A Very OK Podcast
Episode 3: “The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre”
May 19, 2021
Episode Transcript
Trait Thompson: Hello and welcome to A Very OK Podcast I am your host, Trait Thompson, along with my cohost, Dr. Bob Blackburn.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Trait, good to be with you again. It’s great to see you here today. And we have a really interesting topic that’s been in the forefront of the news, especially over the last year or so. In a few days, we’ll be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which occurred from May 30 to June 1, 1921, and couldn’t think of a better time to dive into this topic than now. A little bit later, we’ll be interviewing Phil Armstrong, who is the project manager of the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, and I look forward to that conversation quite a bit. So, Bob, this is a topic that you have been familiar with ever since you’ve been at the Oklahoma Historical Society. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your involvement with this topic over the years?
Blackburn: I think what’s interesting about my take on the Tulsa Race Massacre is that it’s both a personal issue to me and a professional, as a historian, of trying to track it. I grew up in a segregated community. I was born in 1951 and never went to school with an African American until I went to college in 1969. So, and both sides of my family are southern— one side from Virginia and Texas to Indian Territory, the other from South Carolina and Arkansas to Oklahoma. And so, I grew up in a southern family with southern attitudes about race. So that was my personal background, and I had to overcome a lot of that as a student. Fortunately, I had a great college professor at OSU who taught, then we called it Black History, and the book that he used, at the time I didn’t know much about the author, subsequently would, but it was From Slavery to Freedom by Dr. John Hope Franklin. Later became very close, personal friends with Dr. Franklin. Had him in many times to speak, but that book opened my eyes to the total picture from connecting slavery with segregation, with civil rights effort, with modern-day violence. And, you know, today we’re talking about policing in this issue. Well, that book gave me a great sounding. And then when I started work at the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1979, I wanted to pursue learning more. And fortunately, I came onto the scene as a historian, with my own personal evolution and learning about how to overcome racial prejudice that’s ingrained in families and culture and communities and then how to really pursue it. And so, I was there when the first articles were published, and I’ll never forget. Rudi Halliburton, professor at Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah, wrote a short story on the on the race, we called it at the time the race riot. And I published that in The Chronicles in the early ’80s. And then in ’84, another man who later became a friend published a book, LSU Press did it, and by Scott Ellsworth, and was the first scholarly history of an event that happened in 1921. And if you check all the historiography of Oklahoma history, very few people were writing about it. It was a footnote and not much of a footnote, then. And here’s an entire book. Well, the author had to go to LSU in Louisiana to get it published, but it opened everyone’s eyes more to the story itself. And so I was learning all these years, changing personally, changing as an academic, trying to uncover truth and find out where the sources were and how to create dialog. Then I had the good fortune of working with Representative Don Ross, one of my heroes, representative from Tulsa at the time, chairman of the Black caucus, and worked with him on an exhibit on the race riot for the Tulsa Greenwood Cultural Center. And then when he was able to create a commission, he asked me to serve as chairman of that in 1997. So, that evolution from knowing nothing about the African American community, to this evolution of a better understanding, and then as a historian, embracing that, it was quite a transformation. And I still look back on that journey and wishing that everyone could have a similar journey of understanding and learning more about this.
Thompson: Yeah, it’s really important. And, you know, I grew up in a different generation, and I did not grow up in Oklahoma. But, you know, in my high school we did, you know, we had Hispanic, we had some Asian American, we had Black Americans as well. And so I was able to go to school in the integrated school district, although even at that time, you know, it still feels like that, and this is school in the early to mid-’90s, but it still feels like that everybody kind of even kept to their own race a little bit, that the sports teams and things like that, you know, you would integrate and you mix. But when the friend groups came together, they were still segregated. As I got older and I came to Tulsa in 1996 to go to college at Oral Roberts University, I don’t remember hearing anything about the race massacre or what went on there. I think it was still one of those topics that people didn’t talk about. And then I forget how it happened, but I discovered Rilla Askew’s book Fire in Beulah, and that’s a fictionalized account. It’s a novel. But at the same time, she painted a picture of what it must have been like. And it was just, it was horrifying. I couldn’t believe that, you know, I had grown to love Tulsa and still love Tulsa today, but I couldn’t believe an event like that could have happened in the town that I had come to go to college in.
Blackburn: I have family from Claremore, so I grew up in the greater Tulsa community and understood Tulsa well. But I’ll never forget at one of the first meetings where I was chairman of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, as we called it then, and in one ear, I had an older white gentleman say, Bob or Dr. Blackburn, you know what really happened? And I said no. What? And he said they got what was coming to them. They broke the law. They came over to our part of town with guns and started shooting up the town. So it was law enforcement. Okay. Well, in the other ear, I had someone from the North Tulsa Historical Society came and said Dr. Blackburn, you know what really happened, don’t you? I said, what? He said it was a conspiracy. It had been planned for years. The Chamber of Commerce had all these plans, and they wanted our property and set us back and get rid of us and all of this. And so we had those two extremes in Tulsa. The vast majority probably would have said, I don’t know anything about it. A few would have said, why are we bringing this up again? And so, what I finally determined as we got into the commission and even came out of it, is that the real purpose of that commission was trying to uncover facts, but there were going to be many people who would never accept the facts. We have that today in our political world. But what I finally determined that the best thing was dialog, that we’ve got to talk about it.
