Post by slim on Feb 20, 2004 12:24:15 GMT -5
Where did the word "picnic" comes from? It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch.
If anyone truly believes that the last April attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was the most tragic bombing ever to take place on United States soil, as the media has been widely reporting, they're wrong -- plain and simple. That's because an even deadlier bomb occurred in that same state nearly 75 years ago. Many people in high places would like to forget that it ever happened.
The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wallstreet," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.
The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's what Black Wallstreet was all about.
The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the Black community in 15-minutes. As far as resources, there were Ph.D.'s residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, a hefty pocket change in 1910.
The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many of them were jealous. When the average student went to school on Black Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age.
The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the renowned R and B music group the Gap Band got its name. They're from Tulsa.
Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a banker in the neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi [River]. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.
There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.
Stradford was one of Tulsa's most prosperous black entrepreneurs in the 1910's. He owned a 65-room hotel, a savings and loan, and other real estate in Greenwood. Having lost everything in the riot, Stradford escaped to Chicago, where he began life anew and became a successful lawyer. When he died in 1935, at the age of 75, the incitement charge still hung over him. With the riot's anniversary, the family wanted his name cleared. But first LaFortune and Assistant District Attorney Nancy Little had to uncover the details of the events of 1921.
TULSA IN THE 1920S WAS A BOOMTOWN WITH a short fuse. Originally part of the sprawling Indian Territory, Tulsa had for years been beyond the reach of state or federal law, and after the discovery of oil nearby at the turn of the century, the town became a notorious haven for criminals. An otherwise boisterous history, ordered up by the city in the 1970's, speculated about those early boom years: "There seemed to be an unwritten law between the town and the outlaws in which Tulsa furnished them with asylum in exchange for being spared from criminal acts." Even after Tulsa fell under the American legal system, it remained unusually rough. The volatile mix of desperadoes, gamblers, prostitutes, cowboys, wildcatters, roustabouts and Ku Kluxers was enough to weaken the knees of the bravest law-enforcement officials.
This Black prosperity caused resentment among poorer whites, and the city elders worried that it was bad for the city's image. In 1912, the Tulsa Democrat complained: "Tulsa appears to be in danger of losing its prestige as the whitest town in Oklahoma." The paper went on to ask: "Does Tulsa wish a double invasion of criminal Negro preachers, Negro Shysters, crap shooters, gamblers, bootleggers (sic), prostitutes and smart alecs in general?"
The Tulsa riot was the same incident that set off so many other race riots before it: a report of an assault by a Black man on a white woman. In the case of Tulsa, a woman of little credibility and a story apparently trumped the report up, a combination of an allegation by a newspaper with even less. But those small details would not be fully understood before Black Tulsa burned to the ground.
The NAACP's Walter White, being very light complexioned, volunteered for duty shortly after his arrival in town, and was given one of these commissions. "Now you can go out and shoot any Nigger you see," he was told, "and the law'll be behind you." White would spend a tense night riding about the city in the company of five members of the Ku Klux Klan.
As for Deputy Sheriff Barney Cleaver, he became the toast of Tulsa. Although the town's newspapers showed little remorse that the entire Black section had been burned to the ground, they were sympathetic about Cleaver's losses, which were considerable. Cleaver had amassed $ 20,000 (about $ 200,000 today) worth of real estate on a policeman's pay. If this were not enough to raise questions about Cleaver's conduct, an article about him in the Tribune strongly suggested that he was playing a double game: "In all of Tulsa today there was just one Negro who walked the street openly and unafraid, molested by no one and greeted with a cheery smile by all who knew him."
What had Cleaver done to deserve such good will? Whatever he had done before, he now sided with the whites in blaming his fellow Blacks for the riot. Two days after the riot, Cleaver was quoted as saying: "I am going to do everything I can to bring the Negroes responsible for the outrage to the bars of justice. They caused me to lose everything I have been accumulating and I intend to get them." Get them he did. It was largely Cleaver's testimony, in court and out, that helped convince white Tulsa that it was blameless.
When Levit returned to Tulsa, the city's legal community was embroiled in an acrimonious and very public debate about another painful piece of Tulsa's history: the city's cozy relationship with the Ku Klux Klan.
Levit belonged to one of Tulsa's two "inns"--fraternal organizations of lawyers and judges. The other inn was called the Robert D. Hudson Inn, named in memory of one of Tulsa's most accomplished and beloved attorneys. Robert Hudson was the son of Washington Hudson, who during the early 1920s was a prominent trial attorney, the majority leader of the Oklahoma senate and the titular head of the Ku Klux Klan in Tulsa.
The Hudson-KKK connection had been vaguely understood by some members of the Robert D. Hudson Inn, but the feeling at the time was that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the son. That position became untenable in 1994, after some yellowing KKK membership rolls had been discovered in a Tulsa attic. Among the names listed around 1930 was that of Robert D. Hudson. A heated debate ensued that spilled over into the Tulsa newspapers.
