Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should know a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over here. We have all come together in
Speaker 1: the year where our silver jumpsuits as always I know, right,
Speaker 1: and talk about a buried, overlooked blemish in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States. Are we not gonna recount know
Speaker 1: anything about this past year? Talk about this being the
Speaker 1: first recording of the new year. All right, we've had
Speaker 1: a break here, I said, I'm gonna push forward. We've
Speaker 1: been off for a couple of weeks, which was pretty
Speaker 1: glorious to not have to just over text my brain.
Speaker 1: But it is also nice to get back in here
Speaker 1: to the stank of this room. This room, I don't
Speaker 1: think this room stinks well right now. It smells like
Speaker 1: you're caramel vanilla frappe lape. This is just black coffee.
Speaker 1: This happens to be flavor. It's really I mean, it
Speaker 1: smells great. It's I think a green mountain or something.
Speaker 1: Caramel vanilla coffee pot. Man, it is super fragrant. It's
Speaker 1: nice in a great way. It makes me. It smells
Speaker 1: like an ice cream Sunday. It's pleasant, it is very pleasant,
Speaker 1: but it's not doing the job. Like I'm still I'm
Speaker 1: a little tired, a little groggy. You know, I had
Speaker 1: a four shot latte earlier, and so I'm kind of gotcha.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what I mean. I'm zippy and go downstairs
Speaker 1: to I know you don't like to pay for coffee,
Speaker 1: but go downstairs to Spiller Park Hugh Atchison's place a
Speaker 1: four shot latte. Yes, okay, that has me going. Well,
Speaker 1: I give it about a half hour before Chuck crashes everybody. Yeah, seriously, anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be back. Well, I'm glad you're back
Speaker 1: to You know, we've been here the whole time. This
Speaker 1: is where you spent Christmas and New Year's Yes, both
Speaker 1: in this room and Thanksgiving, and I guess you, me
Speaker 1: and Momo slept over there in the corner. They come
Speaker 1: to visit sometimes they say, please, please come on, please
Speaker 1: stop working. I say, I can't. They slide the food
Speaker 1: trade through the slot. Um you know where I got
Speaker 1: this idea, And I know you haven't watched it, but
Speaker 1: the Watchmen I came across mention of that. I was like,
Speaker 1: why is everybody talking about the Watchman with the Tulsa
Speaker 1: race riot, or more appropriately, why is everyone all of
Speaker 1: a sudden talking about the Tulsa massacre? Yeah? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the Watchman really put it on the map in a
Speaker 1: big way. Uh, utilize it quite well in the storyline.
Speaker 1: And I have a recommendation for everyone, even though it
Speaker 1: is a marketing piece. There's a thing in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: called the Massacre of Black Wall Street, paid for by HBO,
Speaker 1: but it's a It tells the story in comic book
Speaker 1: form in the Atlantic, and I didn't notice it was
Speaker 1: a marketing piece until afterward. But well, it's still good, sure,
Speaker 1: as long as the contents good. Yeah, it's cool and
Speaker 1: very well done. So um, this is like, it's great
Speaker 1: that The Watchman has brought attention to this because it
Speaker 1: wasn't until about two thousand one, maybe the late nineties
Speaker 1: really that people started talking about this and this this
Speaker 1: event that we're going to talk about happened in and
Speaker 1: almost the week after, basically the week after, everyone said,
Speaker 1: don't talk about this, just forget it ever happened. We
Speaker 1: was moving forward and we're going to bury the past,
Speaker 1: literally buried people, the evidence, all this stuff that was
Speaker 1: buried and people just acted like nothing happened in Tulsa,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma for eighty years. And when you hear what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about, it's astounding that the community, both
Speaker 1: black and white, agreed to just basically pretend this never happened,
Speaker 1: at least publicly civically. Yeah, and um, it's hard to
Speaker 1: find some of some information still on some of the
Speaker 1: key events, and definitely some of the key players because
Speaker 1: a lot of them died of old age without ever
Speaker 1: having been interviewed. Yeah, no follow ups, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it, but a couple of the most
Speaker 1: key players is like, this is kind of all we know, right.
Speaker 1: I looked them up to and it's like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean you have no idea even who this this
Speaker 1: guy was? Let alone? You know what became of him
Speaker 1: or what? What do you mean? Like you just no
Speaker 1: one kept track. But that's how complete and total this
Speaker 1: cover up was. It was a cover up. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. First. Let's talk about Greenwood, which I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with. But Greenwood was a an affluent,
Speaker 1: I guess almost suburb adjacent to Tulsa, just north of Tulsa.
