Such trends were mirrored both statewide and in Tulsa. By early Tulsa was a modern city with a population of more than one hundred thousand.
Most of the city's ten thousand African American residents lived in the Greenwood District, a vibrant neighborhood that was home to two newspapers, several churches, a library branch, and scores of black-owned businesses. However, Tulsa was also a deeply troubled town.
Crime rates were extremely high, and the city had been plagued by vigilantism, including the August lynching, by a white mob, of a white teenager accused of murder. Newspaper reports confirmed that the Tulsa police had done little to protect the lynching victim, who had been taken from his jail cell at the county courthouse.
Eight months later an incident involving Dick Rowland, an African American shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, would set the stage for tragedy. While it is still uncertain as to precisely what happened in the Drexel Building on May 30, , the most common explanation is that Rowland stepped on Page's foot as he entered the elevator, causing her to scream.
The next day, however, the Tulsa Tribune , the city's afternoon daily newspaper, reported that Rowland, who had been picked up by police, had attempted to rape Page. Moreover, according to eyewitnesses, the Tribune also published a now-lost editorial about the incident, titled "To Lynch Negro Tonight. Talk soon turned to action. By p. At about 9 p. The sheriff, however, turned them down, and the men returned to Greenwood.
Stunned, and then enraged, members of the white mob then tried to break into the National Guard armory but were turned away by a handful of local guardsmen. At about 10 p. They are the historical record. The following information comes from the Race Riot Commission Report:. Black Tulsans had every reason to believe that Dick Rowland would be lynched after his arrest. His charges were later dismissed and highly suspect from the start. They had cause to believe that his personal safety, like the defense of themselves and their community, depended on them alone.
As hostile groups gathered and their confrontation worsened, municipal and county authorities failed to take actions to calm or contain the situation. At the eruption of violence, civil officials selected many men, all of them white and some of them participants in that violence, and made those men their agents as deputies. In that capacity, deputies did not stem the violence but added to it, often through overt acts that were themselves illegal. Public officials provided fire arms and ammunition to individuals, again all of them white.
They removed them to other parts of the city, and detained them in holding centers. Entering the Greenwood district, people stole, damaged, or destroyed personal property left behind in homes and businesses.
People, some of them agents of government, also deliberately burned or otherwise destroyed homes credibly estimated to have numbered 1,, along with virtually every other structure — including churches, schools, businesses, even a hospital and library — in the Greenwood district.
Despite duties to preserve order and to protect property, no government at any level offered adequate resistance, if any at all, to what amounted to the destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood. Although the exact total can never be determined, credible evidence makes it probable that many people, likely numbering between , were killed during the massacre.
Not one of these criminal acts was then or ever has been prosecuted or punished by government at any level: municipal, county, state, or federal. Despite being numerically at a disadvantage, black Tulsans fought valiantly to protect their homes, their businesses, and their community. Between and , African Americans founded dozens of Black townships and settlements in the region. Learn more about Black Wall Street here. African Americans in Tulsa pooled their resources and built wealth to foster successful businesses in the self-contained Greenwood neighborhood amid Jim Crow discrimination.
Among the early entrepreneurs was O. Gurley, who purchased 40 acres of land on the north side of Tulsa and opened a rooming house and provided loans to help other Black people start their own businesses. Stradford opened a luxury hotel that was considered the largest Black-owned hotel in the country, with 54 guest suites, a pool hall, saloon and dining room.
Meanwhile, A. Smitherman founded the Tulsa Star newspaper, a Black newspaper based in Greenwood. Read about these Greenwood entrepreneurs and others here. The Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma was a thriving city within a city—a symbol of pride, success and wealth.
The massacre beginning on May 31, was sparked after a year-old Black man allegedly offended a year-old white female elevator attendant and the story became drummed up in local newspaper reports. The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America. The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
Search this Guide Search. This guide provides access to material related to the "Tulsa Race Massacre" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers. About Chronicling America Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages from sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Included in the website is the Directory of US Newspapers in American Libraries , a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since , which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Introduction Destruction of residences due to the Tulsa Race Massacre.
0コメント