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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday everyone. We are approaching the centennial of the

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Speaker 1: Tulsa Massacre, which used to be more often known as

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Speaker 1: the Tulsa Race Riot. We are staying away from that

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Speaker 1: terminology because it's problematic. Uh. This started on May and

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Speaker 1: we have actually run our episode on the Tulsa Massacre

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Speaker 1: as a Saturday Classic once before. We did that in

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Speaker 1: November when it was playing a central role in the

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Speaker 1: HBO series Watchman. We haven't really rerun Saturday Classics the

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Speaker 1: second time before. But given that this is the hundredth

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Speaker 1: anniversary of the massacre and that the city of Tulsa

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Speaker 1: is planning to continue its search for bodies of the

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Speaker 1: massacres victims starting on June one of this year, we

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Speaker 1: thought it would be appropriate to make an exception this time.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm trade B. B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. And

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Speaker 1: today we have another frequently frequently requested episode. Lots and

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Speaker 1: lots of people have asked us to talk about the

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Speaker 1: destruction of black Wall Street. Black Wall Street was a

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Speaker 1: nickname for Greenwood, which was essentially a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma,

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Speaker 1: which was destroyed in a race riot in nine So

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Speaker 1: the name black Wall Street makes it sound kind of

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Speaker 1: like it was a business district, but Greenwood was really

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Speaker 1: a vibrant neighborhood of businesses and homes and schools that

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Speaker 1: even had its own hospital. And race riot also makes

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Speaker 1: it sound as though it was a fight instigated by

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Speaker 1: people of more than one race. But while Greenwood's destruction

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Speaker 1: was definitely the product of racial tensions, the actual event

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Speaker 1: was a whole lot more one sided than that. This

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Speaker 1: all happened during a period of ex stream racial tension

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Speaker 1: in the United States. Race riots and lynch ings and

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Speaker 1: vigilante justice were really widespread, and the Tulsa race riot

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Speaker 1: was one of the deadliest and most shocking events from

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Speaker 1: this era, and yet a lot of people knew nothing

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Speaker 1: about it until maybe twenty or thirty years ago. It

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Speaker 1: got brushed under the rug for a long time. And

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Speaker 1: to set the scene, the economy of Tulsa, Oklahoma, really

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Speaker 1: boomed during the nineteen teens thanks to the discovery of

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Speaker 1: oil in the area, and the population in this area

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Speaker 1: of Oklahoma grew very quickly, including an influx of African Americans,

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Speaker 1: many of whom were leaving the Deep South in the

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Speaker 1: hope that they could build a life in a less

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Speaker 1: pressive environment, and so Tulsa's population actually grew tenfold in

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Speaker 1: the span of ten years. Also growing during this time

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Speaker 1: in Tulsa where crime and lawlessness. A federal agent actually

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Speaker 1: conducted an undercover investigation in April of nine and found quote, gambling, bootlegging,

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Speaker 1: and prostitution very much in evidence at the leading hotels

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Speaker 1: and rooming houses. The bell hops and porters are pimping

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Speaker 1: for women and also selling booze. Regarding violations of the law,

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Speaker 1: these prostitutes and pimps solicit without any fear of the police,

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Speaker 1: as they will invariably remind you that you are safe

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Speaker 1: in these houses. And that's where the quote ends. And

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Speaker 1: in addition to that, automobile theft was so common that

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Speaker 1: insurance companies started just canceling all their policies in Tulsa.

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Speaker 1: And at the same time, the suburb of Greenwood was

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Speaker 1: really flourishing. By one there were about ten thousand African

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Speaker 1: Americans living in the Tulsa area, and the vast majority

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Speaker 1: of them were living in Greenwood. They fell all along

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Speaker 1: the economic spectrum, So you had everyone from doctors and

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Speaker 1: investors worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to families that

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Speaker 1: were living in extremely modest homes along dirt roads. Greenwood

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Speaker 1: itself was simultaneously the product of segregation and of black entrepreneurship. O. W.

