America's Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy: Accounts, Causes, Effects, Facts, History (2002)

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The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a group of whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618340769/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp;=1789&creative;=9325&creativeASIN;=0618340769&linkCode;=as2&tag;=tra0c7-20&linkId;=6ea7b207287ffa8e0d7dcc55fa18c9c5 It resulted in the Greenwood District, also known as 'the Black Wall Street' and the wealthiest black community in the United States, being burned to the ground. During the 16 hours of the assault, more than 800 people were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries (the two black hospitals were burned down), and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities.[2]:108–109 An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.[2]:108, 228 [3] The events of the riot were long omitted from local and state histories. "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place."[4] With the number of survivors declining, in 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report to establish the historical record of the events, and acknowledge the victims and damages to the black community. Released in 2001, the report included the commission's recommendations for some compensatory actions, most of which were not implemented by the state and city governments. The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park to the victims in Tulsa. The latter was dedicated in 2010. The riot occurred in the racially and politically tense atmosphere of post-World War I northeastern Oklahoma. The territory, which was declared a state on November 16, 1907, had received many settlers from the South who had been slaveholders before the American Civil War. In the early 20th century, lynchings were common in Oklahoma, as part of a continuing effort by whites to assert and maintain white supremacy. Between the declaration of statehood and the Tulsa race riot 13 years later, 31 persons were lynched in Oklahoma; 26 were black and nearly all were men and boys. During the twenty years following the riot, the number of lynchings statewide fell to two.[5] The newly created state legislature passed racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws, as one of its first orders of business. Its 1907 constitution and laws had voter registration rules that disfranchised most blacks; this also barred them from serving on juries or in local office, a situation that lasted until the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, part of civil rights legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. Major cities passed their own restrictions.[2] On August 16, 1916, Tulsa passed an ordinance forbidding blacks or whites from residing on any block where three-fourths or more of the residents were of the other race. This made residential segregation mandatory in the city. Although the United States Supreme Court declared the ordinance unconstitutional the next year, it remained on the books.[2] As cities absorbed returning veterans into the labor market following World War I, there was social tension and anti-black sentiment. At the same time, black veterans pushed to have their civil rights enforced, believing they had earned full citizenship by military service. In what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919, industrial cities across the Midwest and North had severe race riots, often led by ethnic whites among recent immigrant groups, who competed most with blacks for jobs. In Chicago and some other cities, blacks defended themselves for the first time with force but were outnumbered. Northeastern Oklahoma had an economic slump that put men out of work. Since 1915, the Ku Klux Klan had been growing in urban chapters across the country, particularly since veterans had been returning from the war. It first appeared in Oklahoma in a major way on August 12, 1921, less than three months after the Tulsa riot.[6] The historian Charles Alexander estimated that by the end of 1921, Tulsa had 3,200 residents in the Klan.[6] The city population was 72,000 in 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot