Death in a Promised Land

by Scott Ellsworth

  The man from the funeral parlor, unknown to Bill, was without a gun and so decided to make the run back to retrieve the shotgun that John had left at the parlor. Dodging bullets, he made it across the street twice again. Although, like John Williams, the man was a good marksman, he could not load the gun properly, so Bill had to show him. The two men held the pool hall position for about an hour before, once again, it was time to go. Whites had broken into buildings on the west side of Greenwood Avenue, directly across from them.

  Bill and his father went down the back stairs of the building which housed the pool hall. Bill hesitated, however, because he did not know where Hosea was. His father said, “We’ll split up here, and I’ll meet you down on Pine Street.” His father started walking north along the Midland Valley railroad tracks. A little while later, Bill started walking north, toward Pine, using the alley between Greenwood and Hartford avenues. He had a couple of shotgun shells in his pocket which he threw away. He had gone about two blocks when he was met by three armed whites. One of them said, “Hold up your hands, nigger.”

  One day later, after having spent the night at the home of a white projectionist who worked at the Dreamland and who secured his release from Convention Hall, Bill Williams was reunited with his mother and father. Together, they went back to Greenwood.

  III

  They found the business district to be a burned-out shell. Their home—the building at Greenwood and Archer which also housed their confectionary—had been looted and burned. Their theater, too, was but bricks and ashes.2

  What had happened? Overnight, over one thousand homes occupied by blacks had been destroyed in Tulsa. The Greenwood business district had been put to the torch. The city had been placed under martial law. Many, both black and white, had died or were wounded.

  IV

  The history of the Tulsa race riot is but one chapter in the troubled history of racial violence in America. In terms of density of destruction and ratio of casualties to population, it has probably not been equaled by any riot in the United States in this century. Nevertheless, the Tulsa race riot is not a lone aberration rudely jutting out of a saner, calmer past. Events similar to the one described here are part of the histories of Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth, Omaha, Los Angeles, and scores of other cities and towns in every part of the nation. They were a part of the American scene in the 1830s as well as in one city in the late spring of 1921.3 The story of Tulsa is very much a story of America.

  “What the future holds regarding race relations in America nobody knows,” wrote historian William Tuttle in 1970, “but one thing is evident. The optimist cannot take solace in the past.”4 The concerned can, however, learn from it. But to do so, it is necessary to lift the Tulsa race riot from its distorting setting as a singular, “dramatic event,” and view it within the context of the various forces which shaped both Tulsa and America in 1921, and which, indeed, shape them both today.

  Chapter 1

  Boom

  Cities

  I

  Tulsa was a boom city in a boom state. Between 1890 and 1920, the population of the land which became the state of Oklahoma increased seven and one-half times; the total population in 1920 was over two million. Thirteen other states and territories, primarily in the West, more than doubled their populations during this period, but Oklahoma’s rate of increase was by far the largest. And of these states, only Texas, with its much larger land area, surpassed Oklahoma in the number of people added to her population during these decades. By far, the greater part of Oklahoma’s population boom was due to immigration. But unlike the forced immigration of Native Americans which began in the 1830s, the new immigrants’ move was a matter of choice. Most of them came between 1890 and 1910, an era marked by land runs and statehood (1907).1 They came for a variety of reasons and from a variety of places, but for many Oklahoma was a place to start life anew.

  Tulsa’s growth during the first years of the twentieth century was even more dramatic. Located along a bend in the Arkansas River in a verdant area where the oak-laden foothills of the Ozarks slowly melt westward into the treeless Great Plains, it had been a Creek settlement known as “Tulsey Town” during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first permanent white settlers did not arrive until the early 1880s; Tulsa’s population in 1900 was estimated at 1,390. During the next two decades, the city’s population skyrocketed. In 1910, the Census Bureau listed Tulsa’s population at 18,182; in 1920 at 72,075. In that latter census, Tulsa ranked as the ninety-seventh largest city in the United States, comparable in size to such cities as San Diego; Wichita; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; and Troy, New York. City directory estimates, it should be added, were higher than those of the federal government, and the 1921 directory recorded Tulsa’s population as 98,874.2

  The primary reason for Tulsa’s rapid growth was oil, and as one writer in the 1920s remarked, “the story of Tulsa is the story of oil.” Petroleum had been discovered in 1897 near Bartlesville, Indian Territory, some fifty miles north of Tulsa, and in 1901 the Southwest oil boom seriously got under way with two noted petroleum discoveries: the Spindletop strike near Beaumont, Texas; and the strike at Red Fork, Indian Territory.3

  The hamlet of Red Fork was located directly across the Arkansas River from Tulsa, and its strike was an important early contributor to the city’s growth. Tulsa had been incorporated only three years prior to the Red Fork gusher, and had but few characteristics to distinguish it from other towns in the northeastern part of the territory. It had, however, a hotel of some form as early as 1882, and a local Commercial Club, established in 1902, raised enough money to convince officials of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad that their line should pass through Tulsa in 1903. A year later, three entrepreneurs opened a toll bridge which they had constructed across the Arkansas River, thus making the Red Fork field more accessible to the business and laboring communities in Tulsa.4

