Outline
I. Introduction pg. 3
II. Riot Beginnings pg. 3 -4
III. Statistics pg. 4-5
IV. Lives Changed pg. 5-6
V. Reparations pg 6-7
VI. References pg. 8
Introduction
The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was a dark time in the history of Oklahoma. It all began with a simple misunderstanding, but had catastrophic consequences. Homes and businesses were destroyed, many African Americans and whites were killed, and Tulsa had lost its soul. In the beginning Oklahoma was just a young state, and Tulsa was just a young town, trying to find its place in the world. The discovery of Oil quickly turned Tulsa into one of
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Louis and many communities in between white mobs pursued what can only be described as a reign of terror against African Americans during the period from 1917 to 1923." As Mr. Patrick stated this was probably one of the worst if not the worst domestic act violence. Even today people do not have the knowledge or refuse to believe what happened that day in 1921. The official death toll was 35(Patrick, 1999) but it is believed that many more hundreds were killed, because many bodies were dumped into the river of coal mines or burned (Patrick, 1999). Here are other numbers that Mr. Patrick writes in his article, 1500 African American homes destroyed, 600 businesses destroyed, 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 stores, 2 movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, and schools. It takes people with an exponential amount of hate in their hearts would be able to do destroy institutions that exist only for the benefit of mankind. The Statistics prove that Greenwood Avenue was once vibrant and full of life. Greenwood Avenue not only just provided great economic means for African Americans, but it was a place where their hopes and dreams came alive. It was where they were free to prosper after a long history of slavery and discrimination. Lives Changed
Many people had their lives destroyed, fortunes lost, and names tarnished. One of these men was J.B. Stradford, who had been a prominent lawyer and
The Detroit race riot of 1967 was one the most destructive and violent riots of the 159 race riots that occurred during the “Long Hot Summer.” For five straight days civilians fought the police, resulting in 43 deaths, 1,189 injuries, 7,200 arrests, and over 2,500 lootings. Fifty years later there are still visible results of the riot, and the event remains a source of reflection for Detroit citizens. Asides from the building damage and violence, the riots affected various aspects of Detroit's culture, including the Motown enterprise, which was producing chart-topping music that influenced listeners across the globe. As a genre of music that was known as “The Sound of Young America” in the 1960s, studying the Motown sound before and after the riots can provide insight into Detroit citizens’ mindset.
White supremacy in Tulsa during 1917 to 1921 was soaring, white citizen of Tulsa thought with events of bombing a wealthy oilman home to the killing of a taxi cab driver that they should have take the law into their own hands. African Americans were terrified in the white citizens actions. African Americans felt that they would not get equal justice with the law, so African Americans had to stand together against white supremacy and challenge their authority. Which leads into the events that start of the Tulsa race riot. Dick Rowland work as a shoe shiner on Main Street. There were no toilet facilities for the boot shiners, so the owner of the shine parlor where Rowland worked arranged for the employees to use the restroom across the street on the top floor. So the morning of “May 31, 1921” Rowland went across the street to us the bathroom. Dick Rowland got onto the elevator to go to the top floor of the building. Minutes later the young lady ran out of the elevator with scratches on her hands,
The events that took place in Greenwood, Oklahoma on the 31 of May 1921, was a holocaust in Black American history. Present day African Americans still cannot get past this horrible memory that their ancestors experienced because there was no atonement nor acknowledgement by the American government. The suburb of Tulsa christened “Little Africa” was an advanced economically empowered black community. It could be described as the golden black community of the twentieth century. The holistic economic empowerment of this community ranged from classic business ventures such as grocery stores, barber shops and brothels; to new businesses such as banking, aviation and transit systems. It is logical to argue that this community would have preferred peace to maintain and sustain their wealth for future generations. What trigged the unfortunate fate that befell this community has been left out of history books. However, the lasting memories have lingered in the minds of the thousands of descendants of the unfortunate victims of the incident. What was it that lead to the bombing of Greenwood? Chris Messner argues "that the groups involved in the Tulsa riot held conflicting ideologies that both shaped, and were influenced by, their own surrounding social structures, environments, and lived experiences" (Messner 1). The systemic and institutionalized racism that led to the Embargo Act of 1807 on Haiti is analogous to the the aerial bombing
One of the most horrific events that happened in 1917 was the Tulsa Outrage. The Tulsa Outrage was most known for when seventeen men were murdered. One late November night a group of about fifty men dressed in all black known as the “Wobblies” approached seventeen men. The seventeen men were then “pulled from the lineup, tied to a tree, a Knight approached every man with a double piece of hemp rope and whipped the victim’s back until blood draped their backs. Another man stepped forward and slathered boiling tar on the victim’s backs with a paint brush, coating him from head to seat. The final act of humiliation, the Knight then padded the victim’s back with feathers from a down pillow”(Chapman 2). “According to multiple interviews conducted by National Civil Liberties Bureau Investigator L.A.
Urban Blacks were also encounter with extreme racial violence in neighborhoods and at work. Different ethnic groups of new immigrants obtained power and used conflict as a strategy of diminishing urban Blacks power level. They began blocking Urban Black workers going to work throughout new immigrant’s neighborhoods. Race riots have played a crucial role in the social establishment of race, prejudice, and discrimination across the United States. Race riots uncovered fundamental tensions in societies experiencing swift technological and economic changes. In 1920, there were many race riots and other violence in many places, such as Red Summer Race Riots of 1919 and the St. Louis Riot of 1917 that took place during the segregation in the South and the Black urban migration to the North. These race riots were response to the reality that Urban Blacks were carrying on a powerful struggle against White supremacy. During race riots, Urban Blacks lived through a renewed flow of riots, massacres, and racial terrorism.