Thompson: Right.
Blackburn: And we have, even though knowing that someone may never accept the facts because they believe so strongly in the conspiracy theory or something else, we cannot change their minds. But the vast majority who know nothing about it, those are the people we need to be talking to, and so we need to be talking with good facts. Not make believe. Not fiction, not mythology, urban myths. We need to have the facts. We need to come to the table and really be willing to listen as well as talk, and then have this dialog. And I think the Commission, although it did not accomplish everything, we were supposed to look at reparations as well, although that was a little inconclusive. The State of Oklahoma invested almost $4 million in trying to do something at the community level. So, the State of Oklahoma tried to start with reparations in ’98 and ’99. Of course, we have a long way to go, but I really think what came out of that was starting the dialog that a greater awareness that there was this event that had been fairly suppressed, and there are reasons for that, but that we just needed to talk about it.
Thompson: Yeah. And I was going to mention that. You know, when you try to get at the facts of this, you would think that this would be... I mean, 100 years ago, we sometimes we think that that’s a long time, but it’s not really that long ago. And you would think that they would have good documentation for what would have happened. But in fact, the opposite is true. The records are scant on this particular event. You have the impact of sort of the fog of war going on where it was this major traumatic event and people’s memories and recollections change over time. And then you have, there does seem that there was a concerted effort to bury this history, and people didn’t want the facts to come out. What led to this? How did we get to this position to where we have armed Black people and armed white people going up against each other, and you have an entire section of a city utterly destroyed? And how did we get to this place in our community?
Blackburn: You really have to start with the stage of history. And I always use that metaphor that we’re always stepping onto the stage of history, each of us individually, each generation, certain challenges, certain opportunities. But you have to understand that stage of history, and that’s what we try to do at the Historical Society, is to create a picture of the way it was. And so the picture in 1921 is in the white community, you have a southern state. Danney Goble, one of my heroes, Oklahoma historian Danney Goble wrote if you do not understand that Oklahoma is a southern state, you will never get to the truth. And so you have to start knowing that the culture of Oklahoma largely comes out of the south. You get to the to the Cherokee Strip and the Panhandle and certain urban areas, and especially Tulsa, more Mid-Atlantic. But southern culture is dominant. And then a strong part of southern culture is Scots-Irish, which is always dominant, even if it’s a minority culture blending. It is so strong, and you can see it throughout Oklahoma. But we are a southern state. And so Oklahomans who came here, starting with the Indians, the Five Civilized Tribes, all came from the South. All were being led by mixed-blood Scotsmen and Indians who were southerners. They came from a society of cotton plantations. Slavery was a given way of life, and many of those Indian leaders saw slavery as a good thing. It was helping those Black people come up out of, you know, ignorance and the wilderness, giving them Christian opportunities. So that was that attitude coming with the tribes, and we get migration after the land runs largely coming from the south. And so segregation was part of who we were. And many of the African Americans in the state had come initially as slaves, then freedmen, then told to go back into a segregated way of life with statehood in 1907. So there was a little bit of progress there in the 1890s. But 1907 and segregation coming to the state of Oklahoma, we were a southern state, similar to what you’d find in Mississippi or Alabama.
Thompson: If you look back at one part of our history, there was an attempt, although it died out pretty fast, that there was a thought that this could be an African American state, that this could be a haven for African Americans when the Boomer Movement was going on. E. P. McCabe, who founded Langston, he had thought that this could be a haven for African Americans. Of course, we knew that that was not going to be the case. You know, you have African Americans that were run out of certain towns during the territorial period. There were sundown towns, and African Americans were not allowed to be here. The 1897 Territorial legislature banned racial mixing in schools. So even pre-statehood, we’re starting to see some of these Jim Crow laws come. And then after statehood, we have Senate Bill One. And I have, you mentioned the great historian Danney Goble. And so I did want to read an excerpt here from his book with James Scales, the book Oklahoma Politics: A History, which I turn back to a lot. And for those of you out there who are looking for a good synopsis of what’s our political history, this book is incredible. So I’m going to read the, the excerpt here from that book. And he says, “Meeting from December the 2nd, 1907 to May 26th, 1908, the legislature turned quickly and enthusiastically to its task. Completion of the state’s segregation system was the first order of business, finally fulfilling the leadership plank of their 1906 platform. The first legislature whooped through Senate Bill One with a 37-to-2 vote in the Senate and a 95-to-10 vote in the House. Transportation companies were given the responsibility of providing separate coaches, waiting rooms, and compartments,” quote, “which shall be equal in all points of comfort and convenience,” unquote. “Failure to provide these Jim Crow facilities left the companies liable to fines ranging from $100 to $1,000 for each violation. Black reaction to the predictable measure included small-scale rioting. The Midland Valley station at Taft, which was an All-Black town, was burned, and Lieutenant Governor George W. Bellamy’s train was besieged in a brief skirmish.” So, you can see the pot starting to boil here.
