HISTORY AND THE TULSA RACE MASSACRE (AND DON'T FORGET THE OSAGE)

 

The dawn of May 31, 1921, promised to be like most Tulsa mornings in late spring- warm and humid. The Great War had ended more than two years previously and economic prosperity was developing nationwide- including Tulsa. After all, the city was the Oil Capital of the World with the Glenpool drilling to the south and the Osage Nation reserves to the northeast. Money was to be made by all- Whites, African Americans, and Native Americans. Then three unthinkable tragedies happened- two utterly violent and one utterly intellectual dishonest.

The tranquility of that spring morning ended too soon. A young black man was accused of assaulting a younger white woman and was arrested. A mob of white men then gathered at the jail to expediate his lynching. Soon a large group of black men arrived at the jail to ensure due process for the accused. Shots were fired and the riot by whites began.

The riot soon evolved into a massacre of blacks and the destruction of their businesses and homes in the affluent black neighborhood of Greenwood. The rioting continued into the next day and concluded with the arrival of the Oklahoma National Guard. The number of deaths is disputed, perhaps up to 300. More than 800 residents were admitted to hospitals and about 6,000 blacks were left homeless. The Tulsa Race Massacre is considered the worst incident of racial violence in American history.

During this time another act of violence was occurring- the victims were of the Osage Nation and unlike Tulsa, the violence was spread out over about a decade. The Osages had purchased their reservation in what is now Oklahoma (Osage County encompasses the reservation). This purchase allowed the tribe to have more sovereignty over their land including mineral rights. Oil was discovered in the 1890s and by the mid-1920s the Osages were considered the richest people per capita on the planet.

Alarmed by this extreme wealth the Federal government began requiring a complicated system of guardianship of Whites to the Osages. Graft, corruption, and even murder began to deprive the Osages of their headrights to the oil royalties. Indians were poisoned, shot, and even bombed in their homes. As many as 60 Osages were murdered and perhaps even dozens more suffered a similar fate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation dispatched an agent to Oklahoma for the bureau’s first ever murder case. Several murders were solved, and the perpetrators tried and convicted. Although most murders remained unsolved, the killings stopped.

Then the third tragedy occurred- silence. It was as if these events were not mentioned, then they never really happened. My hometown in northeastern Oklahoma is slightly over an hour’s drive from Tulsa. The city boasted it was “America’s Most Beautiful City”. I had college friends from Tulsa. I studied Oklahoma history in college. Not one mention of the massacre. Even in the 1990s a native of Tulsa who lived in Greenwood disputed his professor’s lecture on the event- “That did not happen.” But it did. Eventually there was a reference to a riot in Tulsa and finally in this century we are beginning to understand.

History also almost erased the memory of the Osage murders. But Hollywood and publishing brought forth the truth of this event sooner. The 1959 movie “The FBI Story” starring Jimmy Stewart had a dramatic scene concerning the federal investigation of the murders and the book Killers of the Flower Moon richly chronicled the situation. But not a word in my history textbooks.

History is a prickly and pesky beast, but history is not “one damn thing after another” as several cynics have remarked. History is richly nuanced and paradoxed combining the good, the bad, and the ugly. History cannot be separated out according to our personal feelings and preferences- unless one takes it all, one has nothing but empty fairy tales.

We Americans face a conundrum today. Many want to destroy our memories of our history of which they disapprove but exalt other memories. History is all or nothing. Silence will not teach us anything worthwhile. To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan (ironically a native of Tulsa), “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.”

We honor the memories of the slain African Americans and Native Americans with appropriate commendation not eradication.