Have you ever said that you wanted to start a riot, and people have responded by saying that’s not funny? Well here’s why they say that. On May 31, 1921 a riot occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It all happened when Dick Rowland (an African American) was accused of raping a white woman named Sarah Page in an elevator, when Rowland had tripped and grabbed her arm by accident. A salesclerk overheard the scream and called the police. Rowland was arrested. There were angry whites that were outside the courtroom protesting for Rowland to be lynched. The violence started for some people on May 31, 1921 and went on until June 1, 1921. 1265 homes, dozens of office buildings, restaurants, churches and schools had been destroyed during this
The Tulsa Riot of 1921 was a tragic racial riot that resulted in the periodic destruction of Greenwood, a neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nicknamed “Little Africa”, Greenwood was described as a vibrant community, and was built up by African Americans. This community, however, was completely destroyed by a massive mob of white men, whose anger stemmed from rape allegations of an African American man. Before and after the Tulsa Riot occurred, African Americans of the Greenwood community faced social issues due to the prevalence of racism among white men across the nation.
The Tulsa Race Riot is considered to be the most deadly and violent race riot of all time. The period of the riot was a time of prosperity in America, not only among whites, but the black population in Tulsa were also living an upper middle class life. The oil boom gave Tulsa a quick boost in the economy and people had money, lots of money. With oil in the ground and money everywhere, it’s hard to imagine that the National Guard was about to be called on its own civilians for the first time and only time in history.
This paper explains a very important moment in the history of our government that took place in Illinois in 1917. As World War I was beginning for the United States things were heating up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Anti-black riots killed or injured over one hundred black civilians. Then a Silent Parade of over ten thousand black citizens from New York broke out. Civil rights have always been an issue in our government, and according to www.kidzworld.com, after these anti black riots, things eventually led to the development of the The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and from that, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on the bus. The creation of the NAACP also influenced the Little Rock, Arkansas incident, Martin L. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, and many other things which eventually led to equal rights for everyone with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This paper will explain the riots and how it shaped our government into providing equal jobs for all races.
The Watts riots began in the summer of 1965, in a city in Los Angeles called Watts. It all began with the arrest of a young African American by a white California Highway Patrol officer. Now, it was not because he was arrested for already doing something illegal, it was for the way the police officer treated the individual. According to Lacine Holland, an eyewitness to the arrest, the officer “took him and threw him in the car like a bag of laundry and kicked his feet in and slammed the door.” (Flournoy) This caused lots of unrest among the fellow residents of Watts. This was just the beginning of years of pent up oppression for the minorities, which participated in the event. Similarly, in 1992, the Rodney King riots also arose due to the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers for their brutal beating
The Chicago Race Riots of 1919 helped to further show how African Americans are looked as inferior, not just within the citizens of the United States, but the Congress and criminal justice system. White and black beaches were separated by an invisible line; the black beach on 25th street and whites on 29th street. The story of Eugene Williams swimming on the beach worsened after a white police officer, Dan Callahan, refused to intervene or arrest the group of white men responsible for his death, in turn starting the deadliest racial violence in Chicago history. The riot lasted a week with protestors full of rage mostly on the South side with white gangs attacking isolated blacks and blacks attacking isolated whites.
The Chicago race riots of 1919 were one of the darkest moments in our nations history. But something so terrible does not just happen over night, in fact the reason for this riot began with the Great Migration around 1910. The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African-Americans from the rural south into the urban north. Of those 6 million African-Americans traveling to the north 500,000 of them went to Chicago 's South Side. The African-American population thought they were going to a better situation by escaping the apartheid practices of Jim Crow. However they were taken advantage of and seen as new competition to the northern white population. Nine years later during the summer of 1919, two years after World War I ended, the American society suffered from a racial tension that it has never seen before. The racial tension brewed from the demobilization of black and white
Pre-existing racism in Tulsa was the foundation on which all the other causes of the riot were built upon. Wide-spread segregation was still common in America at that time and it was accepted by many in the North and South that whites were inherently superior to blacks. These views were particularly strong in the South, where emancipated blacks were seen as a threat and scourge to white Southern culture, a culture which was utterly dominated by whites and where blacks were oppressed with no hope of equal protection under the law, equal representation, etc. This was also the case in Tulsa in the early 1900s. Blacks were segregated against by the white residents and as a consequence formed their own community, called Greenwood, on the north side of the Frisco Railroad tracks, which was heralded by
After allegedly a young African American boy by the name of Dick Rowland had assaulted a young Caucasians lady by the name of Sarah Page on an elevator. The Ku Klux Klan had destroyed six hundred businesses including twenty-one restaurants, two movie theaters, a hospital, and 30 grocery stores. Over 1,000 homes were burnt, but left thousands of people homeless. The riot lasted for over sixteen hours and the governor declared martial law. No one knows how many actually died because the town was burned down, but the Tulsa race riot commission tested the soil for unmarked graves. The test results revealed that hundreds of bodies were in the
In July 23, 1967, the Detroit Police department busted a bar with a prominent number of African Americans. They arrested every person in the bar. More and more people started to gather on 12th street to watch the proceedings. That is when the rioting started. The crowd began to get more violent as more people joined.