Blackburn: You get what’s happening nationally. The reason for the separate but equal was the law of the land, as determined by the US Supreme Court in 1896, in Plessy vs. Ferguson said, you can separate the races legally as long as they’re equal. Well, of course, there was never any equal. There was always separate, was always emphasized. And that would remain the law of the land until the 1960s and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration. But, you know, once you have that legal segregation and in one community it says there’s something so different about another part of the community that we can’t live together. We can’t ride on a train together. We can’t drink out of the same water fountains. You can imagine what that’s doing to the culture. Everyone is being polarized. We see that in today’s political world, but even more so at the time. And then you get some other changes as we move into the 20th century, layering on top of the of that wall of segregation, we get the influences in the white community of the oil boom. And to understand Tulsa, you have to understand it was an oil community to begin with. And so in the oil community with Glenn Pool Field in 1907, here come people trying to find jobs, both white and Black. And by 1920, the town is about 90,000 people, and perhaps as many as 10,000 African Americans in that community. Well, largely, these people coming are single males, and it’s a male-dominated community because of the jobs working in the refineries, working in the pipe plants, building rigs, not just, you know, working in the oil companies. And so you get this young, male frontier community that’s a boomtown with lots of alcohol flowing, even though it’s prohibited by state law. Still there, where having a good time is considered going to town, getting drunk, and getting in a fight. That would have been a short description of a good time on a Saturday night.
Thompson: Well, and who wouldn’t want to have a good time like that, right?
(laughter)
Blackburn: That’s right. Today we look down on those who want to go.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Maybe not getting drunk is not such a taboo, but getting in fights anymore is, but a very physical society where these young males are away from their aunts, and their mothers, and their grandmothers, and the social control of the little towns. If you get in a fight in a little bitty town, pretty soon your parents are going to find out. Your aunt and uncle or grandma, you’re in deep trouble. Well, in the frontier boomtown, you know, the inhibitions are gone. And so you get that condition. Then you throw in World War I, and during World War I, it was super patriotism. I lived through the 1960s when the term was on a lot of cars. “America: Love It or Leave It.” It was either you go 100% native patriotism or there’s no discussion. You can just get out if you don’t like it. Well, that’s the way it was World War I. And there were pacifists, white pacifists lynched during World War I because they weren’t patriotic enough. They were German communities assaulted. Many German communities had to change their names because of it. And out of that came the Councils of Defense, which were vigilante groups that could go in and enforce patriotism. If you weren’t buying enough bonds, if you perhaps were not flying the flag in front of your house, the council defense would come in, and the general public would applaud.
(clapping)
Blackburn: Yes, go get them. So vigilante justice, which was embedded in our culture anyway because of the frontier, is there and it’s celebrated. So coming out of that, you get that in the white community. And so you get all of these social changes in the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan, because people are pushing back on change. And the Ku Klux Klan has as its fundamental law, it’s really fundamental Christianity. The cross is a burning cross. We have to bring the cross back into our lives, get rid of the immorality, get rid of the miscegenation, get rid of the adulterers, get rid of all of these problems in the Black community. And so that all comes together where the tinders are lit in the white community for it. Then in the Black community, you come through the All-Black towns. We had over 35 in the state, where there seemed to be some equality, some opportunity, some freedom of expression, and then World War I again. The US Army would remain segregated until after World War II. People don’t realize that. But during World War I, you have Black regiments. Well, they’re sent over with the expeditionary force, and the white generals in the lines with the American troops don’t want those Black troops. They say, oh, send them to the back of the line, or to do supplies, or run the restaurants. Well, the French said, no, no, we want those guys in the trenches. So the French embrace those Black regiments, put them into some of the hottest areas. And they fought, just fought bravely and won honors. And the French government loved them, and they were welcomed into the saloons and in people’s homes. And here’s our daughter, you know, come in, and you are our heroes. And then they come back to Oklahoma in the South and says, oh, no, you’re no hero. You’re a second-class citizen. You get off the sidewalk if I walk by.
Thompson: And how hard it must have been to go overseas and to experience a taste of freedom, you know, a taste of what it would be like to walk in, to ride a train, to walk into a saloon or a restaurant and nobody looked down on you, and then when you come back home and the country that you just fought for doesn’t even really want you there. I mean, I can’t imagine how heartbreaking and how hard that must have been.