  Tulsa was growing, but the event which ushered in the city’s most spectacular growth did not come until 1905. In the fall of that year, the Ida Glenn No. 1 oil well gushed some fourteen miles from Tulsa. The area near Sapulpa where the strike was made became known as the Glenn Pool, considered to be “the richest small oil field in the world.” A veritable forest of derricks was constructed in the area during the next two years, and from some of Glenn Pool’s five hundred producing wells flowed more than two thousand barrels of oil per day. Other big oil discoveries followed that of Glenn Pool, and by 1907, the year of statehood, Oklahoma led the nation in oil production. Six years later, Oklahoma was producing one-quarter of all the oil produced in the nation, and by 1915, the young state was producing up to 300,000 barrels of oil per day.

  First Street, Tulsa, Indian Territory; probably just after the turn of the century.

  Courtesy of McFarlin Library University of Tulsa

  Oklahoma rode on top of its oil boom, and Tulsa more and more became the city associated with the boom, the oil industry, and the vast Mid-Continent oil field. After Glenn Pool, the face of Tulsa changed rapidly. A five-story brick hotel with over five hundred rooms was completed one year after the celebrated oil strike of 1905, and civic leaders promoted a “special train called the ‘Coal Oil Johnny’ which pulled about fifteen coaches, leaving Tulsa in the morning, letting the workers off at the various oil fields in the area, and picking them up in the evening for the return trip to Tulsa.”6 Homes were built to accommodate the city’s booming population, and a respectable business district was established downtown. The 1909 Tulsa city directory listed no fewer than 126 oil companies with offices in Tulsa. Two years earlier, the city’s first oil refinery had been built.7 Not only was Tulsa a city where the financial and exploratory ends of a booming oil industry were directed, but it soon became a production and oil well supply center as well. The city also became an important commercial center tied to the state’s agricultural industry, which claimed in 1920 about one-half of Ok
lahoma’s work force.8 “Tulsey Town” had grown into one of the South-west’s largest cities in practically no time at all. Local boosters called it the “Magic City.”9

  A Scene in the Glenn Pool, south of the city

  Courtesy of McFarlin Library University of Tulsa

  The “Magic City.” Fourth and Main, looking north, 1918.

  Courtesy of McFarlin Library University of Tulsa

  II

  Native Americans were the first settlers of the area which was to become Tulsa. The next racial group to be among the area’s inhabitants were not whites, but blacks. Afro-Americans were present in the Tulsa area probably throughout most of the nineteenth century, as the Cherokees and the Creeks—who were moved onto what had been Osage lands beginning in the 1830s—had black slaves. After the Civil War and the coming of emancipation, black freedmen remained in the area and were not without a voice in the local government. Freedmen in the Coweta District of the Creek Nation, in which Tulsa was later located, were sometimes chosen for district public offices. Blacks were also involved in the Green Peach War, a “serious political disturbance” which broke out among the Creeks in 1883.10

  As the nineteenth century waned, and Tulsa grew, the city’s black community became larger and more established. Two black churches, the Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Macedonia Baptist Church, had their foundings in 1895 and 1897, respectively.11 Immigration no doubt also affected the social life of black Tulsa, as blacks born in other states became the majority within the black community. In 1900—when blacks comprised about 5 percent of the total population of the city—more black Tulsans had been born in Missouri than in Indian Territory, with Mississippians and Georgians ranking third and fourth. Most of the adults at that time worked as day laborers, servants, or housewives, but there also was a black lawyer, blacksmith, stonemason, and a full-time preacher. A fair number of the domestic workers “lived-in” with their white employers.12 As for the others, apparently it was not until 1905 that black Tulsans began to live along Greenwood Avenue in the northeast section of the city, when a strip of land in that area was sold to a group of blacks. One year later—one year before statehood—Tulsa boasted a black newspaper, the Tulsa Guide, edited by G. W. Hutchins. And when statehood came, black Tulsa had two doctors, one barber, and three grocers among its business people.13

  By 1910 the black population had grown to 10 percent of the total population of the city, and there was then at least one black trade union, the Hod Carriers Local No. 199. One year later, Barney Cleaver became Tulsa’s first black police officer, and a few years after that the Dreamland Theatre and other black businesses graced Greenwood Avenue. The second lowest black illiteracy rate of any county in Oklahoma testified to the presence of a black school, and over three-fourths of black Tulsa’s school-age children were attending school. A new black newspaper, the Tulsa Weekly Planet, edited by Professor J. H. Hill, was then in existence.14

  While black Tulsans were “welcomed” to work at common labor, domestic, and service jobs in any part of the city, they were “not welcome” to patronize white businesses south of the tracks and in other sections of the city. This was a major reason, according to local historian Henry Whitlow, for the growth of Tulsa’s black business community, located primarily along Greenwood Avenue.15 Thus, in the early years of the twentieth century, Tulsa became not one city, but two. Confined by law and by white racism, black Tulsa was a separate city, serving the needs of the black community. And as Tulsa boomed, black Tulsa did too.

