U.S. 'ethnic cleansing'
The 1921 Tulsa massacre
By Monica Moorehead
The main argument for the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
supplied by President Bill Clinton, the Pentagon generals and
the big-business media is the alleged "ethnic cleansing" of
Albanians in Kosovo. This can only be stopped if the United
States and NATO intervene, say NBC, CBS and ABC.
NBC, of course, is owned by one of the biggest Pentagon
contractors, General Electric.
But the U.S. government has never cared about the plight of
any oppressed grouping. Its policy is to pit one oppressed
group against the other to secure its brutal class rule.
A specific incident in U.S. history that exposes the
hypocritical nature of the racist, imperialist U.S.
government--and is rarely talked about--took place in Tulsa,
Okla., in 1921.
Before the righteous rebellions of the oppressed Black
masses in Watts, Newark, Detroit and elsewhere in the late
1960s, there was the "Tulsa Race Riot of 1921."
Never heard of it? A lot of people have not.
Investigations begun in 1997 concluded that this "riot"
could more appropriately be described as a massacre. Mass
graves of at least 300 Black victims of racist violence have
been uncovered, according to the Tulsa Race Riot
Commission.
The official report had stated that 36 people died.
Yet many historians now say that more Black people were
killed in Tulsa than in any other recorded "riot" in U.S.
history.
Excavations of the grave site will begin this summer.
Racist & economic roots
What was the root cause of this terrible massacre?
Millions of Black people were forced to leave the South at
the turn of the 20th century to escape the savage lynchings,
wretched poverty and other remnants of slavery. Thousands of
Black people migrated to Tulsa.
Oil had been discovered throughout the Southwest, a region
once known as "Indian Territory" that had been a part of
Mexico.
Glenn Pool, 14 miles from Tulsa, became known as the
"richest small oilfield in the world." By 1907, Oklahoma had
become the center of the country's oil production, producing
300,000 barrels a day.
Black Tulsans were trying to take advantage of this economic
boom by establishing their own businesses in the Greenwood
area.
Tulsa was an extremely segregated city. Black people were
forced to live on the north side of town. Whites lived in the
southern part. Black people were prohibited from doing business
with whites.
The educator Booker T. Washington characterized the
Greenwood section as the "Negro's Wall Street." Racists
referred to Greenwood as "Little Africa."
The people of Greenwood were attempting to carry out their
own brand of post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Greenwood included a Black newspaper, two doctors, a Black
labor union, three grocery stores and barbers. Three-quarters
of the Black children attended the lone Black school. Tulsa had
the second-lowest Black illiteracy rate of any county in
Oklahoma.
Many other Black people were forced to work in the white
areas as domestics or shining shoes. This was a testament to
the fact that whites still dominated the overall economy.
The white political establishment attempted to whip up a
hysteria against the organizing efforts of the Industrial
Workers of the World and against Jewish people. The
predominantly white police force forged a relationship with the
Ku Klux Klan and other white vigilantes.
Reminiscent of apartheid
On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young Black shoeshine man,
was falsely accused of accosting a white woman in an elevator
shaft. He was arrested immediately.
The next day the Tulsa Tribune ran an editorial entitled "To
Lynch a Negro Tonight."
A white mob numbering 2,000 gathered outside the jail in an
attempt to lynch Rowland. A heroic group of 50 to 75 armed
Black men, dressed in their World War I Army fatigues,
confronted the racists. As a white man tried to physically
disarm a Black man, a shot was fired.
The Black men fired back in self-defense. But they were
overwhelmed by the armed mob of racists.
For the next several days, gangs of armed whites went into
the Greenwood section setting fire to homes and businesses and
shooting every Black person in sight. Dr. A. C. Jackson, one of
the top surgeons in the country, was murdered after
surrendering himself to a group of whites.
The racists also went into their own white neighborhoods
searching for Black domestic workers.
The Chicago Defender reported that Black neighborhoods in
Tulsa were bombed from the air by a private plane equipped with
dynamite. Other reports said the police had commandeered
private planes to fly over the area. This is the first report
in history of airplanes being used to drop explosives.
On June 1, some 6,000 Black Tulsans, including children,
were rounded up and imprisoned by the racists. Reminiscent of
apartheid South Africa, Black people who were not imprisoned or
interned were forced to carry green badges saying "Police
Protection."
In the meantime, whites were given a free reign to continue
their looting and rampage of Greenwood without interference
from the police or the National Guard.
Once the internment was over, a thousand Black Tulsans were
dislocated and forced to spend the winter in tents and board
shacks. The city was not legally obligated to restore the
houses and businesses of Greenwood.
Not one white person was ever arrested for taking part in
this racist attack. The young white woman who Rowland
supposedly attacked never pressed any charges against him. He
was eventually released from jail.
The truth about the Tulsa massacre should be publicly
exposed. And the U.S. government should be made to pay
reparations to the Black people of Tulsa and to all the living
descendents of slaves.
And not only should the United States immediately stop its
bombing of Yugoslavia--but the United States and NATO should be
held responsible for paying reparations to the Yugoslav
masses.
Material for this article taken from "Death in a Promised
Land--The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921" by Scott Ellsworth (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982)
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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