On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at a dark (and often unknown) chapter from American history, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. This was brought to the public’s attention in the excellent HBO Watchmen series, and many people (hosts included) thought it was just a fiction from this world of super heroes. However, it was very real and very tragic.

The whole thing unfolded in perhaps the most unique and prosperous neighborhood for African Americans in the all of the US, a portion of Tulsa known as Greenwood. This area was called the Black Wall Street. It was a place where wealth black investors from Chicago and New York moved. It had movie theaters, jewelry stores, high end restaurants, everything that many black communities didn’t have. The problem was, Tulsa also had white supremacy groups such as the KKK and the Knights of Liberty. They ran lynch mobs and saw vigilante “justice” even on white criminals who they would storm out of police detention and kill.

On Memorial Day weekend, a black shoe shiner named Dick Rowland had an encounter with elevator operator named Sarah Page in the elevator of the Drexler Building. She screamed. He ran out. The next day he was arrested for no particular reason. By that afternoon, a mob of 1000 people stormed the sheriff’s department, even though they concluded no crime was committed. Some black residents banded together with weapons (many were vets from WWI), and thing escalated quickly.

Shots were fired, and ten whites and two black were dead in minutes. The white mob armed itself and stormed Greenwood. They burned down 35 city blocks in one night. They destroyed the businesses, torched 1200 houses, left 8000 black residents homeless, and murdered as many as 300 innocent victims. The immediate response afterward was a systematic cover up. No journalist could write about it. Tulsa police and military records went missing, and all the culpability of city leaders who stoked the flames were disappeared. There have since been memorials and calls for reparation, but even Dr. Manhattan can’t save the day this time.

 

Visit Our Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/hbo-2019/the-massacre-of-black-wall-street/3217/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre

https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/arts/television/watchmen-tulsa-race-riot.html

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=TU013

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/10/11/we-lived-like-we-were-wall-street/

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/17/789015343/new-research-identifies-possible-mass-graves-from1921-tulsa-race-massacre

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/possible-mass-grave-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-found-researchers-n1102781