Speaker 1: And what was odd about the fact that it was
Speaker 1: a fluent is that it was an all black community
Speaker 1: in you know, the turn of the last century, and
Speaker 1: yet it was one of the most affluent communities in
Speaker 1: the entire United States. Yeah. I mean, now it's just
Speaker 1: part of Tulsa like a neighborhood. But back then just
Speaker 1: sort of like my neighborhood would have been a suburb
Speaker 1: of Atlanta in the nineteen twenties, even though I'm you know,
Speaker 1: five miles from downtown exactly. But in ninety one, it was,
Speaker 1: like you said, super affluent. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: I think there were ten thousand black residents there. It's
Speaker 1: called the Black Wall Street like I mentioned, and six
Speaker 1: hundred businesses. There were fifteen African American millionaires living in
Speaker 1: this district. Yeah, fifteen black millionaires in nine in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it and it wasn't I mean, like the whole
Speaker 1: area was very well to do. There was like indoor plumbing,
Speaker 1: the public schools there were like top notch, and in
Speaker 1: many cases Greenwood had a lot to boast about that,
Speaker 1: Like the white areas in Tulsa just over the railroad
Speaker 1: tracks literally on the other side of the tracks. Um,
Speaker 1: didn't have like that, Like, this is far better off
Speaker 1: than some parts of white Tulsa. Yeah, including uh, one
Speaker 1: of the top African American surgeons, if not the top
Speaker 1: in the country, endorsed by the Doctor Mayo himself, the
Speaker 1: Mayo Brothers. Yeah, this guy's Dr. A. C. Jackson, and
Speaker 1: he was one of the people murdered in this massacre. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say there was a spoiler, but I
Speaker 1: guess we've already kind of mentioned there's a massacre coming, right, Yeah, So, um,
Speaker 1: just to take a step back even further. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive to think of, like, this is the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow era United States. This is we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: the this massacre took place in that's you know, fifty
Speaker 1: years after the end of the Civil War UM. And
Speaker 1: in many ways the Jim Crow era was just as
Speaker 1: bad as the Antebellum slavery era. But so the idea
Speaker 1: to us today looking back at this time of well,
Speaker 1: there's a black community um in Oklahoma that was one
Speaker 1: of the most affluent areas in the country. It's kind
Speaker 1: of mind boggling. But if you dig even deeper into
Speaker 1: how it was formed, almost you developed like a sense
Speaker 1: of pride in this that these these these people came
Speaker 1: together under these conditions and not only like survived, but
Speaker 1: like thrived and created a carved out a place for
Speaker 1: themselves where like being black was celebrated and where you
Speaker 1: could be proud and you took pride in your home,
Speaker 1: in your children and your children's education and the health
Speaker 1: care that they were getting, in the bus service, and
Speaker 1: the quality of the theater that you went to, um,
Speaker 1: the confectionery, the soda fountain, like that's where you went
Speaker 1: to go, like proposed marriage. Like it was just incredibly
Speaker 1: developed community. And the one of the ways that it
Speaker 1: was that it was able to flourish and was able
Speaker 1: to kind of grow like this is because the first
Speaker 1: thing that that Oklahoma did when it became a state.
Speaker 1: Remember it was originally a territory for forced relocation of
Speaker 1: Native Americans and their African slaves to this area. Um.
Speaker 1: When it became a state, when the white settlers came
Speaker 1: in and said, no, we want this instead, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take this territory we gave you away and turn into state.
Speaker 1: The first piece of legislation they passed was that um,
Speaker 1: black people have to stay in their own area. They
Speaker 1: can't marry outside their race, they can't frequent white owned businesses,
Speaker 1: they have to stay over here. And so the people
Speaker 1: agree would say, fine with us. We're going to pass
Speaker 1: a covenant that says you have to be a black
Speaker 1: person to own land here, or to even rent a
Speaker 1: place here, to own a business here. There's a it's
Speaker 1: a covenant restricted community. And we're gonna take a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of pride and in circulating our currency, our hard
Speaker 1: earned money that we're making by working for these white
Speaker 1: businesses that we're not allowed to patronize. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: make our own businesses over here, and we're going to
Speaker 1: support them with our with our community, not only because
Speaker 1: we can't spend our money elsewhere, but because we have
Speaker 1: a lot of pride in the businesses that we've built
Speaker 1: over here. And so in this way, Greenwood flourished because
Speaker 1: of and in spite of these Jim Crow era laws
Speaker 1: that that black people had to deal with in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, and this was Dave Rouse helped
Speaker 1: put us together, put this together, and some of the
Speaker 1: research he got was from the book The Burning Colon
Speaker 1: Massacre destruction and the Tulsa race ride of by Tim Madigan,
Speaker 1: uh and very astutely points out that this was this
Speaker 1: happened in Oklahoma, of course, but this kind of thing
Speaker 1: was happening all over the country. Um, not just in
Speaker 1: the South or the what you called Oklahoma. I guess
Speaker 1: the West Moodwest, Yeah, but not Midwest. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think we just call it Oklahoma. It's interesting some
Speaker 1: people there identify with the South, but if you're from Georgia,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma might as well be you know, Montana. I think
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma is like Native America. Yeah. And then what
Speaker 1: it says on the license plate, maybe it says the
Speaker 1: middle of the country with oh, with a little apostar
Speaker 1: and there's a picture of the Mountain Doolo going. But um,
Speaker 1: this was happening everywhere. There were In nineteen nineteen, there
Speaker 1: were two dozen race riots, um in places like Chicago, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. St. Louis. Uh. In between the end of
Speaker 1: the Civil War and World War Two, there were more
Speaker 1: than four thousand lynchings in the United States, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's important to point that out because what
Speaker 1: and we'll get into the story here, but a lynching
Speaker 1: is what was the aim of the white people of
Speaker 1: Oklahoma on this night. Right, but I have seen also
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I went to so much
Speaker 1: um lengths to explain Greenwood and part was too because
Speaker 1: to show what was lost here, but also to show
Speaker 1: um there's there are a lot of people who consider
Speaker 1: this massacre to have been carried out or fueled in
Speaker 1: part by envy, because the people of Greena were so
Speaker 1: much better off in some instances than the white people
Speaker 1: who were carrying out this massacre. All right, maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break, No, and then we'll come back. Man,
Speaker 1: we gotta start with an argument over a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it, all right, let's take a break. We'll
Speaker 1: come back and talk a little bit about the beginnings
Speaker 1: of what would end up being the Tulsa massacre. All right,
Speaker 1: So we should talk about the key player here, or players,
Speaker 1: And in this case it is Diamond Dick Rowland, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest names I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. He was a shoeshine boy in Tulsa,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, he was smart, and he was
Speaker 1: a handsome young guy, and he was uh sort of
Speaker 1: a man about town. He was popular with the ladies,
Speaker 1: had the world on a string. Yeah, pretty much. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was a girl named Sarah Page who ran an
Speaker 1: elevator at the Drexel Building, a building that I have
Speaker 1: walked past with my own two feet. Oh wow. Right,
Speaker 1: and she was white. She was white, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Dick thought she was cute and he would go down
Speaker 1: there and basically kind of make up excuses to ride
Speaker 1: her elevator. Okay, I saw something different than that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that he was on the elevator because he
Speaker 1: was he could use the segregated bathroom on the top
Speaker 1: floor of the Drugtle building only, so he had to
Speaker 1: ride up the elevator up and down to get to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, the closest bathroom for him to be able
Speaker 1: to use. That's what I saw. So you're saying he
Speaker 1: didn't fancy Sarah Page, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But I also saw a different explanation for why he
Speaker 1: would have been on the elevator as often as he
Speaker 1: supposedly was. All right, maybe it was both. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: he went to the bathroom a little more often than
Speaker 1: he had to because they did think Sarah Paget who knows.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they necessarily contradict each other. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying I've seen other explanations as well that I said,
Speaker 1: that's not a very loyally for some reason, didn't it. Man?
