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The Tragedy Of The 1920 ' S

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Selena Carrizales
Mrs. Lilley
English III
10 March 2017 The Tragedy of the 1920’s Tulsa Race Riot
Racism has been a huge problem in the U.S. for many decades now, and a big action that follows racism are the race riots. One of the biggest riots of the 1920’s was the Tulsa Race Riot, which involved the burning of the Greenwood area, and left many African Americans homeless. The Tulsa Race Riot was concluded to be one of the worst racial violent events in American history. On June 1, 1921 a sequence of really bad events had happened over a course of eighteen hours, and around 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed and the death rate ranges from 50 to 300 (Franklin ). Young African American men that lived in Tulsa in the 1920’s did …show more content…

Walter White, that worked with the NAACP, could not understand why people assumed that Rowland would assault a girl in plain sight with so many people surrounding them (Ellsworth 47). While the officers were working their investigation, a newspaper company, The Tulsa Tribune decided to interpret the incident their own way to gain popularity. The early issues of the Tribune were later changed again, someone had ripped out the front page article and took out the editorial page. Everyone knew that the cause of all the riots was because of a newspaper article in the Tribune talking about threats being made from white mobs about lynching Rowland for attempted assault, which caused a dispute between the black and white mobs ( Ellsworth 48). The Tribune was sent out to everyone at 3:15 p.m. and half and hour later there was a call to the police letting them know that there was lynched talk on the streets (Ellsworth 49). Once the Police figured what could happen, the police and also the Fire Commissioner decided to notify Sheriff, Willard McCullough (Ellsworth 49). A little after 7:30pm a couple hundred white men had gathered around the courthouse, trying to get the officers to hand over Rowland, but the sheriff kept refusing. A couple hours later after reports of what happened went around Tulsa, and reached Greenwood a group of about twenty-five armed WWI African American veterans went up to the courthouse and tried to offer to help protect Rowland from

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