Rediscovering the Great Two Day Tulsa Race War of 1921

IN TULSA, OKLAHOMA, in late May, 1921, memorial day weekend, there occurred a two day race war, triggered by a stereotypical event, the alleged sexual assault of a white woman by an African-american gentleman, who may or may not have been so gentlemanly. The "darkie", as he and others of his sort were back then termed, was apprehended and locked up, and presumably slated to be subjected to due process, in accordance with constitutional guarantees. But guess what? A lynch mob, consisting of European-American Christians who seem to have feared God and law enforcement a bit less than might have been prudent, tried to overpower the law enforcement authorities, break their way into the jail, and dispense summary justice, of which the "justice" of choice was lynching. Rope is cheap, trees are plentiful, and black lives, at least back then, most definitely did not matter. Resistance offered by officers was, quite likely token and unenthusiastic, because the white lynch mob was actually quite small, and lacking in real determination. Then another problem developed. A counter mob of angry African-Americans, then called "darkies", "coons", or "niggers" by upstanding caucasian Christians, formed in protest. All hell broke loose. Machine gun nests manned by irate honkies sprang up, charges and counter charges, World War One style, ensued, bombs were actually dropped on the black neighborhood by primitive airplanes, a series of pitched battles raged across the fair city, and after a day and a half of ferocious fighting, over three hundred darkly pigmented second class citizens lay dead, the precise number never having determined, and no one at the time, then or now, gave a damn about the specifics of second class attrition. Part of the irony of all this is that, early in the twentieth century, Oklahoma, which is now a bastion of conservative ideology, was a relatively progressive state, exemplified by the progressive minded comedian-philosopher Will Rogers, who never met a man he didn't like, black or white. Will Rogers must not only have been a poor judge of human beings, but a complete ass kissing doofus ans sycophantic philanthrope as well, but I digress. When the gun smoke had cleared from the great two day Tulsa race war, several white humans lay dead, but far fewer than black folk, because blacks in those days were not encouraged to own guns, nor much of anything else, although the black district of Greenwood was at the time the most affluent black neighborhood in America. Another irony is that during the last years of the nineteenth century and first years of the twentieth, in the United States of Animosity, racism was at a relatively low ebb, and began to return to its normal position of prominence only in the nineteen thirties, when the horrors of the war to end all race wars the American "civil" war, had finally been pushed into the past, and the attraction of hatred was fueled by worsening economics, and increasing availability of dark skinned scapegoats moving north to pursue to American dream, or, in their case, the American nightmare. Alas, if only "they " had stayed in "their" "place", down south, sharecropping. We don't talk about this tidbit of unsavory American history these days, although to do so would be more than a little relevant, considering that we just can't seem to let go of the fundamental problem. Students in Tulsa public schools are supposed to be told about all this, but usually aren't, remindful of students in Germany and their traditional neglect and glossing over of uncle Adolf. We tend to blot out bad news, and history unfavorable to the prevailing culture. Hence, we much prefer to say "all lives matter", and to leave it at that, glossed over, like Hitler in modern Germany. ......PLEASE SHARE THIS WEBSITE WITH OTHERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE MOST LIKELY TO BE ENRAGED BY IT. THANKS!