to expand, that whites decided that they needed blacks to leave the Greenwood District and move farther north. And they approached them prior to the massacre and asked them to do just that. Downtown Tulsa was exploding, and they realized that they did, in fact, need the area where Blacks had built their homes and businesses, even though initially they didn't mind them building in that area. But as they expanded, they decided and realized that they did, in fact, need that area.

And when they approached them, they were told that blacks were not at all interested in moving their homes and businesses north. And then the massacre takes place. And then again, African-American home and business owners are approached by whites and said, well, now your property isn't really worth anything. And we'd like to offer to purchase it, pennies on the dollar. And once again, African-Americans refused to sell. Many African-Americans refused to sell. The Chamber of Commerce opening up its minutes wasn't the first, you know, historical look back into what happened. In the 90s, the Oklahoma State Legislature set up a commission. What came of that study? They were formed to study the events of the massacre and to determine what was actually a fact because so much of what we had was simply oral histories that had been passed on and not enough of those. And after a two-year study or so, they did decide and recommend that reparations be made to the survivors, the remaining survivors at that time, about 160, 150, to their descendants, that there be

scholarships established for African-American graduates, and that there be some type of tax credit, the establishment of an economic development enterprise zone in the Greenwood District to promote entrepreneurship among African Americans, and then a memorial for the reburial of the remains of the victims of the Tulsa race riot. None of those recommendations were honoured or fulfilled. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't

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You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. How did your institution, the Greenwood Cultural Center, come about? So the Greenwood Cultural Center, the initial concept for the Cultural Center, came about in the early 1970s during a model city's community meeting where the Black community was asked, what did they want to see in their community? And what they said was that we want a place where our children can learn about different forms of the arts, explore various forms of the arts, and also learn about their history. The Greenwood Cultural Center, there were individuals who initially went door- door, raising money, taking donations.

Later, as the state legislature began to address the issue of reparations and have that conversation, as the history of the massacre in Black Wall Street began to get national attention, and that was due to the efforts of retired state representative Don Ross, who, when the Oklahoma state legislature began talking about the Oklahoma City bombing, he brought up the fact that they were not acknowledging the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. So eventually, after years and years of the community raising money towards the Greenwood Cultural Center, the state legislature made a contribution. Don Ross was chair of the Appropriations Committee at the time and was a champion for funding of the Greenwood Cultural Center, along with the Mabel B. Little Heritage House. So initially, we received funding to help us begin and complete the building that's known as the Greenwood Cultural Center. It was 20 years, nearly 20 years, since that initial discussion until we actually opened our doors.

So let's talk about Greenwood today. Let's see how descriptive you can be in telling us what it looks like today and what's happening there. Greenwood today houses structures at the corner of Greenwood and Archer that are a remnant of what Black Wall Street once was. There is no Black-owned business district in our community today, and we are still struggling for some of the same amenities, some of the same resources that you would find in any other part of Tulsa. North Tulsa today does not have a grocery store.

They don't have a shopping mall or a Walmart. They don't have skating rinks and bowling alleys and really nice sit-down restaurants. So we continue to struggle in our community to recover from the massacre that took place nearly 100 years ago. However, we are seeing this renaissance and renovation take place. We are seeing redevelopment in our community and our community awakening and standing up and being more vocal about what they want to see in their community, what they want to happen in their community, and playing a more active role in electing representatives,

elected officials who are willing to stand up and fight for what our community needs and wants and believes that it deserves. It sounds like in many ways the damage done in 1921 has not been resolved. Absolutely not. It has not been resolved. And part of the issue is that we still struggle with a society that at times is hesitant to acknowledge this history. We have not dealt with the history of the massacre. We, as part of the work of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission, they are working to create a new Greenwood History Center that will tell the story in a more modern, interactive way.

We broke ground recently on a pathway of hope. There is now Reconciliation Park. But the city of Tulsa has to do more towards reconciliation. And we can't truly have reconciliation until there has been some type, some form of reparations. We still continue to suffer in our community because of historical trauma that has been passed on from generation to generation. And part of that is due to the fact that we as a community, in our culture, we have traditionally not spoken about mental health issues. We haven't spoken about trauma. That hasn't been part of our conversation. Historical trauma is a relatively new term.

And what we would do traditionally is simply put it in God's hands, pray about it, and move on. And we realize now that this has to be dealt with. We as a community have to deal with this and acknowledge how we have been affected, but we also need the city of Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma to acknowledge this part of our history in a very real and meaningful way and to address the conversation around reparations. We have to have a very honest, open conversation about what reparations may look like for our community today. And this is actually, in large part, your job.

You are tasked with talking about this event, telling the stories to a modern audience so that they understand and know it and perhaps can help change it. What is the message that you hope your audience will take away from not just the events of 1921, but your work as well? Yes, because the story does not end in 1921. The history of Black Wall Street does not end with the destruction that took place in 21. By 1925, Black Americans had rebuilt the Greenwood District. Black Tulsans rebuilt their homes and their businesses. And we saw the opening again of the hotels and theaters.

And so it speaks to the courage and determination, the resilience of our community. And when I took several of our race massacre survivors to Oklahoma City to hear the commission's final report and their suggestions following that report, one of our survivors was approached by several reporters. And one of the reporters said, you know, we know you want something. Just what exactly do you want? And he said, well, of course, we believe that reparations are due for everything that our families lost, their homes, their businesses, their livelihood, their lives, in fact, at times. But what we want more than anything is for our children to know that there's more to Black history than slavery and the civil rights movement. Because even being an

African-American in an African-American history class in North Tulsa, which is predominantly African-American, with African-American instructors, we never learned about Black Wall Street or the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. So they wanted their children and grandchildren and future generations to know that they were a proud people, that they were smart and strong and well educated. They were savvy business owners, and they had a love for one another. When one gentleman would get his business or one woman would get her business off the ground, they'd grab the hand of their brother or sister and pull them up alongside them. And if we ever want to rebuild Black Wall Street, we have to return to that mentality that causes us to love our brother and sister enough to grab them by the

hand and pull them up alongside us. So that's what I hope that our young people know and believe and learn, especially in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that while it's easy to turn on the TV or the radio and find someone, an entertainer, an athlete to admire, to serve as a role model. There are people right here in Tulsa, our ancestors and forefathers, who are worthy of your admiration. They've laid the groundwork for us to be successful, for us to be great. And so I want them to leave with that knowledge of who they truly are and where we've come from. Well, Michelle Brown, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

And also thank you for your work. Thank you so much. From Wondery, this is episode five of the Tulsa Race Massacre for American History Tellers. On the next episode, we're joined by Beckett Graham, co-host of the podcast History Chicks, who will share the story behind one of America's most iconic monuments to freedom and one of Graham's favorite women from American history, Lady Liberty. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now

by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Elaine Appleton Grant, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery.

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