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Speaker 1: Gurley and J. B. Stratford were two prominent African American

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Speaker 1: investors who really get a lot of credit for making

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Speaker 1: the town what it was. In the early nineteen hundreds, Gurley,

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Speaker 1: who was a real real estate developer, bought some land,

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Speaker 1: plotted it out, and then sold it to other African Americans.

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Speaker 1: Stratford built a fifty four room hotel that was also

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Speaker 1: home to a restaurant, a banquet hall, and other amenities,

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Speaker 1: and Stratford's hotel was one of the largest black owned

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Speaker 1: businesses in Oklahoma at that time. These and other businesses

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Speaker 1: became the seeds of a really robust community that was

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Speaker 1: also deeply segregated from the rest of Tulsa. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: in a way and a lot of ways, was really

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Speaker 1: self sufficient. It had two newspapers, the Tulsa Star and

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Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Sun. It also had its own library, branch, schools,

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Speaker 1: a hospital, theaters, and lots of small businesses that were

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Speaker 1: owned and operated by the black community. There were all

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Speaker 1: so many many churches, but most of its residents, while

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Speaker 1: they were living and conducting almost all their business in Greenwood,

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Speaker 1: worked for white employers elsewhere in the city, and this

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Speaker 1: was the case for a man important to our story

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Speaker 1: by the name of Dick Rowland. Dick Roland was a

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Speaker 1: young black man who worked in a downtown building shining shoes.

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Speaker 1: Restrooms at this point were segregated, and his workplace didn't

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Speaker 1: have a bathroom for black people, so his employer had

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Speaker 1: arranged for him to use one that was on the

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Speaker 1: top floor of the nearby Drexel Building. Sarah Page was

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Speaker 1: a young white woman who ran the Drexel Buildings elevator.

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Speaker 1: An incident passed between Roland and Page on May. Exactly

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Speaker 1: what happened is completely unclear. Her story changed at various points,

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Speaker 1: and there seems to be no testimony on record of

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Speaker 1: Dick Rowland. However, a clerk at a clothing store in

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Speaker 1: the Drexel building thought he heard a screen and he

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Speaker 1: saw Dick Roland hurrying out of the building, and he

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Speaker 1: called the police. The story that spread through Tulsa was

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Speaker 1: that Dick Roland had either raped or tried to rape

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Speaker 1: Sarah Page in broad daylight in the elevator. Roland was

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Speaker 1: arrested the next morning and held on the top floor

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Speaker 1: of the Tulsa Courthouse. The Tulsa Tribune, which was an

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Speaker 1: afternoon paper, covered his arrest on the thirty first, and

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Speaker 1: reported his crime as a physical attack, quote scratching her

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Speaker 1: hands and face and tearing her clothes. The paper also

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Speaker 1: reportedly published an editorial calling for Roland to be lynched. However,

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Speaker 1: no original copies of these articles exist. There are pieces

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Speaker 1: torn out of the bound copies of the paper that

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Speaker 1: were kept on record. The text of the story reporting

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Speaker 1: Roland's arrest is reprinted from a ninety six Masters thesis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are multiple eyewitness testimonies of people who who saw

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Speaker 1: these articles in the newspaper, but the actual copies of

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Speaker 1: the note of the newspaper no longer exist. Before we

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Speaker 1: talk about how this turned the scene at the courthouse

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Speaker 1: to one of a mob scene, let's take a brief

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Speaker 1: moment for a word from a sponsor that sounds grand.

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Speaker 1: By about seven thirty in the evening on May the

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Speaker 1: thirty one, a lynch mob had started to gather outside

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Speaker 1: the Tulsa Courthouse and the mob was demanding that Roland

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Speaker 1: be turned over to them. The sheriff refused to do this,

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Speaker 1: and word spread to the Greenwood district about what was

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Speaker 1: going on. People were positive that Roland was going to

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Speaker 1: be lynched. There had been thirty three recorded lynchings in

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Speaker 1: Oklahoma between the time it had been declared as a

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Speaker 1: state in nineteen o seven and nine, and seven of

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Speaker 1: the victims of those lynchings had been black. They also

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Speaker 1: had ample reason to doubt that the courthouse was a