Blackburn: And today, we talk about the legacy of slavery. Well, that’s part of that legacy of slavery. And it’s still with us today. I can see it in so much of our of our society nationally. But it was so evident then. And so you’re lighting these, you’re putting the tinder in place for a fire in both communities. And of course, the Black Wall Street was the name that Booker T. Washington gave to the Greenwood community. It was so prosperous. There were over 150 African American-owned businesses.
Thompson: Twelve Black churches, 15 Black physicians, a Black hospital, two Black theaters. J. B. Stradford had the Stradford Hotel, which was at that time the largest African American-owned hotel in the entire country. So yeah, definitely prosperous. Five-hundred members of the Hunton YMCA on Greenwood. Booker T. Washington High School had opened in 1913. I mean, this truly was, and I think a lot of people don’t realize this was just outside the Tulsa city limits. So Randy Krehbiel points out in his book that they, the streets were unpaved. There were sanitary issues there because they had petitioned to the City of Tulsa to try and come in and provide those services, but the City of Tulsa pushed back and wouldn’t do it. But from all you know, from all looks, this was a community that was on the rise and that was prospering.
Blackburn: It was, and people were going there. One of my heroes, Dr. John Hope Franklin, I can’t talk about any of these subjects without bringing him into the conversation. Born in the All-Black town of Rentiesville, his dad, when John Hope was just an infant, thought, well, I don’t have that much opportunity anymore in Rentiesville. It’s a farming community. It’s really declining already in terms of prosperity. And he moves to Tulsa in the spring of 1921. He’s an attorney. It had been, his grandfather had been a Chickasaw slave. He was born a free man in the Territory, got a law degree. Bright, brilliant, great writer, would eventually write his own autobiography that one of my favorite books. And John Hope’s dad, B. C. Franklin, moved to Tulsa at that time because to to the African Americans in that day, that was freedom. That was opportunity. Go get a job, raise your family, get a house. You know, buy a car, go on vacation, all the things that any family wants. That’s not part of of the pigment of your skin. That’s just human nature. And so these expectations are rising, and people are coming, and it’s a volatile situation. And then you get to a hot spring night, May 31st, tempers flair, and that, the stage is set for something to happen.
Thompson: So let’s go over it a little bit. We can talk about the events of that day, which like I said before, some of it is still shrouded in mystery, but some of it we know. We have, there’s an event, there’s an occurrence that happens on May 30, and it’s between Dick Rowland, who was a young African American person, and Sarah Page. Sarah Page was an elevator operator in the Drexel Building, downtown Tulsa. The 30th is Memorial Day. So busy day in downtown. There’s parades, everything going on. Dick comes into the building. For what, we don’t know. Some say to go use the restroom or, you know, we’re not entirely sure is on the elevator. Some way he has a, he either bumps into her or the elevator lurches or who knows what happens. But she screams. She goes to the clerk for the Renberg’s Department Store, and she says that I’ve been assaulted. The department store clerk calls the police. Dick Rowland runs away and he’s he’s later captured, and he’s brought to the Tulsa City Jail. And that’s when it starts. This is the next day. This is May 31st. And so then there starts to be rumors that, okay, we’re going to, you know, that he might be lynched. So they actually move him from the city jail to the county courthouse because the county courthouse is more fortified. It’s harder to get to the area of the jail, and they think that he’s going to be safer there. And a few armed Black men, this starts to come in the evening, a few armed Black men come from Greenwood to protect him, and crowds start gathering. You know, you start to have more and more white people show up, more and more Black people show up. The sheriff at the time tries to disperse the crowd and specifically disperse the armed Black men. And a couple of different times, he was successful. They leave, but the white crowd keeps growing. And so you’ve really got this, once again, you’ve got a hot summer night and you’ve got this situation that’s brewing. And the Black people down in Greenwood, they say, okay, the white people aren’t dispersing. We’re coming. They come in bigger force now. And then we have, somebody tries to disarm a Black man, a shot goes off, and we’re off to the races.
Blackburn: Yeah. And at that moment, which we think was about 10 o’clock that night. So it’s dark already. Alcohol’s been flowing for a while. Tensions are rising, and people’s prejudices are just right there on the surface. And we think maybe, maybe 20 people were wounded or killed on that first moment. So there’s blood on the street.
Thompson: Wow.
Blackburn: And that begins the battle. And but we think that some of those African Americans who were brave enough, and I look at them as these brave citizens of the community that were trying to do their civic duty and came over and, but you know, we think maybe 75 or so African Americans in that second group. But by that time, 2,000 white guys in a mob and young white guys who are looking for a fight anyway, and for them to come over to me shows the bravery. And many of them were World War I veterans. And so the minute the fighting starts, you almost have picket lines, and it becomes almost a military operation for a while at least.