Speaker 1: Maybe this is uh the new Yu Matlock. Josh Clark
Speaker 1: esquire a spree that's different than esquire. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: we should probably also point out that, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: mixed race couples still get sideways looks in some parts
Speaker 1: of America today, but certainly in nineteen twenty one and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea of a black man fancying a white woman,
Speaker 1: he was even looking at a white woman. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was not only um untoward, but like a threat worthy
Speaker 1: of a lynching. Right. It was still that time in
Speaker 1: America where, um, if you made any advances, that was
Speaker 1: sort of the biggest fear for some white men was
Speaker 1: black men coming in and taking quote unquote their women. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: which was character popularized thanks to Birth of a Nation,
Speaker 1: which depicts the clan you know, coming to the aid
Speaker 1: of white women who were about to be raped by
Speaker 1: maniacal black men who just couldn't couldn't help themselves. They
Speaker 1: were just so uh in love with white women. That
Speaker 1: they just had to ripe. That was just what black
Speaker 1: guys did. That was the view of black guys at
Speaker 1: the time, right, that that's just how it was so
Speaker 1: to white people. Um, you like you you kept an
Speaker 1: eye out for that, Like when you saw a black
Speaker 1: man and there's a white woman over there, you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that he wasn't going to you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the mentality that people were walking around with
Speaker 1: back then. Yeah, that movie was actually partially shot in
Speaker 1: my old neighborhood in l A. You have a lot
Speaker 1: to do with this episode. Well, it's just weird to
Speaker 1: think about Birth of a Nation, uh, you know being
Speaker 1: shot in Los Felis, which is this very like kind
Speaker 1: of hip community and on the east side of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: But anyway, on May uh, Dick Roland went into that
Speaker 1: elevator to either flirt or use the restroom or both.
Speaker 1: And what I saw was that the it was well
Speaker 1: known that the third floor um landing did not land
Speaker 1: flush with the threshold, and supposedly this is why, as
Speaker 1: the story goes, Dick Roland tripped when he was getting
Speaker 1: onto the elevator. So maybe if that bathroom was on
Speaker 1: the third floor, that could make sense. I heard top floor.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many floors, I don't remember. Actually
Speaker 1: it was it more than I don't know, I don't remember. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just I don't think they call a building this
Speaker 1: something building if it only has three floors, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, you're probably right, that's like an eight
Speaker 1: plus floor like Moniker. I think you're probably right. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, he gets on the elevator. As the
Speaker 1: story goes, Uh stumbles getting on and kind of falls
Speaker 1: forward and grabs her arm, which was kind of the
Speaker 1: first thing that he could get a hold of to
Speaker 1: keep from falling. As the story goes, she started beating
Speaker 1: him over the head with her purse because I guess
Speaker 1: it's an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and she didn't have
Speaker 1: a rolling pin. And the elevator opened. On the ground floor.
Speaker 1: People see this sort of scuffle going on, or what
Speaker 1: appears to be a scuffle. She allegedly cries out that
Speaker 1: she had been assaulted, and people on the first floor
Speaker 1: called the police as Dick flees on foot. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, no one knows exactly how this went down.
Speaker 1: No one even knows exactly who Diamond Dick Roland was
Speaker 1: or Sarah page for that matter always are. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: we found out what was that she was an orphan.