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Speaker 1: secure place to keep Roland safe. There had been a

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Speaker 1: couple of really dramatic jail breaks from the courthouse and

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Speaker 1: the months leading up to this event, and the black

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Speaker 1: community was quite positive that if they did not protect Roland,

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Speaker 1: no one would, and that he was going to be lynched. So,

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Speaker 1: with all of that in mind, about twenty five African

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Speaker 1: American residents, many of whom were veterans of World War One,

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Speaker 1: armed themselves and went from Greenwood to the courthouse to

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Speaker 1: offer their assistance in defending him. The sheriff refused and

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Speaker 1: insisted that Roland was safe, and so the men went

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Speaker 1: back to Greenwood. However, the arrival of twenty five armed

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Speaker 1: black men on the scene really stirred up a lot

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Speaker 1: of fear and anger among the white mob outside the courthouse.

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Speaker 1: Word got to Major James A. Bell of the National

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Speaker 1: Guard that things were starting to look really ugly, and

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Speaker 1: even though the sheriff told him things were okay, he

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Speaker 1: quietly sent word to the other National guardsmen in the

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Speaker 1: area to come down to the armory. This was fortunate

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Speaker 1: because some of the mob from the courthouse then went

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Speaker 1: to the armory to try to get rifles and amy

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Speaker 1: mission for themselves, and they were stopped by the National

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Speaker 1: Guard members that Major Bell had summoned. Tensions continued to

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Speaker 1: grow for another couple of hours. The crowd at the

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Speaker 1: courthouse got bigger and bigger. Small groups of Greenwood residents

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Speaker 1: started patrolling the streets, armed both as recon and to

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Speaker 1: try to show that Greenwood was not entirely defenseless, and

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Speaker 1: the white community began to fear that an uprising was imminent.

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Speaker 1: Soon rumor reared its head again. At about ten PM,

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Speaker 1: word got back to Greenwood that a lynch mob was

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Speaker 1: breaking into the courthouse, and so this time it was

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Speaker 1: about seventy five armed African American men who made their

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Speaker 1: way there to once again offer their aid in keeping

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Speaker 1: Roland safe. So again the sheriff refused their help, and

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Speaker 1: as they turned to go back to Greenwood, one of

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Speaker 1: the white men tried to disarm one of the black men,

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Speaker 1: and in the ensuing scuffle, a shot was fired. It

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Speaker 1: was this spark that started the r at in Earnest.

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Speaker 1: More shots were fired in front of the courthouse, with

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Speaker 1: as many as a dozen people being killed there, and

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Speaker 1: as the dust settled, the black men, who were vastly outnumbered,

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Speaker 1: began falling back to Greenwood in a fighting retreat, with

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Speaker 1: the white mob in pursuit. Once the men were back

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Speaker 1: in Greenwood, things continued to get worse. Car loads of

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Speaker 1: white men started driving through black neighborhoods, just shooting it

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Speaker 1: discriminately into houses and at people on the street. White

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Speaker 1: vigilantes also broke into downtown Tulsas sporting goods stores to

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Speaker 1: steal guns and ammunition. Others went to some of the

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Speaker 1: white neighborhoods all night cafes and started a plan to

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Speaker 1: invade Greenwood the next morning. The law enforcement's action at

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Speaker 1: this point and Tulsa was to begin deputizing people including

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Speaker 1: members of the original lynch mob. Soon the National Guard

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Speaker 1: was ordered to aid local authorities. They did this by

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Speaker 1: setting up a perimeter around the northern edge of Tulsa's

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Speaker 1: white neighborhood to defend it against a counter attack, a

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Speaker 1: counter attack which never actually happened. People started setting fires

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Speaker 1: in Greenwood at about one am, and then the mob

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Speaker 1: prevented the fire department from trying to put the fires out,

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Speaker 1: so the fires spread really rapidly throughout the night. Both

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Speaker 1: the National Guard and local law enforcement wound up responding

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Speaker 1: to false reports of shots fired by black people in

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Speaker 1: white neighborhoods all over Tulsa, and they were doing this

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Speaker 1: rather than responding to the real reports of violence and

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Speaker 1: arson that we're going on in Greenwood. At one thirty

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Speaker 1: six am, the Chief of Police sent a telegram to

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Speaker 1: the state capitol which read race riot developed here, several killed,

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Speaker 1: Unable handle situation, request that National Guard forces be sent

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Speaker 1: by special train situations serious. This telegram was signed by

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Speaker 1: the Chief of Police, the sheriff, and a district judge.