Thompson: The police chief, they are, they start deputizing people. And it was really this chaotic situation where there wasn’t any formality of saying, okay, here’s your duties as a deputy. Here’s what you’re allowed to do. Here’s what you’re not. They’re pulling people off. And this is where when you talked about that Home Guard situation, that starts coming into play, too. All these people that have been part of the Home Guard, they’re deputized now. They start breaking into sporting goods stores and trying to, and stealing or confiscating weapons. And they, there’s even a group that tries to go over to the National Guard armory, and the commander of the armory, he pushes them back, says, no, you guys better get out of here. We’re not giving you anything here. In the meantime, the commander at the armory is waiting for the governor to give the order so that the National Guard can be mobilized, and the fighting takes place in downtown. It’s like you said, this is all happening in downtown Tulsa, blood on the streets. But over the next few hours, the fight gradually moves to Greenwood.
Blackburn: Yeah. Of course, the railroad tracks are there. So there’s a bit of open ground as you would on any battlefront. You know, you have your entrenchments, your fortifications, your heavy artillery, and then you have the open, kind of the killing zone. And that’s what those railroad tracks would have been. That would have been the killing zone. And some of those African American veterans knew how to deploy their fighters and say, well, if we’re flanked over there, you get in that building with a range of fire here or there. And so you have this really this pitched battle, and a lot of those deputized, we think as many as 500 of the mobsters were deputized at that time. And of course, the famous quote that everyone, I think everyone now believes was used by the chief of police, the Tulsa chief of police, and I can’t use the word, but I’ll say the N-word. “Get a gun. Get a you-know-what.” And that was his order. And it was that open and just really the vigilante justice came out. And at that moment, they thought they were really doing law enforcement. They were doing, you know, community service by going out and trying to kill someone. And so that, the fighting rages. We think the first fire started about 1 a.m., and then finally the governor, J. B. A. Robertson, at 12 or excuse me, 2:15 that night, does mobilize the Guard, and then they start coming together. Their men are contacted by telephone or courier. They start coming to small towns like Chandler and Oklahoma City. And the first group that starts toward Tulsa, as a formal National Guard unit starts, leaves Oklahoma City about 5 a.m.
Thompson: What’s interesting too, about that same 5 a.m. time period, the fight is now, The white people have pushed the Black people into Greenwood. Fires are raging, and a lot of people, in their memories and recollections, say that they heard a whistle or something that they believe was signifying for the whites to move into the Greenwood area en masse. And that’s when you start to have some of the worst destruction. The fires start to get, and there are planes flying overhead. And, you know, some people believe that people were throwing bombs from planes. Although once again, those facts are a little bit murky at this particular point. I don’t know that any of that has been proven at this particular point. But some people have those recollections. And now you’re getting into Mount Zion Baptist Church, at 7 o’clock that morning is torched because there are snipers in the bell tower. Once again, you know, if you’re trained in war, you know, go to the highest spot, and that’s where you can have the best defense. By 10 a.m., fire is throughout the whole business district, and now it’s starting to get into the residential districts that are surrounding the neighborhoods.
Blackburn: At this point of the event, and Randy Krehbiel, again, that’s a book everyone should read. Randy’s book came out of OU Press a couple of years ago. It’s their best seller right now. But, Randy,
Thompson: The book is called Tulsa 1921, for those of you who would like to go pick it up.
Blackburn: And Randy is a journalist, and so he he understands how journalists report and write. And so he’s done the best analysis of the journalism that existed not just in Tulsa, but throughout the country, because other reporters were coming in and reporting on memories. But anyway, Randy’s book was very good. So from 5 o’clock, which we know that day, 5:08 was dawn. So that’s when the real fighting began. But then the criminal class steps in. Oh, they see an opportunity to loot. And Randy describes that very well. And the known criminals of Tulsa feel like they are suddenly empowered to do what they would have done if they had a chance without being punished. And they get in with the crowd, and instead of just pushing back and doing what vigilantes are trying to do, they’re in there to kill and to murder and to steal. And so you get the looting and the airplanes, like you said, and troop movements. But finally, at 9:15 a.m., the National Guard arrives by train. And that’s when we see the beginning of the end, at least. And so, but for over four hours, you have this intense fighting, and many of the African American defenders are running out of ammunition. They’re being outflanked. The more people are coming and they begin falling back. And you can imagine with almost 10,000 African Americans crammed into this community trying to flee, families leaving, trying to take care of their kids and the confusion of the night. And then that morning, the fires starting and the smoke and not knowing who they could trust or where they might be shot. The trauma of that morning just is almost too much for me to comprehend what they went through. I think someone would have to go through war or some kind of of genocide to really understand what was going on, but that must have been four hours of hell for the people of Greenwood.
Thompson: I really just can’t imagine trying to protect your kids during something like that and to try to keep them safe. And then once again, where do you go? A lot of people fleeing north of Tulsa, and they started trying to get into some of the surrounding communities or just kind of cowering in fields and just trying to stay away from the guns, and the bullets, and everything else that was going on. And as a father and really just as a human being, it just, when I hear the stories and I read about it, it just it breaks my heart. It absolutely breaks my heart that kids, some of those kids, it might have been their, the first memory that they had their whole lives if they were three or four years old. And it really does, it’s a hard thing to contemplate. It really is.
Blackburn: When the Guard gets there, they start trying to separate the two crowds. And, you know, they defended themselves later as people made accusations. But the Guard uses a strategy of rounding up the African Americans, disarming them, and taking them to camps where they they said, where they could defend them. Otherwise, because there were too many other people— the mobsters running around— to confiscate everything there. But they started trying, and a lot of the violence does begin to go down after 9 o’clock. And then that night, people are gathered a couple of places in town. But the confusion that the, and to me, one of the hero organizations that comes in as the Red Cross. The Red Cross sets up offices. In fact, to me, the best documentation from the moment that the smoke is clearing comes from the Red Cross. It’s still a very good... most historians have determined by further analysis, the Red Cross was pretty accurate in their depiction. They were there to help. They had the right attitude, is that we are here to save lives and to help families.
Thompson: And despite the fact that the Public Welfare Board rejected any aid or financing from any outside groups, so they said, no, we’re going to, you know, this is a Tulsa problem. We’re going to solve this here in Tulsa. And money that could have gone to help those families, that could have come in from outside areas, was completely rejected, which I just, I can’t even fathom. When you look in, so talking about the aftermath, almost immediately the narrative was changed so that they were going to blame the Black population for for what was then called the riot, now what we call the massacre. And there was immediately, the Tulsa Council passed an ordinance to say that any new rebuilding you had to meet the fire code, which they knew at the time, was going to pretty much make it prohibitively expensive to try to rebuild. But even so, many of the Black families and the Black business owners began rebuilding, and they had to do a lot of it at nighttime. And eventually that ordinance was overturned by the courts. And then there was another attempt by the Tulsa authorities to try to—this scheme— to try to buy the land and then turn it into, turn Greenwood into an industrial area. And they tried that for several months, and that never quite went anywhere, either. And in the meantime, you have families that are living in tents. You have businesses that have set up shops in tents again, and they’re trying to rebuild their lives. And in the meantime, they’re not getting any insurance either, because most of their insurance policies had clauses in there that said, if it was a riot, then this claim is voided. And they had everything against them, but they began to rebuild again.
Blackburn: To me, that’s one of the amazing parts of this story that’s been under-emphasized. And of course, our guest today is going to talk about Greenwood Rising. But that story is so important that people had that faith. Dr. Franklin, I asked him to come to the first meeting of the commission. Mayor Susan Savage came and spoke and said City of Tulsa was going to participate in this, and let’s find out all the facts we could. And I knew Dr. Franklin before this. I had assisted him on editing his father’s manuscripts, but he came in from Duke, flew into Tulsa, sat there with me, my right side, because I said, Dr. Franklin, I need you. You know, here I’m a white guy coming in here. But as a historian trying to uncover the facts, a lot of people are certain that they know what happened, and they’re not going to change. But I said, we need to make sure people understand that this is going to be a full effort, transparent as possible, that we’re going to try to find the facts. And he gave a speech at that first meeting, and I’ll never forget it. Still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it all. But one of the things he said that touches on what you just brought up, the rewriting the history. He called it a conspiracy of silence. I’m not sure if he used that phrase, but that’s the phrase that I’ve applied to what he said, the conspiracy of silence. It’s almost like it was agreed to in the white community, in the Black community. In the white community, Chamber of Commerce was embarrassed. This was not something good to tell a business looking at establishing an office.
Thompson: It doesn’t look good on the brochure.
Blackburn: It doesn’t look good on the brochure. And so they’re embarrassed that it happened in this town. No, we’re not a bunch of racists. Well, of course they were. But they said, no, we’re not. Usually the greatest racists are the first to say I am, I’m the least racist person in the world. That’s almost a sign. But then in the Black community, what surprised me, Dr. Franklin said there was a sense of pride in the Black community that first, those 25 men went to the white part of the community armed, trying to do something, and then sent another 75. He says, we were proud of them. They were standing up for our rights, our ability to protect ourselves and not be lynched. He says, but if we had expressed that pride openly in Tulsa in the 1920s, he says, we would have been beaten up. We probably would have been driven out of town. And the Klan really reaches its peak from ’21 to ’23. And so this is in the shadow of the Klan really becoming a force. We think more than half of all state legislators at the time were members of the Klan. And so there was this agreement in the Black community: we can’t express our pride. And then secondly, if we get too confrontational, it could happen again. And John Hope Franklin said in his early years, he really believed that at any moment, this sort of thing could happen again. And it’s like what we’re getting now with policing, is that it’s happened so many times. It becomes almost an expectation and then a fear, and then that evolves into hate and that involves into polarization. And that conspiracy of silence kept the community from really dealing with this episode in their history that was so evil in so many ways. But out of it, we really have good human stories, perseverance, of resurrection, of reaching out and helping. There are a lot of stories that should be remembered, and we’ve got to remember what caused this. Why were we so polarized that people were willing to take a gun and shoot a neighbor, and people who would normally be in church on Sunday morning and professing their faith, still willing to attack. I think that we’ve just got to be talking about it, and John Hope Franklin understood it. And really, not until the 1970s did the dialog even begin locally.