Speaker 1: She could have been a younger sixteen. I've seen reports
Speaker 1: of seventeen and was working to pay her way through
Speaker 1: business college. And that's what the Tulsa Tribune reported like
Speaker 1: the day after. Yeah, and I saw that elsewhere. But
Speaker 1: I also saw like literally nothing else about her. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything. And then Dick Roland, they think that
Speaker 1: he might have possibly been named Jimmy Jones. I saw
Speaker 1: that too, and who was raised by his grandparents whose
Speaker 1: last name was Roland, so he took their name. And
Speaker 1: there is a guy who would have matched his birthdate
Speaker 1: named Jimmy Jones that they found buried in Tulsa, but
Speaker 1: he died like two months before these events took place,
Speaker 1: so it couldn't have possibly been him. Yeah, there were
Speaker 1: a few years apart two I think, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable that so much that this is lost to history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these two people who set the off this one of
Speaker 1: the one of the most despicable events that has ever
Speaker 1: taken place in this country's history, just vanish almost after
Speaker 1: this point. It's just you guys played your role. Now
Speaker 1: everyone else is going to step in. So Dick goes home, Um,
Speaker 1: his mom, he I guess. He tells his mom what happened,
Speaker 1: and she obviously was pretty scared right away because she
Speaker 1: knew probably what this meant. But for that night, at least,
Speaker 1: nothing really happened. Um. The next day he goes out
Speaker 1: to meet up with some friends and the Tulsa police
Speaker 1: pull up and, uh take him in basically on an
Speaker 1: assault charge, right, which is I don't know why they
Speaker 1: didn't go pick him up at home or whatever, but
Speaker 1: they also read somewhere that they had arrested him on
Speaker 1: the spot. But the what you're you're recounting matches what
Speaker 1: I've seen mostwhere, right, Yeah, But that's that's history, especially
Speaker 1: suppressed history. Right. One person writes, and then somebody else reports,
Speaker 1: and then enough people reported, and then that's fact exactly,
Speaker 1: that's the story. But so either way he came into
Speaker 1: police custody, we know that is the way it is.
Speaker 1: And then this is like a white sheriff named William Sullivan,
Speaker 1: I think, right, William McCullough. McCullough I was very close. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when you're starting to read the story, you hear
Speaker 1: about this, you know, white mustache sheriff and immediately think,
Speaker 1: oh boy, this guy's in trouble. Well, this guy had
Speaker 1: replaced the last guy that he was trouble. Right, who
Speaker 1: would allowed um, a white mob to take uh an
Speaker 1: arrested black man out of his custody and lynch him.
Speaker 1: Oh it says here was a white person. Is that
Speaker 1: not true? I think that's wrong. Okay, either way, he
Speaker 1: let somebody be lynched by an angry mob. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I thought for sure Sheriff McCullough was going to do.
Speaker 1: But apparently McCullough was intent on kind of going by
Speaker 1: the book. He followed the Hectate school of sheriff ing,
Speaker 1: how don't you know what that from from to kill
Speaker 1: a mockingbird? Oh right, right, which was, hey, let's let
Speaker 1: the all play out, let's give him a stay in court.
Speaker 1: There will be no lynchings on my watch. So he
Speaker 1: took um. He took Diamond Dick up to a room
Speaker 1: on the upper floor. The only way to get there
Speaker 1: was this one staircase. So he basically strategically hit him out,
Speaker 1: went down to this white crowd and said, there's not
Speaker 1: going to be any lynching today. Like Chuck said, the
Speaker 1: thing is we've left out a really important point here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like why was there a white crowd to begin with?
Speaker 1: There is a newspaper that was called the Tulsa Tribune
Speaker 1: that um ran an article about Sarah Page being assaulted.
Speaker 1: This is a news article, and the headline for said
Speaker 1: news article was nabbed negro for attacking girl and elevator.
Speaker 1: Not people might nab negro for attacking girl and elevator
Speaker 1: police worried white mob might not. It's nabbed like go
Speaker 1: do this. That was the headline for the article. Editorial
Speaker 1: took it even a step further. And this is the
Speaker 1: day after this event took place. Yeah, the editorial was
Speaker 1: to lynch Negro tonight. And I gotta say, whoever is
Speaker 1: writing these headlines, it's inflammatory, of course, but they also
Speaker 1: don't make much sense. The poor construction. They're very poor construction.
Speaker 1: And I went to try and find the micro film
Speaker 1: of this, and um, I think the first one is available,
Speaker 1: but blurry the second one. The only copy of that
Speaker 1: paper they have is a front page with an article
Speaker 1: cut out that scanned in and everyone's like, it must
Speaker 1: this must have been that editorial, But I literally couldn't
Speaker 1: find any you know, because I was kind of curious
Speaker 1: to read just how poor of a writer this person
Speaker 1: was and get you know, probably what would not have
Speaker 1: been accurate details. No, no, so no they I mean
Speaker 1: they basically reported in the first one, in the actual article, um,
Speaker 1: that her her her clothes have been torn at they
Speaker 1: been They really characterize it like he attacked her assault
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um. And then the second one is just
Speaker 1: basically like an all out editorial calling for Dick Rowland's lynching.
Speaker 1: This is in the paper so that the local newspaper
Speaker 1: has inflamed them, the white citizenry, into basically calling them
Speaker 1: to action, to go do something about this. And they
Speaker 1: all show up at the courthouse, um to to demand
Speaker 1: that Sheriff McCullough hand over Dick Roland to them so
Speaker 1: they can go lynch him. And he says no, back off, no,
Speaker 1: But so before but I think he tells them like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not doing that like you said. But um,
Speaker 1: before the crowd disperses, a second group comes and it's
Speaker 1: actually a group of World War One veterans from Greenwood
Speaker 1: who had found out that that that this white mob
Speaker 1: was going to lynch Dick Roland. And they were like, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're not. We're going to go see to it that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Yeah. I mean, there were hundreds of w
Speaker 1: W one veterans, black veterans in Greenwood. UM. They were
Speaker 1: people who fought for this country. And it's sort of
Speaker 1: that familiar despicable story, shed blood on European soil, come
Speaker 1: back home to America, and you're still a second class citizen.
Speaker 1: They had petition to UH and this is just sort
Speaker 1: of a sidebar. They had petitioned to UH walk in
Speaker 1: the Memorial Day parade UH for many years and we're
Speaker 1: always refused. And was Memorial Day and that that same
Speaker 1: year they had once again said can we participate in
Speaker 1: the Memorial Day Parade as veterans And they say no,
Speaker 1: we're only going to honor the white veterans. Now, I
Speaker 1: think they wanted to be integrated in the parade with
Speaker 1: the white veterans, just as World War One veterans marching together.