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Speaker 1: A train was scheduled to leave Oklahoma City bound for

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Speaker 1: Tulsa at five am that morning, carrying about one hundred

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Speaker 1: additional National Guard troops during the night. A lot of

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Speaker 1: Greenwood residents stayed behind to try to defend their homes

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Speaker 1: and businesses, but many others fled. They took cards, taxis,

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Speaker 1: and other transportation north out of the city. Greenwood was

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Speaker 1: on the northern side of Tulsa, so the smith that

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Speaker 1: they didn't have to go back through Tulsa to try

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Speaker 1: to get away. Some people were able to take refuge

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Speaker 1: with their employers or other compassionate citizens on the Tulsa

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Speaker 1: side of town, but a lot of people were really

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Speaker 1: left mostly defenseless. Before the sun came up on June one,

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Speaker 1: an armed mob had gathered around the fringes of Greenwood.

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Speaker 1: Some of them were carrying weapons that had been provided

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Speaker 1: to them by public officials. In addition to the deputized

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Speaker 1: members of the lynch Mob, some of this crowd were

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Speaker 1: uniformed police officers and members of the National Guard. There

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Speaker 1: are also multiple eyewitness reports of airplanes in the skies

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Speaker 1: over Greenwood as the riot went on, although exactly what

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Speaker 1: was done from the airplanes is a little harder to substantiate.

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Speaker 1: There are reports that bombs are dropped that there's not

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Speaker 1: clear evidence to support that. It's pretty likely that there

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Speaker 1: were definitely people firing their guns from the airplanes though.

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Speaker 1: The train carrying the additional National Guard troops got to

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Speaker 1: Tulsa around nine fifteen am. These out of town troops

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Speaker 1: became known as the State troops, and this helps differentiate

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Speaker 1: them from the local National Guard that were part of

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Speaker 1: the rioting. But by that point most of Greenwood had

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Speaker 1: already been burned to the ground. Martial law was declared

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Speaker 1: at eleven nine am on June one, although by then

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Speaker 1: the riot had really mostly run its course. Once martial

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Speaker 1: law was declared, the State troops moved through Greenwood, putting

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Speaker 1: out fires, disarming the rioters who were still there, and

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Speaker 1: forcing them to go back to Tulsa. Order was restored

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Speaker 1: around eight pm on June one. The State troops also

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Speaker 1: took custody of African Americans who had been imprisoned by

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Speaker 1: vigilantes during the riot, but this was not exactly a rescue.

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Speaker 1: The State troops took every black person they could find

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Speaker 1: into custody in a mass arrest. People who had fled

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Speaker 1: the city were detained when they returned. It was supposedly

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Speaker 1: for people's own protection, but a clear part of the

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Speaker 1: motivation was the white community's ongoing fear of a black uprising.

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Speaker 1: In the end, about six thousand African Americans were held

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Speaker 1: at the convention Hall, and when they ran out of

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Speaker 1: room there at the fair grounds in the ball field.

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Speaker 1: Some black citizens were held for more than a week.

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Speaker 1: No one was released until a white person could vouch

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Speaker 1: for them and also take responsibility for their future behavior.

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Speaker 1: So before we talk about the aftermath of this riot,

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Speaker 1: let's take another brief moment for a word from a sponsor. So,

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Speaker 1: in this riot, Greenwood was virtually destroyed. They're five city

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Speaker 1: blocks were burned to the ground, and at least eight

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Speaker 1: hundred people sustained injuries that had to be treated. One thousand,

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Speaker 1: two hundred fifty six homes were destroyed, plus the hospital,

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Speaker 1: the library, some of the schools, and both of the

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Speaker 1: newspaper's offices. A couple of weeks after the riot, the

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Speaker 1: Nation reported that the damages totalled one point five million dollars,

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Speaker 1: although more recent estimates are multiple times higher than that.

