By John Fennell
Night skies lit up with blazing, out of control fires. Buildings set on fire by mobs of angry citizens. Gunfire in the streets. Millions of dollars lost in items looted during riots. Dead and wounded people laying bloody in the streets. Innocent lives lost. Families torn apart. The scenes are all too common. Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlottesville, the list goes on. I was not aware that the riots going on in today’s times could not even live up to one of the race riots of days gone by.
I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when I was 5, almost 6, years old. Not once had I ever heard of the Tulsa Race Riots before my junior year of high school, and even then, the riots were not a major point of discussion, but more of a “Yeah, this happened, but let’s just skim over it and move on to something more important.” Because of this brief mentioning, I decided to take a deeper look into Tulsa’s past experiences by way of the Tulsa Race Riot Archive.
Diving into the Tulsa Race Riot Archive is no easy task. For starters, everything about the archive itself is grossly underwhelming: the lack of interactivity, the bland colors, how outdated the website is, the content within the archive. This is not an archive I would ever recommend to a friend to read. As I sat reading it one morning, I opened the archive and asked, “What am I even looking at?” A list of blasé court documents, reports, and obscure letters stared back at me. So, I did what anyone in my position would do. I began to scroll until I found some glimmer of evidence that I could use. At first, all that I could find were reports and court documents basically saying that the city was in utter turmoil (burning buildings, murder, etc.) and the police, fire department, and other authorities knew about it, yet they were doing absolutely nothing to help. Then, I chanced upon the Federal Report on Vice Conditions in Tulsa. In short, this report goes into great detail about the severity of the “vices” in Tulsa were in April of 1921. The report begins with a summary of what Tulsa’s vice situation was at the time of the report.
“Summary of conditions: Vice conditions in this city are extremely bad. Gambling, bootlegging and prostitution are very much in evidence. At the leading hotels and looming houses the bell hops and porters are pimping for women, and also selling booze, [r]egarding violations of the law, these prostitutes and pimps solicit without any fear of the police, as they will invariably remind you that you are safe in these houses” (Federal Report on Vice Conditions in Tulsa).
I think that most shocking part for me is that I didn’t know Tulsa was this “bad” back in the day. I have lived here for nearly fourteen years, and the first time that I even heard about the Tulsa Race Riot was when I was a junior in high school. Let that sink in for a second… twelve years for me to even hear about one of the worst race riots in the nation’s history that happened where I live. I always viewed Tulsa as a good, uncorrupted city, and I am not sure why because, looking at this report, the city was filled with corruption, prostitution, gambling, and drinking. I was also surprised that the report mentioned that the “prostitutes and pimps solicit[ed] without any fear of the police,” because the report almost implies that the police turn a blind eye to the crimes, or they know about the crime and actually care, yet they cannot do anything to stop it (Federal Report on Vice Conditions in Tulsa). I guess my whole problem with the situation is if this was one of the largest race riots in the nation’s history, where a primarily African-American section of town, known as Black Wall Street, was burned to the ground and never rebuilt, where people were murdered because of the color of their skin, why has nothing been done to rectify the situation? Why did it take twelve years to hear about such an important piece of history about my city? Why did the African-American section of town, once one of the greatest African-American economic districts in the nation, never get rebuilt after it was razed to the ground?
To begin to answer these questions, I went beyond the archive to look for evidence in modern times to see what is being done to fix what was wronged. I stumbled across an article, written by Randy Krehbiel of the Tulsa World, that discussed Oklahoma’s plan to educate its citizens about the horrific massacre that occurred in 1921. The state government is already planning a Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission for 2021, the 100th anniversary of the race riots (Krehbiel). Later in the article, Krehbiel outlines what the plan for the commission is.
“According to a statement by Matthews, the commission’s chairman, the body’s objective is to ‘facilitate activities and events that will educate Oklahomans and Americans about the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, its impact on the state and nation; to help remember its victims and survivors; and create an environment conducive to fostering sustainable entrepreneurship and heritage tourism within the Greenwood District and North Tulsa’” (Krehbiel).
To be completely honest, I think the plan for the commission is good, is a step in the right direction, and is encouraging to see that Oklahomans actually care about attempting to right what was wronged, but I do not think that the Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission is the only thing that this community needs. For starters, I believe that the city of Tulsa should formally come out and apologize for what was done during the riots. I think that it is wrong for the city to hide behind commissions and museums commemorating the riots when they could just come out and admit that what happened in 1921 was a violent racist massacre that destroyed a thriving African-American community.
Now, striving to see if a police apology had been submitted to the public, I began to scour the archive once more. I looked through prison records, witness lists, and court statements alike, but I could not find anything about a police apology, which was honestly to be expected. I did not expect to find an apology; the whole reason I went searching through the archive for an apology was to be proven wrong. Why would a group of proud white citizens who burned down a rich black section of town because they viewed it as just apologize for their actions? They wouldn’t. Not stopping there, I looked through news articles on the Internet to see if police had apologized since the riots, where I stumbled across an article, written by Reverend Andrew Bozeman, in the Wall Street Journal (ironic name, I know). The article talks about how on September 22, 2013, the Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan publicly apologized for the actions of the police officers during the Tulsa Race Riots (Bozeman). This is encouraging because at least someone has recognized and publicly admitted that the Tulsa Police Department messed up during the race riots. This is essential to continue the healing process of the aftermath of the race riots because, in order to solve a problem, you first have to admit the problem exists.
After searching through the Internet for an apology for the race riots, I decided to divert my attention to finding out if plans had been made to rebuild Black Wall Street. I stumbled across a Fox News article, written by the Associated Press, that discusses plans to rebuild the former pride of downtown Tulsa.
“In 1921, over the course of roughly 16 hours, a race riot decimated the economic and cultural mecca. The tally of casualties seemed more in line with the aftermath of a military battle — 300 dead, 800 wounded, more than 8,000 left homeless. Blacks rebuilt the area in the decades that followed, only to see their work wiped out during the so- called urban progress of the 1960s. Attempting to make good on failed hopes of an eventual renaissance, black leaders want to bring 100 businesses here by 2021, marking the race riot’s 100th anniversary” (Associated Press).
I am very pleased by these plans because if everything goes according to plan, the rebirth of Black Wall Street would coincide with the Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission, which would be a monumental step in the right direction of righting the wrongs of the past in regards to the Tulsa Race Riot. To be completely honest. I had a very hard time navigating through the archive. It is old, outdated, and needs to be updated very badly. There is no creation date for the archive, but it is curated by Oklahoma Digital Prairie. The archive is rather bland; I was expecting to come across eyewitness stories of the riots, but instead, I had to sift through court documents and letters about court cases.
Fall 2017
John Fennell is currently a freshman at Oklahoma State University. He is majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and he plans to go to medical school after he graduates from Oklahoma State in order to become an anesthesiologist.
archiveoklahoma.com 