  By the year of the riot, 1921, the black population had grown to almost 11,000 and the community counted two black schools, Dunbar and Booker T. Washington, one black hospital, and two black newspapers, the Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun. Black Tulsa at this time had some thirteen churches and three fraternal lodges— Masonic, Knights of Pythias, and I.O.O.F.—plus two black theaters and a black public library.16

  A focal point of the community was the intersection of Greenwood and Archer. This geographical location—a single corner—has had something of a symbolic life of its own in Tulsa for most of the twentieth century, as it has been a key spot of delineation between the city’s black and white worlds. The corner has even been mentioned in song. Beginning about 1941, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, a white “western swing” group which drew their music heavily from black sources, sang:

  Would I like to go to Tulsa?

  You bet your boots I would,

  Let me off at Archer,

  I’ll walk down to Greenwood

  Take me back to Tulsa...17

  And in the 1970s, a nationally known black musical group from Tulsa, the Gap Band, drew its name from Greenwood, Archer, and Pine streets.

  Greenwood Avenue looking north from Archer, ca.1918

  Courtesy of W. D. Williams

  The first two blocks of Greenwood Avenue north of Archer were known as “Deep Greenwood.” It comprised the heart of Tulsa’s black business community, and was known by some before the riot as the “Negro’s Wall Street,” while an organizer for the National Negro Business League visiting black Tulsa in 1913 called it “a regular Monte Carlo.” Two- and three-story brick buildings lined the avenue, housing a variety of commercial establishments, including a dry goods store, two theaters, groceries, confectionaries, restaurants, and billiard halls. A number of black Tulsa’s eleven rooming houses and four hotels were located here. “Deep Greenwood” was also a favorite place for the offices of Tulsa’s unusually large number of black lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. The district would especially come alive on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons and evenings—the traditional “days off” for black domestic workers living in white neighborhoods.18

  On some of the side streets adjacent to the famed avenue was the world of poverty that some black Tulsans shared with their racial brethren throughout America. In addition to the shanties and houses made from the wood of packing crates, one would also find black Tulsa’s share of prostitution houses, speakeasies, and “choc” joints. “Choc” is short for Choctaw beer, a thick, milky-colored intoxicant made from Choctaw root, or Indian hemp—unrelated to marijuana—which was quite popular with more than a few black, red, and white Tulsans at the time, as well as in later years.19

  Along Detroit Avenue and certain other streets were the neat, sturdy homes of some of those black Tulsans who owned businesses lining Greenwood Avenue, augmented by the houses of the city’s black professional class. Within this elite group, some were rumored to have assets in excess of $100,000.20 Not all black Tulsans lived in the Greenwood district, however. Many lived in “white” neighborhoods where they worked as servants and housekeepers for well-to-do white families. They usually resided in “quarters” located on their employers’ lots, generally above or next to garages, and their visits to Greenwood would primarily be to shop or attend church or school.21

  While “Deep Greenwood” was assuredly one of the finest black commercial districts in the entire Southwest, it was scarcely free from white influence and control. Whites owned a large portion of the land in the district. Furthermore, black Tulsa’s service-oriented businesses were geared toward catering a wage-earning population. Few of them employed more than a handful of people. Economically, black Tulsa was dependent upon the wages paid to black workers by white employers. Despite its visible solidity of brick, Greenwood rested upon an uncertain economic foundation reflecting ominous social and racial realities.22

  Chapter 2

  Race Relations and

  Local Violence

  I

  Whereas Tulsa’s growth in the early twentieth century was virtually unmatched by any other American city, Tulsa’s race riot was far from being the only event of its kind in the nation. Indeed, the happenings in Tulsa in the spring of 1921 are incomprehensible without some familiarity with the currents in American race relations and racial ideologies of that time. Not only must the riot be viewed within that context, but also within that of three crucial event
s of violence and threatened violence—racial and nonracial—which occurred in Tulsa during the four preceding years.

  Beginning in 1917, a series of race riots broke out across America which culminated in the summer of 1919, ushering in what Tulsa-bred historian John Hope Franklin has described as “the greatest period of inter-racial strife the nation ever witnessed.” These riots took place in Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, as well as in the South. Perhaps their clearest common denominator was the invasion of black neighborhoods by whites. The race riot in Tulsa was the last one in this “series”: it has not until the Harlem riot of 1935 and the Detroit incident of 1943 that racial violence on the scale of the 1919-era riots was repeated.1

  We can get some idea of the racial climate from the fact that in the year of the Tulsa riot fifty-nine blacks were lynched in southern or “border” states. The alleged causes for these lynchings ranged from murder to making “improper remarks to [a] white woman,” to being a relative of someone who was lynched. Although the number of lynchings per year in the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century decreased from those reached in the 1890s, the degree of barbarity in these lynchings had generally increased. The burning of live victims was not uncommon in twentieth-century southern “lynchings,” a fact which made the United States one of the few nations in the world at that time where human beings were burned at the stake.2 During the very weeks that saw black Tulsa torn apart, a lynching in Moultrie, Georgia, was described in vivid detail by a correspondent of the Washington Eagle: