It can be fairly stated that all humanity like all democracy is, in every sense, a work in progress. From its very beginnings the American experiment in self-governance was thought by many to be the World’s best hope for all mankind. This glowing praise was extended even as a sound and seemingly thriving nation eventually emerged as contending economic and military power with a global presence and capability. The Founding Fathers exuded a fundamental understanding that they were not perfect and did not know everything. Despite possessing such a keen sense of enlightenment, they founded a republic upon an existing social order which, by 18th Century standards, was within the acceptable norms of the day. More to the point, in 1776 the phrase “All men are created equal” was a mere euphemism for all of humanity. In reality, upon the founding of the Republic some twelve years later, its meaning as it was then applied was inclusive of only a very small segment of the citizenry. Although the wheels of evolution of the American nation have moved at glacier speed, that celebrated phrase and the promise it contains has fueled the efforts of many visionary Americans to make it universally apply to men and women of all colors, creeds, faiths, classes and lifestyles in 2021. It is also an encouraging sign that so many more now not only understand but acknowledge the fundamental flaws of the nation’s founding. Indeed, in the beginning women were not permitted to vote, non-landowners were not permitted to vote and most certainly those laboring at involuntary servitude at best counted as 3/5ths of a person and were certainly not extended any right to vote.
The genuine original sin of the American nation was tolerating the inhuman practice of owning and using human chattel as a labor force. The system of involuntary servitude accounted for generating the majority of wealth in the southern states. In the nation’s third century, the consequences and fallout from the odious institution of slavery are still being visited upon all of the nation’s populace. Despite tardy lukewarm efforts, much public policy has sought to make amends for past wrongs committed on citizens of one race ever since President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation with many unacceptable results. For over the past century and a half, the African American quest for equality has been a trail of one bloody and brutal incident after another. The pervading tacit notion that one race is superior and one race is inferior has waned little since the Republic’s founding. Even the victorious Union Army that fought so hard to end slavery was segregated and remained so until after World War II. The struggle of the African American minority ever since has been marked with a bloody trail of racially motivated terror and cultural suppression. This year marks the centennial commemoration of one of if not the most egregious events in that struggle for equality. It is a reminder to all that it is not only the most shameful event that ever occurred in my own hometown since its founding in 1879, it is the ugliest piece of all showcase episodes of the true and authentic history of the United States: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
Not all the violence and destruction that has pockmarked the nation’s history has been directed at the African American community. Perhaps some of the worst has been, but there has been a litany of violent injustice visited upon many others including of course the Native Americans and just about every other ethnic group, management against labor and various religious groups which set white Americans against other white Americans. I vividly recall writing about the twentieth anniversary commemoration of the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember pointing out that with the 168 killed in and around the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995 was the most Americans killed by Americans since the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southwest Utah in year 1857.
The massacre at Mountain Meadows is a little-known episode of ugly but authentic Americana and Mormon Church history. An immigrant wagon train traveling through Utah Territory to California from Missouri and Arkansas was encamped near Mountain Meadows and reluctantly surrendered their firearms to the local authorities who were acting under the direction of a local Mormon cleric. The following day the entire party of over 120 non-Mormon emmigrants were murdered by a local band of Native American Paiute tribal members led by Mormon settlers.
For all Oklahomans and most Americans, the Murrah Building bombing is sacrosanct. Yes, the number of fatalities it claimed did indeed top the body count of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. However, it never really entered into anyone’s thinking, particularly in the minds of White America in light of multiple such happenings nationwide, that the 1921 Race Massacre in Tulsa actually holds the top spot for Americans being murdered by Americans. Compounding the egregiousness of it is the scope of deliberate destruction of private property done by an armed mob with the complicity of city police and state national guard forces including the use of aviation assets. A reasonable question is why was this allowed to happen? The widespread criminal mayhem of May 31st and June 1st, 1921 began as an attempt to stop a lynching and escalated to the total destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood and inflicted deaths numbering from 150 to 300 of its residents. The exact number of dead remains unknown, but the calculation of the total differs widely from the 36 recorded by city officials at the time. The truth is that it is likely is closer to the higher figure of 300 which was determined by the 2001 commission investigating the event some eighty years after the fact.
In the aftermath of the race massacre, the nomenclature of the event was officially stated by the city and state government as a “RIOT.” This official terminology provided all insurance companies insuring Greenwood District clientele the cover to legally deny all claims associated with the massacre. I may not have all the answers to the universal issues that plague the African American community either locally or nationwide, but reparations are not as indicated in this case as much as is legal and rightful payment of all the loss claims which were denied. Include with those settlements the maximum amount of interest allowed by law in addition to a late penalty to all living relatives of the massacre victims who can verify their relationships and any evidence of loss. For any verifiable victims with no living relatives, place the claim funds into a community trust for the Greenwood district. Will this assuage the still existing anguish of this century-old atrocity? Probably not, but it is a baby step in the right direction.
I am a Tulsa native, born, raised and public school educated. I remember as grade school kid my dad, who was originally from Fort Smith, AR, related a story to me told to him by a former neighbor who was involved in the aftermath of what was then known as the Race Riot. According to my dad, Mr. Paine, who was in his 60’s when my dad heard his story in the early 1960’s, that many of the dead were loaded onto old chain-driven flatbed trucks, taken to the Arkansas River some distance downstream from the Downtown area and “disposed of” in the river. I have never been able to correlate this specific detail from any anyone who may have been privy to any similar information. Although I heard scattered bits of information about the event from various sources throughout my childhood, it wasn’t until my first Oklahoma History class in ninth grade at what was then Wilson Junior High School that I received a formal lecture and slide show which was presented as the “Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.” I will vouch that it came across as very clinical and detached in a “just the facts, Ma’am” format by a white history faculty over two class periods, but it was in fact taught as part of the Oklahoma History curriculum in 1974! When I hear hometown people years younger than me claiming to have never heard a whiff of this formerly universally known event of 1921 in their secondary public education, I get a sobering reminder of the values of the white majority in charge of my home state’s government. I became acutely conscious of those values after my return home following my first Navy enlistment. In the early 1980’s I worked in a local hospital and cared for multiple patients who were either white participants or children of white participants in the 1921 Greenwood conflagration. Most of them freely imparted their sentiments on the event when queried regarding their life in early Tulsa. Those sentiments ranged from being truly contrite and regretful that it occurred with genuine compassion for the victims to being boastfully proud and unrepentant of their involvement in what happened. In all honesty, there is really no substitute for genuine and unvarnished candor.
Having served in the Navy out of state for so many years, I can remember thinking of nothing but getting back to the place of my birth and upbringing. Yes, it is true that at the end of the day Tulsa is still my hometown and Oklahoma is still my home state, for better or worse. Emphasis on worse. For the personality type I have evolved into as a result of all my life experience, the true colors of the character of my home state make it a very uncomfortable place to abide much of the time. Therein however lies the very existential reason as to why I have chosen to remain in the place of my birth: Oklahoma in general and Tulsa in specific is the mission field for enlightened and progressive souls such as myself. With the upcoming Centennial commemoration of the absolute worst case of hate-motivated racial violence in American history on display for all the entire World to view and remember in all its wretched horror, physical and spiritual, it is incumbent on ALL evolved members of our species to validate the human failure it represents and to take ourselves and as many as we can win over as far away from that place as possible. It is so discouraging to realize how short of a distance we have actually traveled from that place in a hundred years’ time, but as I stated up front, all humanity is a work in progress. It is my hope and conviction that through all our daily efforts, Tulsa 1921 will serve as the sort of example to expect when every fiber of goodwill, compassion and brotherhood existing in the human species is set aside and replaced by hate, greed, envy and self-service. Let us remember where we have been and let us never return to that very terrible place.