If anyone truly believes that the last April attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was the most tragic bombing ever to take place on United States soil, as the media has been widely reporting, they're wrong -- plain and simple. That's because an even deadlier bomb occurred in that same state nearly 75 years ago. Many people in high places would like to forget that it ever happened.
The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wallstreet," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.
The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's what Black Wallstreet was all about.
The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the Black community in 15-minutes. As far as resources, there were Ph.D.'s residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, a hefty pocket change in 1910.
The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many of them were jealous. When the average student went to school on Black Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age.
The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the renowned R and B music group the Gap Band got its name. They're from Tulsa.
Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a banker in the neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi [River]. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.
There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.
Stradford was one of Tulsa's most prosperous black entrepreneurs in the 1910's. He owned a 65-room hotel, a savings and loan, and other real estate in Greenwood. Having lost everything in the riot, Stradford escaped to Chicago, where he began life anew and became a successful lawyer. When he died in 1935, at the age of 75, the incitement charge still hung over him. With the riot's anniversary, the family wanted his name cleared. But first LaFortune and Assistant District Attorney Nancy Little had to uncover the details of the events of 1921.
TULSA IN THE 1920S WAS A BOOMTOWN WITH a short fuse. Originally part of the sprawling Indian Territory, Tulsa had for years been beyond the reach of state or federal law, and after the discovery of oil nearby at the turn of the century, the town became a notorious haven for criminals. An otherwise boisterous history, ordered up by the city in the 1970's, speculated about those early boom years: "There seemed to be an unwritten law between the town and the outlaws in which Tulsa furnished them with asylum in exchange for being spared from criminal acts." Even after Tulsa fell under the American legal system, it remained unusually rough. The volatile mix of desperadoes, gamblers, prostitutes, cowboys, wildcatters, roustabouts and Ku Kluxers was enough to weaken the knees of the bravest law-enforcement officials.
This Black prosperity caused resentment among poorer whites, and the city elders worried that it was bad for the city's image. In 1912, the Tulsa Democrat complained: "Tulsa appears to be in danger of losing its prestige as the whitest town in Oklahoma." The paper went on to ask: "Does Tulsa wish a double invasion of criminal Negro preachers, Negro Shysters, crap shooters, gamblers, bootleggers (sic), prostitutes and smart alecs in general?"
The Tulsa riot was the same incident that set off so many other race riots before it: a report of an assault by a Black man on a white woman. In the case of Tulsa, a woman of little credibility and a story apparently trumped the report up, a combination of an allegation by a newspaper with even less. But those small details would not be fully understood before Black Tulsa burned to the ground.
The NAACP's Walter White, being very light complexioned, volunteered for duty shortly after his arrival in town, and was given one of these commissions. "Now you can go out and shoot any Nigger you see," he was told, "and the law'll be behind you." White would spend a tense night riding about the city in the company of five members of the Ku Klux Klan.
As for Deputy Sheriff Barney Cleaver, he became the toast of Tulsa. Although the town's newspapers showed little remorse that the entire Black section had been burned to the ground, they were sympathetic about Cleaver's losses, which were considerable. Cleaver had amassed $ 20,000 (about $ 200,000 today) worth of real estate on a policeman's pay. If this were not enough to raise questions about Cleaver's conduct, an article about him in the Tribune strongly suggested that he was playing a double game: "In all of Tulsa today there was just one Negro who walked the street openly and unafraid, molested by no one and greeted with a cheery smile by all who knew him."
What had Cleaver done to deserve such good will? Whatever he had done before, he now sided with the whites in blaming his fellow Blacks for the riot. Two days after the riot, Cleaver was quoted as saying: "I am going to do everything I can to bring the Negroes responsible for the outrage to the bars of justice. They caused me to lose everything I have been accumulating and I intend to get them." Get them he did. It was largely Cleaver's testimony, in court and out, that helped convince white Tulsa that it was blameless.
When Levit returned to Tulsa, the city's legal community was embroiled in an acrimonious and very public debate about another painful piece of Tulsa's history: the city's cozy relationship with the Ku Klux Klan.
Levit belonged to one of Tulsa's two "inns"--fraternal organizations of lawyers and judges. The other inn was called the Robert D. Hudson Inn, named in memory of one of Tulsa's most accomplished and beloved attorneys. Robert Hudson was the son of Washington Hudson, who during the early 1920s was a prominent trial attorney, the majority leader of the Oklahoma senate and the titular head of the Ku Klux Klan in Tulsa.
The Hudson-KKK connection had been vaguely understood by some members of the Robert D. Hudson Inn, but the feeling at the time was that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the son. That position became untenable in 1994, after some yellowing KKK membership rolls had been discovered in a Tulsa attic. Among the names listed around 1930 was that of Robert D. Hudson. A heated debate ensued that spilled over into the Tulsa newspapers.