Speaker 1: And they said, no, whites only, you can march by yourself.
Speaker 1: And when they did march, they were taunted and jeered
Speaker 1: at by the people who are watching the parade. So
Speaker 1: these to the people that got guns and came down
Speaker 1: there and said not on our watch. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: let this happen. Uh. And it kind of plays out
Speaker 1: as a film, you know, from the sounds of it
Speaker 1: is like these cars pull in and part the crowd,
Speaker 1: and uh, these black veterans get out with their guns
Speaker 1: and then they're like, no, you're not taking this this kid,
Speaker 1: this is not going to happen, right. So, um, apparently
Speaker 1: Sheriff McCullough I was able to convince the Greenwood World
Speaker 1: War One veterans who showed up that he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to hand over dick roll and that he's going to
Speaker 1: protect the Droll and they should probably just go He's
Speaker 1: gonna get rid of this white crowd too, but don't worry.
Speaker 1: I'm not like the old sheriff. And um, it's about
Speaker 1: seventy five armed men. Yeah, and I drive at home, like,
Speaker 1: how many people I read that there were? I saw
Speaker 1: thousands somewhere of white people of white people at the courthouse,
Speaker 1: Like it was just this calling for a lynching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that was they were heavily outmanned. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: but but seventy five, the seventy five black veterans showed
Speaker 1: up in the midst of this. Let's even say it's
Speaker 1: just a thousand. Let's even say it's like five hundred
Speaker 1: people calling for a lynching and your seventy five black
Speaker 1: men showing up arms saying like, no, it's not happening.
Speaker 1: Just pretty courageous stuff. Right, So, before before they can leave,
Speaker 1: or as they're leaving, it's actually not clear what what
Speaker 1: this event's name gets its name from happens what you
Speaker 1: would call a race riot. Yeah, I mean, it looked
Speaker 1: like it might have been on the way to being
Speaker 1: a a scene that the sheriff managed successfully. They might
Speaker 1: have been on the way out that white crowd might
Speaker 1: have dispersed if not for this one incident. And even
Speaker 1: even if we did know, you know, just beat by beat,
Speaker 1: the history of this, you still wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: say what would have happened. But that is a possible outcome.
Speaker 1: There was a there was a an older white man
Speaker 1: who demand did that one of these black veterans give
Speaker 1: him his gun, And the black veterans said no, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do that, and the old white man went
Speaker 1: to go grab it, and the gun went off and
Speaker 1: both sides just started shooting at one another. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what triggered it. Uh. It was chaos. That was a
Speaker 1: hail of bullets. Uh. People of on both sides just
Speaker 1: started you know, dropping dead from uh from the bullets flying,
Speaker 1: and it became a full on war scene basically for
Speaker 1: the next couple of days. Right. Okay, So at that point, um,
Speaker 1: the black veterans are like, we really should get out
Speaker 1: of here. They leave toward Greenwood, toward Greenwood, which is
Speaker 1: their home. They're going back to their homes. Um, and
Speaker 1: along the way, some of them like kind of dropped
Speaker 1: back in like steak out positions and start sniping at
Speaker 1: the white rioters who are coming after them. And at
Speaker 1: that point, um, they they go further back into Greenwood.
Speaker 1: And by this time, it's like the early morning hours
Speaker 1: of I believe June one, right, Uh, I don't think
Speaker 1: it was the early morning at that point, it was
Speaker 1: like midnight. I mean like midnight one something like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's during the nighttime. And this is when the white
Speaker 1: people started breaking into the hardware stores and looting businesses
Speaker 1: to get weapons. Yeah. Because here's the thing, So that
Speaker 1: Sheriff McCullough, who you're kind of like, Okay, as far
Speaker 1: as like this whole story goes, that's not so bad,
Speaker 1: like he he at least tried. Now, the moment this
Speaker 1: race riot happened and the black veterans took off back
Speaker 1: for Greenwood, he started deputizing white rioters, handing out guns
Speaker 1: and ammunition and basically saying, go get them, Go get
Speaker 1: those guys. And rather than saying like this is not
Speaker 1: your job, is my responsibility? All go home, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go handle this, he enlisted the help of these
Speaker 1: people who were involved in this riot on the white side,
Speaker 1: and at that point any semblance of what you would
Speaker 1: call a race riot ended and what became of um
Speaker 1: revenge massacre uh just started. So so people call this
Speaker 1: the Tulsa race riot, and I think maybe a tenth
Speaker 1: of it qualifies as a race riot, and the rest
Speaker 1: it just should be called the Tulsa massacre. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: what happens is, like you said, some of these veterans
Speaker 1: get staked out in strategic positions, um, on rooftops and
Speaker 1: behind houses, behind cars. Uh. The the white army, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, is advancing into Greenwood. They
Speaker 1: start setting fires at these strategic locations to flush out
Speaker 1: these snipers and then they just start burning everything, basically
Speaker 1: setting fire to every house in every business to burn
Speaker 1: down Greenwood. Well. I think also about for about the
Speaker 1: five or about four or five hours from the time
Speaker 1: where they managed to flush the snipers out until about
Speaker 1: five i've in the morning, they were quietly taking up
Speaker 1: positions inside Greenwood and then a whistle blew at about
Speaker 1: five am and all of them just came out from
Speaker 1: their positions and then they just went preserved. It was
Speaker 1: a charge like military coordinated assault on Greenwood. And so
Speaker 1: this assault involved driving people out of their homes at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: Any resistance that people were shot on site. Apparently there
Speaker 1: were people who were shot who weren't offering resistance. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a story about an elderly couple who were
Speaker 1: kneeling in their house praying and they were both executed
Speaker 1: by these white mobsters um in their home. People were
Speaker 1: burned alive. Houses and people doussed with kerosene and burned alive.
