WEBVTT - What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.520 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:11.200 brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.280 of scientists and historians is on the verge of unearthing 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.000 a chunk of the city's past that has long been buried, 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.160 and one that some people may prefer to keep that way. 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:23.640 It's a potential mass grave from the worst single incident 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:29.400 of interracial violence in American history. Beginning May thirty one, 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.320 thousands of armed white Toulson's invaded the black section of 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:37.080 the booming oil town, terrorizing its residents, looting their homes 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.080 and businesses, and burning to the ground some thirty five 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.360 square blocks of the city. Before the rampage was over, 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.600 more than ten thousand Black people were left homeless, and 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.440 more than six thousand were interned in camps, where they'd stay, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.800 in some cases for months. We spoke with Scott Ellsworth, 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.680 a native Tulson and a professor of African American history 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.640 at the University of Michigan. Ellsworth is the author of 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.120 the nine and eighty two book Death in a Promised Land, 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:04.480 one of the first books to take a comprehensive and 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:08.240 historical look at the Tulsa race massacre, previously mystically called 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.640 the Tulsa Race Riot of ninety one. He said, to 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:16.240 this day, we don't know how many died. Reasonable estimates 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.600 range from I would say forty too as high as 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:23.320 three hundred. When the unmarked but suspected mass grave in 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:27.480 a Tulsa cemetery is excavated in July, it may provide 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.440 a few answers to exactly what happened over those two days. 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:34.440 In it will be for many a literal reopening of 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.560 a wound that's festered within the city for nearly a century. 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.080 The Tulsa Race Massacre of nine one did not, in 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.959 a word often used to describe such events, erupt. The 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.520 city simply reached what now seems an inevitable breaking point. 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.080 In early Tulsa was a wash with cash from the 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.000 oil boom. The good fortune reached into the north section 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.960 of the city, mostly populated by Black Americans. That area, 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.040 later to be known as the Black Wall Street, contained 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.520 a hundred ninety one businesses, including hotels, a feed store, 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.720 a roller, ink cleaners, mom and pop stores, and restaurants, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.760 plus offices for doctors, dentists, and lawyers. The area had 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:17.960 at least five churches too, a library, a movie theater, 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.280 and a hospital. Like the rest of the city at 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.320 that time, the black area also known as Greenwood had 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.880 its problems. Alcohol, even under prohibition, was readily available. Illegal 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.240 drugs were easy to find too, as we're gambling and prostitution. 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.280 The whole city, not just Greenwood, struggled with crime and 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:40.000 with lawless punishment. Less than a year before, a white 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.720 teenager accused of murder was taken from his jail cell 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.720 and lynched by a white mob. The police did little 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:50.560 to protect him, and racial violence against black people was commonplace, 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.440 even though thousands of black Americans had just returned from 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:56.840 fighting in World War One. Jim Crow laws and pervasive 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.680 racist attitudes meant that a quality remained nothing more than 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.440 a dream for black Americans, and many white Americans wanted 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.360 to keep it that way. Ellsworth wrote in a two 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.920 thousand one report commissioned by the state of Oklahoma on 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.480 the then called riot that quote. During the weeks and 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:14.760 months leading up to the riot, there were more than 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.880 a few white Toulson's who not only feared the color 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:21.120 line was in danger of being slowly erased, but believed 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:26.360 that this was already happening. So into that explosive milieu, 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:29.520 a black teenaged boy working as a shoeshiner had a 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.920 brief run in with a white teenaged girl operating an elevator, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:38.640 and the fuse was lit. The boy was taken into custody. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.000 A group of more than two thousand angry white people, 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.960 some intent on lynching him, possibly prompted by an inflammatory 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.600 editorial in a white run newspaper, gathered on the courthouse steps. 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.960 Some armed black war veterans and others squared off with 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:55.640 them there, and soon shots were fired. White people from 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:57.760 all over the city began their march on the Greenwood 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.520 area to tamp down what many white people saw as 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:04.920 an uprising. There are stories of black citizens being murdered 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.560 in their homes, interrupted in their evening prayers. The terror 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:12.120 went on for eighteen hours into June one. Despite their 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.240 sworn duty to serve and protect, neither Tulsa Police nor 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.640 any other government agency assisted the black population. Instead, Tulsa 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.680 police officers helped set some fires, and an all white 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:26.400 unit of the National Guard joined the invaders. Other public 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.680 officials provided guns and AMMO to white men. The KKK 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.800 got involved. A semi functioning machine gun was used on 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:36.560 Black Tulson's, and some reports indicate that airplanes dropped homemade 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:42.000 fire starters. Despite being largely outnumbered, Black Toulson's fought to 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.440 protect their homes and businesses, and most of all, Greenwood, 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.960 but in the end, scores of black people and some 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.160 white people were killed and Greenwood was left in ruins. 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:55.480 The exact numbers of injured and dead, even after what's 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.719 to be uncovered in three suspected mass graves, may never 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:03.400 be known. It's still unclear exactly what happened between the 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.800 black shoeshine boy Dick Rowland and the white elevator girl 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.440 Sarah Page to spark the massacre, though one thing is known. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:18.120 She refused to bring charges. Roland was vindicated. For years, 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:21.280 Tulsa refused to acknowledge in any meaningful way what had 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:25.039 happened in ninety one. Nobody has ever been charged or 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.800 prosecuted for the crimes that occurred during those eighteen or 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.440 so hours. Even those who grew up there, Ellsworth included, 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.520 were not taught that part of the city's history. The 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:38.120 Tulsa race massacre became a terrible and closely held secret 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.279 that began to change with Ellsworth's death in a Promised 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:46.839 Land and some earlier work. Then in nine when members 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.360 of the national media descended on Oklahoma City after the 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:51.960 bombing of the federal building, they were informed of this 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:56.239 other more terrible episode of domestic terrorism in the state's history. 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.200 More news accounts and more books of the massacre followed, 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:03.520 and in twenty nineteen, the HBO comic book superhero series Watchman, 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.920 inspired in part by Tulsa, enlightened many more to the story. 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.160 But Tulsa's failed efforts to come to grips with its 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:16.000 deadly past has left scars. Ellsworth said, the city was 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.320 robbed of its honesty. You have entire generations growing up 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.400 in Tulsa who have never heard of this. You have 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.320 people growing up with a false reality, a false vision 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.480 of the land they were on. I mean, imagine if today, 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.000 right now, that you had young people growing up in 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.920 Manhattan who had never heard of nine eleven, that there 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.080 were no books to talk about nine eleven. That it's 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.159 as if it didn't exist. The Race massacre was a 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:41.520 gigantic myth in the history of Tulsa. It was deliberately 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:46.000 buried for a long time. With the unearthing of one 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.280 of at least three suspected mass graves in Tulsa. Next 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:51.560 month will mark another step in the long road to 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:57.159 understanding and perhaps one day, recovery. Ellsworth said, I know 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.039 that this has been a process that has been going 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:01.840 on for a while now. It's caused people to kind 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:04.040 of re evaluate how they look at the past, how 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.600 they look at their town, and what's going on. I 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.640 think that's been a liberating process for some people. It's 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:17.360 been a very difficult one for others. Today's episode was 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.000 written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:21.800 more on this and lots of other topics, visit how 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.040 Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.400 For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.920 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:30.600 favorite shows.