Rebellion and riot are often used synonymously when it comes to violent disruptions wrapped up in race. They’re not the same. Different motivations, different roots, different players, different goals, different outcomes.
A race riot is when white people respond violently to the notion of blacks seeking economic and political power, making black folks the target of their wrath. Black and brown people rebel spontaneously in respond to the accumulation of persistent injustices. The target of our wrath is rarely individual white people, even though we are reacting to white supremacy and institutional racism; our own neighborhoods end up being the brunt of violence.
This week in 1921, death and destruction came to black citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This race riot started out like most mob actions in this country. Sarah Page, a white woman, made an accusation against Dick Rowland, an African-American man. Since both Page and Rowland worked in the vicinity and knew one another, it is unclear what really happened, but what we do know is that the white press ran a story that whipped up white hysteria until all hell broke loose.
The growing resentment over time by whites of the successful community of Greenwood – dubbed “Black Wall Street” – fueled the white wage. But the real incendiaries were the bombs dropped from planes allegedly to quell the riots.
The casualties were tragically one-sided. Literally all the 35 blocks of Greenwood were burned to the ground leaving about 10,000 black people homeless. A reported 300 black folks perished, but establishing accurate counts was impossible. Homes and businesses were looted before they were destroyed; there were millions of dollars in property damage. About 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were detained in public facilities like the baseball stadium. Every black person was victimized, and black survivors were traumatized.
The wealth and lives of the African-American community were erased overnight. Efforts to erase the incident from history were almost successful. Any verbal discussions were discouraged; written accounts were suppressed, reporters threatened who wanted to write about one of Oklahoma’s darkest hours. I recently met a black woman who grew up in Tulsa and never heard a peep about the race riot. It wasn’t until 1996 that the state commissioned an official study of the massacre.
Many of my readers told me that they first heard about the Tulsa bombing from my columns. Before the September 11 attack on the World Trade Building, I often referred to the only bombings on the continental U.S. soil targeted black communities – Tulsa and the 1985 bombing in Philadelphia supposedly to rid the city of the group named MOVE.
Following World War I, 36 cities experienced race riots because of white opposition to the migration of Southern blacks to the North. In the first nine months of 1919 there were 38 documented race riots in this country. East St. Louis, was among them. Like Tulsa, the police and National Guard who were sent to protect the black communities openly and actively participated in the lynchings and lootings.
This summer will be the 100th anniversary of the massacre in East Boogie. If you have the stomach for the savagery, read the transcripts from the Congressional hearings or Harper Barnes’ provocative book, “Never Been a Time.” Or talk to St. Louis Alderman Terry Kennedy whose kinfolks who fled the inferno and dodged bullets pushing across the Eads Bridge.
Racial violence is no stranger to this country. We’ve just gotten more sophisticated in the way violence gets carried out in the public domain, but haven’t spent sufficient time improving the quality of our relationships. It’s time to take some baby steps into a civilized society that honors and protects black life.