Speaker 1: It was another story of a a blind beggar who
Speaker 1: was tied to a car and dragged through the streets.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it was just bedlam. And Watchman
Speaker 1: actually gets pretty graphic and how they depict this even
Speaker 1: though it's an alternate history show, just like the movie
Speaker 1: in the in the graphic novel where they I think
Speaker 1: they did pretty decent justice. They didn't follow the origin
Speaker 1: story of how it started, but it just placed heavily
Speaker 1: into the plot line. Yeah, yeah, should we take another break?
Speaker 1: All right, let's take another break and we'll tell you
Speaker 1: what happened from here. Okay, So we actually took a
Speaker 1: commercial break in the midst of a massacre. So the
Speaker 1: thing is like people are being driven out of their
Speaker 1: houses and shot in some cases, but more often than not,
Speaker 1: they're being like just flushed out. But no house, no building,
Speaker 1: no business, nothing was spirit. They're in the intent of
Speaker 1: these um, these white terrorists, there's really no other name
Speaker 1: for him, was to burn down Greenwood, and the firefighters
Speaker 1: were kept at bay. Yeah, they said do not come
Speaker 1: in here, like the rioters will kill you. Do you
Speaker 1: just stay away. They burned Greenwood to the ground. Thirty
Speaker 1: five blocks. Thirty five blocks. Do you know how many
Speaker 1: blocks that is? Think about how many blocks is thirty
Speaker 1: five blocks? And then add like ten, because I guarantee
Speaker 1: your conception is less than actually thirty five blocks. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of blocks of buildings burned to the ground.
Speaker 1: People killed in their front yards, including Dr Andrew C. Jackson,
Speaker 1: the famous surgeon, shot like a dog in his own
Speaker 1: front yard. In the chest there's a picture of him. Homes, uh, churches, schools, hospital, library.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned there were six hundred businesses total.
Speaker 1: They were all torched, just torched. There were six people
Speaker 1: who owned airplanes, they were that wealthy in Greenwood. The
Speaker 1: airplanes were stolen by the rioters and used to drop bombs, dynamite,
Speaker 1: nitro glycerin fire. And then there was also accusations the
Speaker 1: National Guard was helping coordinate this too. Yeah, the National
Speaker 1: Guard was called in uh and when they got there,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, they did not to try to help
Speaker 1: quell the riot. They more acted as helping to arrest
Speaker 1: black men. Um, that's just historical fact. Oh yeah, they were.
Speaker 1: They were bringing in I mean, they were killing people
Speaker 1: for sure, but they were also arresting black men. The
Speaker 1: women and children fled, uh. I think six thousand people
Speaker 1: were arrested, and the women and children fled toward the woods,
Speaker 1: basically like leaving behind everything they owned. Who are homeless.
Speaker 1: There was there was ten thousand people who lived in
Speaker 1: Greenwood at the time, and after this one night, this
Speaker 1: orgy of like violence there, um, there were like nine
Speaker 1: thousand left homeless and hundreds dead. Yeah, And apparently back
Speaker 1: to the National Guard, they said that they brought in
Speaker 1: planes just to spot fires and coordinate ground security, but
Speaker 1: there are reports from people there that said that they
Speaker 1: were actually shooting at people on the ground. Say that
Speaker 1: that's yeah. Even setting that aside, the National Guard didn't
Speaker 1: come in and quell anything. They just started arresting and
Speaker 1: detaining the victims of this massacre. That was the role
Speaker 1: that they played in this in this situation, that's right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the whole thing culminates with um. I mean, in the end,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get the amount of people killed.
Speaker 1: I think the official reports as thirty five black people.
Speaker 1: It's certainly way more than that. I've seen all the
Speaker 1: way up to three hundred. That's that's what I saw,
Speaker 1: is almost across the boards. Three hundred. Yeah. That again
Speaker 1: might be one of those things that everyone just sort
Speaker 1: of settled on a on a number, But it was
Speaker 1: not thirty five people, to be sure, No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: And so like as the sun comes up the day
Speaker 1: after I think June one, um, Greenwood burn to the ground.
Speaker 1: There's people hiding in the woods. Thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: former affluent residents of this black community are now homeless. Well, no,
Speaker 1: they're not homeless because the National Guards very kindly put
Speaker 1: them in detention centers at the fair grounds. That doesn't
Speaker 1: qualify as at home, right, That's my point is that
Speaker 1: it's not at home. Right. They're kept detained at the
Speaker 1: fair grounds for months. I saw that in some cases
Speaker 1: most of them had to um endure the winter. This
Speaker 1: happened in May. These people were still a lot of
Speaker 1: them kept in detention camps at the fair grounds through
Speaker 1: the winter. Tulsa winners and summers are both tough. They
Speaker 1: were kept in detention camps because white rioters burned their
Speaker 1: town to the ground. Yeah, and this was in June,
Speaker 1: so right, so right, so um, yeah, it was June.
Speaker 1: I guess it was the end of May. So. Um.
Speaker 1: The way that you got out of these detention and
Speaker 1: centers was your white employer came and vouched for you,
Speaker 1: and so this person works for me. I need him back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: please let him go. That's how you got out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the aftermath, no one was arrested there were
Speaker 1: no prosecutions. No, no, I'm sorry, Chuck. There was a
Speaker 1: grand jury that was sat you convened. They inundated twenty people.
