There was a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, Tulsa was a deeply troubled town at that time. Crime rates were extremely high, and the city had been plagued by vigilantism. In August of 1920, a white mob lynched a black teenager accused of murder, and newspaper accounts indicated Tulsa police did little to protect the lynching victim, who had been taken from his jail cell at the county courthouse.
Eight months later, a black man allegedly stepped on the foot of an elevator operator [a white woman] causing her to scream. The next day, the local newspaper reported the black man had attempted to rape the white woman, and he had been arrested and placed in the county jail.
Later that day, a group of white people gathered outside the jail demanding the “prisoner” be released to them [for vigilante justice] but the sheriff refused. A little later, a group of black men went to the courthouse in an effort to “protect” the prisoner, but the sheriff turned them away. However, racial tensions began to rise, and later that night a false rumor was circulated in the Greenwood area [a black business area of Tulsa] that white men were storming the courthouse.
This led a group of black men to return to the courthouse, and a subsequent confrontation with a group of white men resulted in shots being fired . . . and the Tulsa Race Riot was underway. The end result was the loss of many lives, and the complete destruction of the Greenwood business area, and many of the homes nearby.
It was indeed a most tragic event in Tulsa’s history.
Today, the City of Tulsa is preparing for the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riot. A special commission has been formed, and they are changing the name from “Riot” to “Massacre.” A spokesman for the commission says the term “riot” gives the impression that the people in the Greenwood area were the cause, whereas the term “massacre” better reflects the fact that sources outside the community were to blame. The spokesman also said, “It is important that our children and grandchildren know the truth.”
The City of Tulsa is also changing the name of “Brady Street” to “Reconciliation Way” because the street’s namesake, Tate Brady [one of Tulsa’s founding fathers], is alleged to have associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
In addition, Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) is renaming several schools because “their original names are inappropriate for use in today’s world.” These are the names of the historical figures that TPS is removing from our schools:
- General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate States Army
- President Andrew Jackson, a former slave owner who became the seventh President of the United States
- Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America
- Jean-Pierre Chouteau, a French Creole fur trader who established trading posts in Indian Territory, and later, on behalf of the U.S. government, negotiated the Osage Treaty of 1808, by which the tribe sold much of its ancestral land in present-day Missouri and Arkansas
Our modern day search for enlightenment is becoming more and more puzzling day by day. If our true purpose in all of this is for “our children and grandchildren to know the truth” . . . why aren’t they being told the whole truth?