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Speaker 1: And from the Tulsa Daily World the next day is

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Speaker 1: this quote. Personal belongings in household goods had been removed

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Speaker 1: from many homes impiled in the streets. On the steps

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Speaker 1: of a few houses that remained sat feeble and gray

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Speaker 1: negro men and women, and occasionally a small child. The

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Speaker 1: look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication.

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Speaker 1: Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence

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Speaker 1: to them whether they lived or died harmless themselves. They

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Speaker 1: apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men

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Speaker 1: who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their

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Speaker 1: friends and neighbors, and just as deliberately shoot them in

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Speaker 1: their tracks. Doctor Robert Bridgewater and his wife Maddie were

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Speaker 1: two of the fortunate few to have had their homes

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Speaker 1: spared by the fire, but they got to it to

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Speaker 1: find that their possessions had all been destroyed. Doctor Bridgewater

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Speaker 1: wrote quote, I saw my piano and all of my

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Speaker 1: elegant furniture piled in the street. My safe had been

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Speaker 1: broken open, all of my money stolen. Also my silverware,

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Speaker 1: cut glass, All of the family clothes and everything of

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Speaker 1: value had been removed, even my family bible, my electric

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Speaker 1: light pictures were broken. All of the window lights and

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Speaker 1: glass and the doors were broken. The floors were covered

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Speaker 1: literally speaking with glass. Even the phone was torn from

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Speaker 1: the wall, and there's actually a photo that's part of

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Speaker 1: the historical record of this event, and it shows massive

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Speaker 1: columns of smoke rising from the Greenwood District. Written across

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Speaker 1: it and misspelled is running the Negro out of Tulsa.

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Speaker 1: A photo of the charred body of one of the

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Speaker 1: victims was also used as a postcard. At the time,

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Speaker 1: official estimates put the death toll at nine white people

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Speaker 1: and twenty six black people, but pretty much immediately everyone

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Speaker 1: knew that those numbers were way too low. We'll never

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Speaker 1: really know the official number because birth records at the

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Speaker 1: time are incomplete, and many of the African Americans who

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Speaker 1: were killed were buried in unmarked mass graves or thrown

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Speaker 1: into the Arkansas River. Funeral Home records report burials of

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Speaker 1: many people identified only as quote unknown Negro in the

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Speaker 1: days after the riot. More recent investigations suggest that more

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Speaker 1: like three hundred people were killed, with the overwhelming majority

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Speaker 1: of them being African American, and the riot forced most

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Speaker 1: of Tulsa's African American population into homelessness. The city and

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Speaker 1: its residents made things hard on those who had lost

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Speaker 1: their homes in the hopes of forcing people to resettle elsewhere.

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Speaker 1: They even passed a fire ordinance specifically designed to keep

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Speaker 1: people from rebuilding, although it was overturned as unconstitutional about

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Speaker 1: four years later. Even so, Tulsa's black community set to

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Speaker 1: work rebuilding Greenwood, but it was a slow process, so

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Speaker 1: many of them spent the following winter living in tents.

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Speaker 1: With the exception of the Red Cross and white residents

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Speaker 1: of surrounding communities, the black community got very little help

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Speaker 1: in its rebuilding efforts. The city of Tulsa, as we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: actively discouraged the rebuilding effort. On the legal end of things, UH,

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Speaker 1: Dick Roland's charges were ultimately dismissed. A grand jury convened

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Speaker 1: to investigate what had happened UH, and they found Tulsa's

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Speaker 1: black population responsible for the riot. About seventy black men

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Speaker 1: were charged with inciting the riot, although none of them

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Speaker 1: were ultimately convicted. J. B. Stratford was one. He fled

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Speaker 1: Oklahoma for Illinois, eventually building a law practice in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: He died in five and in nine, following his family's

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Speaker 1: fight to clear his name, he was finally cleared of

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Speaker 1: all charges. No white person was ever tried for any

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Speaker 1: of the murders or arsons that took place or with

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Speaker 1: any other criminal act associated with the riot. Immediately after

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Speaker 1: the riot, the event was international news, and in the

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Speaker 1: weeks that followed, papers across the US published scathing editorials

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Speaker 1: condemning what had happened. Journalists called it both a disgrace

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Speaker 1: and a horror. But then it really fell from view

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Speaker 1: for pretty much everyone who did not directly live through it.