Thompson: As you look at the events, and we’re observing the 100th anniversary of what happened there on those fateful two days. How do we take what’s happened here and get better because of it?
Blackburn: Well, I think we have to realize that we can change. Me, personally, Bob Blackburn, raised in a southern family in a segregated community where I never was even aware there was segregation. I didn’t, no one ever talked about segregation, even though it was part of our lives. Of overcoming that, of learning more, of being willing to change and to listen, to reach out. Even today, Bruce Fisher. I call him my Black brother. My first hire as executive director in 1999 was Bruce Fisher, the son of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, one of our iconic heroes in bringing down the walls of segregation. You know, getting to know people like Bruce and André Head, who did so much for Black history, and Dr. Franklin becoming a good friend, coming to my house. I think we all have to work on it personally. It just can’t be the community saying, what laws can we pass? How can we set up, you know, better systems? Yes, we need to do that, of course, but we need to change as individuals. We need to overcome our own prejudices, whether it’s in the Black side of town or the white side of town. We all are born with our prejudices. How can we overcome it? How can we build an atmosphere of trust, and love, and really do the things that we should be doing as individuals in this world today? So I think we have to really think of it at the individual level. Education is critical. The museum that’s being built in Tulsa, we’ll talk about here in a little bit, I think is going to be critical. We cannot have this intense discussion for two years and then step away from it. We’ve got to sustain it somehow. Having this institutional support there through Greenwood Rising is going to be critical. It’s got to be in the curriculum. And the Oklahoma Historical Society education staff, working for Dan Provo, put together the curriculum that’s going out to teachers right now around the state. We’ve got to teach it to young people. We have to make sure people are aware of it. We have to have a place to come together. We need to encourage coming together and finding common ground, not just on the protest lines or in this, in this governmental debate, but coming together as individuals, as families in the community itself. I think that’s really important for us to overcome some of the scars on our own history.
Thompson: Well said. Well said. Our guest on the podcast today is Phil Armstrong. He is a native of Ohio and has been in Tulsa for over 20 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, and a masters degree in public administration from the University of Akron. Phil has a varied background working in the corporate sector and as an entrepreneur in the restaurant business. In 2019, he was hired by the Tulsa Community Foundation as a project director for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. A talented singer, Phil enjoys singing for several events and organizations around Tulsa, most notably singing the national anthem for the Tulsa Regional Chamber annual meetings, the Tulsa Drillers and Tulsa Roughnecks home games. Phil, thank you for taking the time to join us today. I know you’re extremely busy getting ready for the opening of Greenwood Rising. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to the position you’re now in?
Phil Armstrong: So I’m originally from Ohio, native of Ohio, and I’ve been in Oklahoma now 24 years, moved here in 1997. My introduction to Oklahoma came through a college friend who is still to this day my best friend, a 30-plus year friendship. We both went to a Historically Black College and University in Ohio called Central State University is located in Wilberforce, Ohio. I provide that context because there are two HBCUs in Ohio. They’re right there, right in the same town, right across the street from each other. But Wilberforce, Ohio, is also home to Wilberforce University, the oldest historical Black college in the United States. It was founded in 1855.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Armstrong: Eight years before the Emancipation Proclamation. The context there is the history and the education of African Americans that started there in that southwestern portion of Ohio was still practiced in a wide-ranging way, even when I came through. And granted, I was a sophomore in college in Ohio, had no relation or connection to Oklahoma other than my friend that I had just recently met the year before, and we spent an entire semester— and I do mean semester— on the history of Black Americans at the turn of the century in Oklahoma, and how Oklahoma had become this respite, this mecca for entrepreneurialism and this newfound freedom that Black citizens were moving from all over the South to Oklahoma to obtain in the Oklahoma Territory. We studied the All-Black towns. We studied the 1921 Tulsa race riot, as it was referred to back then. But it was just, it was awe inspiring. What we spent again, a semester reading up on and studying. So when I moved here six years later in 1997, I literally was just shocked. I guess the vocabulary, the proper vocabulary word would be flabbergasted by the fact that I, being in Ohioan, knew more and had a greater in-depth knowledge of the history here than most Black and white citizens that grew up here. And so that started kind of my journey, my inquiry of this Black history here, and serving different positions in corporate America and different things here in Oklahoma. I’ve always been involved in the nonprofit world, and serving on different boards, and being actively engaged. And prior to this position, I was the board chair of the Greenwood Cultural Center and was pivotal in a lot of the earlier collaborations with the Black organizations in north Tulsa, working with the Centennial Commission for commemorative planning and activities as we were approaching 2021. And so when this position became available, a full-time position, I was asked to apply. And that happened back in 2019, and we have been hitting the ground running ever since then. But it’s been an exciting history.
