This post at BoingBoing about The GAP Band, reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to mention on the site. Actually, before I get into it, lemme quote the portion of the entry that I’m talking about so you don’t think my train of thought has completely derailed :

BoingBoing reader Mike Ransom of Tulsa Oklahoma says, “The GAP Band was named after three streets here in Tulsa: Greenwood, Archer and Pine. That’s the same Greenwood and Archer mentioned in the archetypical Bob Wills Western Swing tune, “Take Me Back To Tulsa”. Here’s a further bit of trivia about one of those streets — Link.

Like many of you probably know, I’m from Tulsa and like most people from the Midwest, every time my town is mentioned my ears (or in this case, eyes) perk up.

The “Greenwood, Archer, and Pine” street reference may not mean much to non-Tulsans, but it’s much more important than just a few street names. In the early part of the last century, Greenwood was the nexus of one of the most successful African-American communities in the country, what Booker T. Washington dubbed “Black Wall Street”. And in 1921, it was also the home of one of the worst acts of violence in our country’s history :

The date was June 1, 1921, when “Black Wall Street,” the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering–a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.

The night’s carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.
. . .
Searching under the heading of “riots,” “Oklahoma” and “Tulsa” in current editions of the World Book Encyclopedia, there is conspicuously no mention whatsoever of the Tulsa race riot of 1921, and this omission is by no means a surprise, or a rare case. The fact is, one would also be hard-pressed to find documentation of the incident, let alone and accurate accounting of it, in any other “scholarly” reference or American history book.

I can personally attest to the last part. I went to a public school on the “black side” of town (yes, Tulsa is still mostly segregated 80 years later), and I took the required class on Oklahoma history, but I had no idea about these riots until I was an adult. Of course, I was a middle-class white kid whose parents grew up 100 miles away, so I didn’t benefit from the memories of elder relatives who were actually there the way my black classmates probably did.

In an effort to rescue this tragic page from our history from the memory hole (as well as make amends for those whose lives are still affected by the incident), the state legislature commissioned the “Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921″. Needless to say, their final report contains details that make the word “riot” seem like an understatement.

In the extended portion of this entry, you can see that this wasn’t a “riot” in the sense that we’re usually accustomed to hearing it. Rather than the mass chaos and confusion that we associate with Lakers games and WTO meetings today, the attack on Greenwood district was closer to a military assault with the aim of destroying the African-American community.

Like many race riots of the era, Tulsa’s racial tensions came to a head with a story whose details seem oddly familiar to those of us looking back : A young black man accused of violence against a white girl, a KKK lynch mob shows up at the courthouse to demand the young man, and a mysterious gunshot in the tense crowd kicks off an evening of violence that is only quelled when the local officials reluctantly contact the National Guard. Not to gloss over a tragedy, but the thing that makes the Tulsa riots stand out is what happened the next day :

At approximately 2:00 a.m., the fierce fighting along the Frisco railroad yards had ended. The white would-be invaders still south of the tracks. As a result, some of Greenwood’s defenders not only concluded that they had “won” the fight, but also that the riot was over. “Nine p.m. the trouble started,” A.J. Smitherman later wrote, “two a.m. the thing was done.”131

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Regardless of whatever was, or was not, happening down by the Frisco tracks, crowds of angry, armed whites were still very much in evidence on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Tulsa. Stunned, and then outraged, by what had occurred at the courthouse, they had only begun to vent their anger.
. . .
In the pre-dawn hours of June l, thousands of armed whites had gathered in three main clusters along the northern fringes of downtown, opposite Greenwood. One group had assembled behind the Frisco freight depot, while another waited nearby at the Frisco and Santa Fe passenger station. Four blocks to the north, a third crowd was clustered at the Katy passenger depot. While it is unclear how many people were in each group, some contemporary observers estimated the total number of armed whites who had gathered as high as five or ten thousand.
. . .
Several eyewitnesses later recalled that when dawn came at 5:08 a.m. that morning, an unusual whistle or siren sounded, perhaps as a signal for the mass assault on Greenwood to begin. Although the source of this whistle or siren is still unknown, moments later, the white mobs made their move. While the machine gun in the grain elevator opened fire, crowds of armed whites poured across the Frisco tracks, headed straight for the African American commercial district. As later described by one eyewitness:

With wild frenzied shouts, men began pouring from behind the freight depot and the long string of boxcars and evidently from behind the piles of oil well easing which was at the other end and on the north side of the building. From every place of shelter up and down the tracks came screaming, shouting men to join in the rush toward the Negro section. Mingled with the shouting were a few rebel-yells and Indian gobblings as the great wave of humanity rushed forward totally absorbed in thoughts of destruction.

Meanwhile, over at the Katy depot, the other crowd of armed whites also moved forward. Heading east, they were soon joined by dozens of others in automobiles, driving along Brady and Cameron Streets. As one unidentified observer later told reporter Mary Parrish, “Tuesday night, May 31, was the riot, and Wednesday morning, by daybreak, was the invasion.”
. . .
For Dimple Bush, the flight from Greenwood had bordered upon the indescribable. “It was just dawn; the machine guns were sweeping the valley with their murderous fire and my heart was filled with dread as we sped along,,” she recalled, “Old women and men, children were running and screaming everywhere.”

Soon, however, new perils developed. As the mobs of armed whites rushed into the southern end of the African American district, airplanes — manned by whites — also appeared overhead. As Dr. R.T. Bridgewater, a well-respected black Tulsa physician, later described what happened:

Shortly after we left a whistle blew. The shots rang from a machine gun located on Standpipe Hill near my residence and aeroplanes began to fly over us, in some instances very low to the ground. A cry was heard from the women saying, “Look out for the aeroplanes, they are shooting upon us.”

Numerous other eyewitnesses –both black and white — confirm the presence of an unknown number of airplanes flying over Greenwood during the early daylight hours of June 1. While certain other assertions made over the years such as that the planes dropped streams of “liquid fire” on top of African American homes and businesses appear to have been technologically improbable, particularly during the early 1920s, there is little doubt but that some of the occupants of the airplanes fired upon black Tulsans with pistols and rifles. Moreover, there is evidence, to suggest that men in at least one airplane dropped some form of explosives, probably sticks of dynamite, upon a group of African American refugees as they were fleeing the city.
. . .
As the waves of white rioters descended upon the African American district, a deadly pattern soon emerged. First, the armed whites broke into the black homes and businesses, forcing the occupants out into the street, where they were led away at gunpoint to one of a growing number of internment centers. Anyone who resisted was shot. Moreover, African American men in homes where firearms were discovered met the same fate. Next, the whites looted the homes and businesses, pocketing small items, and hauling away larger items either on foot or by car or truck. Finally, the white rioters then set the homes and other buildings on fire, using torches and oil-soaked rags. House by house, block by block, the wall of flame crept northward, engulfing the city’s black neighborhoods.
. . .
When the State Troops arrived in Tulsa, the majority of the city’s black citizenry had either fled to the countryside, or were being held — allegedly for their own protection — against their will in one of a handful of hastily set-up internment centers, including Convention Hall, the fairgrounds, and McNulty baseball park.
. . .
Conducted, no doubt, under trying circumstances, the burial of Tulsa’s African American riot dead would nevertheless bear little in common with the interment of white victims. Largely buried by strangers, there would be no headstones or graveside services for most of black Tulsa’s riot dead. Nor would family members be present at the burials, as most of them were still being held under armed guard at the various detention centers. It appears that in some cases, not only did some black Tulsa families not learn how their loved ones died, but not even where they were buried.

In the week following the riot, nearly all of Tulsa’s African American citizenry had managed to win their freedom, by one way or another, from the internment centers. Largely homeless, and in many cases now penniless, they made their way back to Greenwood. However, Greenwood was gone.

As you can probably guess, the commission that wrote the report had some recommendations which have pretty much been ignored by the local and state governments. I haven’t been following the story closely, so I’m not up on all the details, but a good place to look if you want more information is the Tulsa Reparations Coalition.