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Speaker 1: History books that were published in Oklahoma made no mention

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Speaker 1: of it for more than twenty years, and even then

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Speaker 1: it was very brief and glossed over. People began to

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Speaker 1: investigate and write about this riot following the Civil rights movement,

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Speaker 1: although the first people to blaze this trail were really

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Speaker 1: met with threats of violence. Eventually in the state of

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Speaker 1: Oklahoma formed a commission that was meant to investigate what

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Speaker 1: it had been and to create clear documentation of the riot.

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Speaker 1: The commission was also to make a recommendation of whether

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Speaker 1: reparations should be paid to the survivors and their descendants.

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Speaker 1: Calls for reparations had actually started almost immediately after the

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Speaker 1: riot was over. In one Judge Loyal J. Martin, who

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Speaker 1: had been the mayor, said quote, Tulsa can only redeem

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Speaker 1: herself from the countrywide shame and humiliation into which she

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Speaker 1: is today plunged by complete restitution and rehabilitation of the

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Speaker 1: destroyed black Belt. The rest of the United States must

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Speaker 1: know that the real citizenship of Tulsa weeps at this

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Speaker 1: inspeakable crime and will make good the damage so far

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Speaker 1: as it can be done to the last penny. The

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Speaker 1: report of the Oklahoma Commission to study the Tulsa Race

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Speaker 1: Riot of one called the event quote late to be

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Speaker 1: acknowledged and still to be repaired, and the commission's report

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Speaker 1: argued really strongly in favor of reparations, including direct reparations

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Speaker 1: paid to the survivors who were still living in their

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Speaker 1: descendants at this point, though many of the people who

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Speaker 1: had lived through the riot had died. When the commission

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Speaker 1: put out its final report, the riot was almost eighty

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Speaker 1: years in the past, but still alive were the children

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Speaker 1: and grandchildren of the people who had survived the riot

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Speaker 1: and of some people who had been killed. The state

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Speaker 1: legislature established scholarships, a memorial, and an economic development initiative

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Speaker 1: for Greenwood, but it declined to make actual reparations to

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Speaker 1: survivors and their descendants. As sort of a side note,

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Speaker 1: a lot of articles about the Tulsa race riot and

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Speaker 1: about the destruction of what was known as Black Wall

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Speaker 1: Street say that the riot was a result of clan activity,

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Speaker 1: and while the Ku Klux Klan had been re established

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Speaker 1: in Atlanta in nineteen fifteen and it was definitely growing

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Speaker 1: all around the United States, there's not really evidence to

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Speaker 1: suggest that the Ku Klux Klan specifically was active in

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Speaker 1: Tulsa or was part of the riot. However, one of

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Speaker 1: the consequences or the ramifications after the riot was that

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Speaker 1: the clan really started to flourish in Oklahoma once the

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Speaker 1: riot was over. We've had so many people request this

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Speaker 1: particular subject, and it's one that, unsurprisingly, based on having

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Speaker 1: learned that it was so conscientiously not discussed for so

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Speaker 1: many years, is one that I was not really familiar

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Speaker 1: with before doing research on it. Thanks so much for

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Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out

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Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or

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Speaker 1: a Facebook U r L or something similar over the

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Speaker 1: course of the show that could be obsolete. Now. Our

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Speaker 1: current email address is History Podcast at I Heart radio

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Speaker 1: dot com. Our old how Stuff Works email address no

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Speaker 1: longer works, and you can find us all over social

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Speaker 1: media at Missed in History and you can subscribe to

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Speaker 1: our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart

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Speaker 1: Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff

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Speaker 1: you Missed in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

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