Speaker 1: All of them were black. Well, now we're white. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I meant on the white side. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: in today's dollars between fifty and a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of damage. Um, everywhere I look, said, the only
Speaker 1: organization that really helped, and they really helped was the
Speaker 1: American Red Cross. Uh, super brave and did a whole lot.
Speaker 1: And I also saw where um, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the entire city of Tulsa. Apparently there were some white
Speaker 1: communities that reached out in the aftermath, of course, to
Speaker 1: help with the recovery efforts to take people in. Um.
Speaker 1: So we don't want to paint the entire town uh
Speaker 1: as doing the wrong thing. Apparently some people did step up. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, just nothing is that literally black and white? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's always shades of gray in that situation,
Speaker 1: in any situation. Yeah, but Greenwood UH came back. They
Speaker 1: It's probably not a surprise, but the insurance companies had
Speaker 1: classified very quickly as a riot instead of just a
Speaker 1: violent massacre. Because that means they wouldn't have to compensate
Speaker 1: people for their homes being in businesses being burned to
Speaker 1: the ground, right because if they were rioting, then they
Speaker 1: were culpable for that damage. And insurance company just despicable. Yea,
Speaker 1: so also despicable. The County Commission said, no, we're not
Speaker 1: accepting any outside donations, will take care of our own,
Speaker 1: and then didn't didn't follow through on that at all.
Speaker 1: So there were no funds paid to the Greenwood people,
Speaker 1: and people were trying to right as reparations or to
Speaker 1: even help them rebuild um and the County Commission, I guess,
Speaker 1: proposed at one point that they would handle this by
Speaker 1: buying the land for like a fraction of its market
Speaker 1: value and then auctioning it off to the highest bidder.
Speaker 1: That was one proposed. And they also said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, just to make sure that this doesn't happen again,
Speaker 1: we're going to establish a new building code for Greenwood.
Speaker 1: No building can be rebuilt unless it's built with fireproof bricks.
Speaker 1: And then they went to the fireproof brick producers and said,
Speaker 1: do not sell any materials to the black people of Greenwood.
Speaker 1: So despite this, they managed to rebuild in about five years. Astoundingly,
Speaker 1: the people whose houses in town was burned to the
Speaker 1: ground came back and rebuilt. And from just about everything
Speaker 1: I read, Greenwood was actually better, more prosperous, and more
Speaker 1: affluent from the second time around than it was even
Speaker 1: the first, and it was pretty affluent the first time.
Speaker 1: And Chuck, we said, like hundreds of people were killed, right,
Speaker 1: so get this. Funerals were forbidden, like you weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to have a funeral. That's how how how covered up
Speaker 1: this thing became. And one of the reasons we will
Speaker 1: never know how many people were killed is because the
Speaker 1: people who were killed were taken off and dumped in
Speaker 1: the river or stashed in coal mines or buried in
Speaker 1: mass unmarked graves. Well, they think they found two of those, uh,
Speaker 1: like a month ago. Yeah, there are archaeologists and Tulsa
Speaker 1: And this was from Time magazine, from Jasmine Aguilera. They
Speaker 1: have identified two sites that they thought were that they
Speaker 1: think now were mass graves. And they've been looking since
Speaker 1: I think two thousand one because they knew people, you know,
Speaker 1: there were reports of mass graves, and so archaeologists have
Speaker 1: been looking and in two thousand eighteen, Um, they started
Speaker 1: like a legit investigation. Uh, and they think that they
Speaker 1: have found one at least one, maybe two of these sites,
Speaker 1: but even which is in a cemetery. Ironically, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw that. But even this whole thing is like fairly knew.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like until the late nineties that people even
Speaker 1: started talking about this, right. Yeah. Nineteen nine seven was
Speaker 1: when the state of Oklahoma introduced a bill. And this
Speaker 1: was after just not talking about it in the black community.
Speaker 1: They would talk about it in stories and whispers. The
Speaker 1: white community just buried it and the state of Oklahoma
Speaker 1: just didn't acknowledge it. Yeah. The last thing I saw
Speaker 1: about it was the Tulsa Tribune ran another editorial on
Speaker 1: like June fourth, a few days after basically saying like
Speaker 1: thank you know, they said thank you to the police
Speaker 1: and all the white citizens who cleaned up Tulsa by
Speaker 1: getting rid of greenwood. It was it's actually way worse
Speaker 1: than what I just depicted, but I couldn't possibly bring
Speaker 1: myself to to read it verbatim. It's just vile what
Speaker 1: it says. It's really bad. But in ninety seven is
Speaker 1: when they introduced a bill for reparations and creation of
Speaker 1: the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, and that report was released
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, and it did hold police in
Speaker 1: public officials to blame. Um it, it it didn't do anything. Basically,
Speaker 1: there were no reparations. As for Dick Rowland, the case
Speaker 1: was the actual case, remember the case of the assault
Speaker 1: that was dismissed in September. Apparently Sarah Page didn't want
Speaker 1: to press forward with charges and she's lost the time.
Speaker 1: He supposedly immediately moved to Kansas City maybe and no
Speaker 1: one else really knows anything else about him. That's just
Speaker 1: so surprising. Yeah, you know, and if not for the
Speaker 1: Watchman coming out, this might still be a fairly buried
Speaker 1: story outside of Oklahoma. It's really brought a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to it. Yeah, and good for them for doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um So. One of the things that I saw about
Speaker 1: Greenwood itself was that it kept prospering and flourishing for
Speaker 1: decades after this, until about the sixties. And um one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I saw that explained why not just Greenwood,
Speaker 1: but a lot of black areas started to decline in
Speaker 1: the sixties was a byproduct of integration. Was that you
Speaker 1: could as a black person in America spend your black
Speaker 1: dollar at a white owned business now and like they don't.
