Remember Tulsa?

[sheshe2]

TULSA RACE RIOT


Picture Credit:http://allhatnocattle.net/blog7/

By early 1921 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.

But Tulsa was also a deeply troubled town. Crime rates were sky high, while the city had been plagued by vigilantism, including the August 1920 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, 1921, 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." By early evening there was, once again, lynch talk on the streets of Tulsa.

More
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/t/tu013.html

[niyad]

1. k and r for this horrific event. may it never be forgotten.

[Igel]

2. A lot of idiots out of control.

Bad news, having a young man that everybody now insists had to be innocent locked up *before* any obvious mob was forming.

Bad news, having a mob form at the jail. *After* they had lynched a white kid just a few months before.

Bad news, having a group of armed blacks "reconnoitre" with intent to show readiness to fight to the white mob.

Bad news, when the white mob, in response, went and armed itself. And grew.

But once the gun battles started, they were pretty much stuck with their own private race war.

It's like one of those pictures that have 10 stars or something hidden in it and your kid is to find all the stars. In this case, "Where's the foolishness?"

[sheshe2]

3. Thanks niyad.

If we want change we can never forget the past. We must learn from it.

[Cha]

4. I do because someone posted it on

DU and I read it last year. Thank you for this reminder of this terrible tragedy, she.

[Scuba]

5. kick