Speaker 1: They didn't teach us that in public school. Like this
Speaker 1: is a byproduct of it. But as a result, these
Speaker 1: these um black owned businesses started to decline more and
Speaker 1: more and more UM and so Greenwood wasn't as prosperous
Speaker 1: as it was before. But the death blow, the death
Speaker 1: blow is that remember in our Interstates episode where in
Speaker 1: a lot of the UM poorer areas, a lot of
Speaker 1: the UM areas of color, that that's where they built
Speaker 1: the highways. They built right through Greenwood. Tell us an
Speaker 1: interesting place. It's spent a few weeks there a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and it's, Uh, it's interesting because it's got
Speaker 1: this old oil money neighborhoods, some of the most like
Speaker 1: amazing estates and houses I've ever seen. It's got some
Speaker 1: very poor communities. Uh, a lot of meth problems. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting place. It sounds like, yeah, well that's a
Speaker 1: Tulsa for you. And you know what, I spent a
Speaker 1: few weeks there in this neighborhood and I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about it. I didn't Maybe there is a memorial
Speaker 1: or something, but I didn't notice it. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: there isn't one, but I didn't see it. So you know,
Speaker 1: um Desmond too too sure who helped bring about, um,
Speaker 1: just the changeover from apartheid to reconciliation. He came have
Speaker 1: a big fan. He came to uh to Tulsa basically said,
Speaker 1: you guys are sitting on a power keg here like
Speaker 1: this not very long ago. I think we were in
Speaker 1: the nineties, maybe even in the two thousand's, just basically
Speaker 1: saying like you can't how could you possibly heal when
Speaker 1: you still have bodies in onmarked graves and like no
Speaker 1: one's talking about this still. I believe there is a
Speaker 1: park that they found, like a reconciliation park or something
Speaker 1: like that, but it sounds like there's still ways to go.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be ironic that it was Watchman that basically
Speaker 1: is forcing this issue to be discussed. Pretty ironic, yea.
Speaker 1: The Hour of comic books, well not even TV, I
Speaker 1: guess of graphic novels. Yes, So if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about the Tulsa massacre also known as the
Speaker 1: Tulsa Race Riot of there's a lot for you to
Speaker 1: go read, thankfully, and you should, uh just type that
Speaker 1: into your favorite search bar. Since I said that it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Hey guys, this email is mostly
Speaker 1: for Chuck. I need to get something off my chest
Speaker 1: and clear some things up about my involvement with your
Speaker 1: pronunciation of Carrie whole wise Elvis Elvis. Sometime over the summer,
Speaker 1: I made a comment in the corrections corner thread of
Speaker 1: movie Crush on the Facebook page where you were pronouncing
Speaker 1: Carrie l wise l wise, I posted, I had read
Speaker 1: on a redd at a m A his name sounds
Speaker 1: like Elvis, But what I meant to say was it
Speaker 1: rhymes with Elvis. Is that why you said Carrie Elvis? Like? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because of eli uh. He says this. When I
Speaker 1: finally heard my name pop up in the podcast, I
Speaker 1: was thrilled and couldn't to hear your reaction. Not only
Speaker 1: did my comment get understandably misunderstood, but I've heard you
Speaker 1: referenced the comment two or three times now and continue
Speaker 1: to correct yourself saying Elvis, most recently on the Andre
Speaker 1: the Giant Live episode. Parenthetical Josh said it right, I
Speaker 1: try to issue another I tried to issue another comment
Speaker 1: immediately afterwards to clear the air, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: You discontinued corrections corner I did. I was gonna do
Speaker 1: that on movie crushing. It just became like you said
Speaker 1: this wrong and your inflection and I was, like you
Speaker 1: said Kubrick was great. He was very great. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was a minute as like movie corrections, but you know
Speaker 1: how it goes. So I just said, no more of this. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't understand how something like this, uh, something as
Speaker 1: small has been tearing me apart inside every time I
Speaker 1: hear you reference it. There's one thing worse than giving
Speaker 1: someone bad information is having them proliferate that information out
Speaker 1: in the world, in this case to millions of well
Speaker 1: not millions of people, chillions. I just want to apologize
Speaker 1: officially for correcting you on something so silly and a
Speaker 1: a way you want to say. The name is fined
Speaker 1: by me as long as it's what do you say?
Speaker 1: L Elis Ellis? I think Ellis. Thanks for the day.
Speaker 1: No now, Eli's kind in my head too. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the decade of great content. I'll see you both in
Speaker 1: January and Seattle for my third live show, All the
Speaker 1: Best Eli. It's Eli's third live show birthday, and I
Speaker 1: think it's pronounced Eli. Oh, it could be Ellie could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna go with Eli, though I think Elias
Speaker 1: E L L I E. It could be. I think
Speaker 1: Ellie Golding is something different than that, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: don't know who is that? Or does she pronounce her
Speaker 1: name Eli? I don't know who that is? You do too,
Speaker 1: you've heard her pop songs before when you're working out, okay, uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, like
Speaker 1: Eli did uh to let us know we're saying something
Speaker 1: wrong because of you, well, you can get in touch
Speaker 1: of this by going on to stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com and you can also send us an email
Speaker 1: send it off to stuff podcast and i heeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
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