Thompson: I came to Tulsa just a year before you did. So our introductions to Tulsa were at a pretty similar time. And earlier in our conversation with Dr. Blackburn, I was talking about how, you know, I didn’t grow up in Tulsa, and I think one of my first exposures to the Tulsa Race Massacre was reading Rilla Askew’s book Fire in Beulah, and just that very, she does a great job, I think, of painting the picture of what happened then. When you became aware of the Tulsa Race Massacre during your research, how did that impact you?
Armstrong: Same as anyone else who was introduced to this for the first time, you’re horrified. You are a bit ashamed in the fact that you didn’t know the history, but then it draws you in because you think, if I was never told this, you know, what else don’t I know? You start going down a, in a positive way, you start going down a rabbit hole of just discovering more and more and more just incredible information. Again, not just on the massacre, but just how vibrant and incredible the Black entrepreneurial community and the spirit was here when African Americans post-slavery and from the South were given this place where they could pursue their freedom and pursue ownership of the land, and where that can go when you’re given the open access to say, you know, take what has been given to you and pursue it without any persecution. And what became literally overnight, you know, with by, you know, by 1880, you know, there were over 30 All-Black towns of Oklahoma established and incredibly running well. And this is, you know, 20 years before you even get to the establishment of a Greenwood. So it’s incredibly rich history, including Greenwood, but even more so the history of what happened when Oklahoma Territory became this place where Black citizens from the south moved here to pursue their fortunes.
Thompson: In doing research all around this, you know, there’s a great article in the Smithsonian Magazine this month, and you’re in Smithsonian Magazine this month. Have quite a nice picture in there. But one of the articles talks about how there was a group of African Americans who went to Washington, DC, to pretty much, they met with everybody they could, including the attorney general, including President Roosevelt, to say, hey, listen, please don’t approve the Constitution. Please don’t approve statehood. Because if you do, they’re going to codify into law segregation and Jim Crow laws. And they were right. It came about to happen. And so Greenwood was a kind of a respite in the midst of a very segregationist state.
Armstrong: Yeah. One of the things that I bring up in my talks when I go in and get invited, you know, by different companies, organizations, and churches to talk about this history is I really enjoy pointing out those things that just people don’t know. You know, like I was never taught this. And one of those things is a gentleman by the name of Edwin P. McCabe.
Thompson: Yes.
Armstrong: In 1883, you know, a Black attorney and land settler from Arkansas that would come and visit these Black towns and encourage people to run for public office and to know that the power was really, falls in those who write the policies and legislation. But his discussions with the US government at that time, in 1883, was to consider if Oklahoma should be an All-Black state. And usually when I say that, that’s that eyebrow-raising moment that, you know, I kind of step back and say—what! And everyone laughs and you know, this, you know, I never knew that, you know, Oklahoma was such a pivotal place for African Americans that they were actually having discussions, you know, statehood, should Oklahoma be just dubbed an All-Black state? Of course, this is long before the Land Run of 1889 again, long before statehood in 1907. But that’s just how active and how impressive the territory was in terms of being this place where Black citizens were prospering and doing well.
Thompson: Well, and Phil, I had an opportunity to meet you in person a few weeks ago, when I came to Tulsa and Senator Kevin Matthews gave a group of us a tour of the Greenwood area, and it was incredibly enlightening to be able to to go on that tour and to hear Senator Matthews talk about it. You are in the midst of a pretty incredible project right now through the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, and it’s called Greenwood Rising. And I would really love for you to tell us about what Greenwood Rising is and when we can experience it.
Armstrong: Greenwood Rising is an 18—I’m sorry— 11,000-square-foot facility that is dedicated to tell the entire narrative, the history of Black Oklahomans, not just focus on the massacre, but tell the full experience of some of what we’ve been talking about pre-massacre events and timelines, and post. How this community rebuilt itself and then bring history and reflection on to what happened, again, on the second decline of Greenwood, the death knell of the building of the I-244 highway program in the ’60s and ’70s, and then all of that culminated into a programmatic space that it deals with healing and addressing some of the things that still keep us divided and creating this safe space for dialog and discussion to take place, called The Journey to Reconciliation. All of this will, all of this will happen and be debuted as one of the commemorative events for this year, and a dedication ceremony for Greenwood Rising will take place on June 2, on a Wednesday. And it, I would be remiss if I did not share that the exhibits and the design of the museum, we partnered with expert museum design firm Local Projects out of New York City. Their work, or their crown jewel, if you will, some of the things that they worked on. They designed the exhibits for the 9/11 Museum in New York City. They also did incredible work with Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery in Alabama, with the opening of the Legacy Museum and as many as well as many things around the world. But just to give you kind of a little bit of their résumé, so that people understand how high level, and how professional, and how incredible this narrative history museum is going to be when people come here to visit Greenwood Rising.
Thompson: You know, I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but this is going to be a very experiential place. And so, from what I understand and what you have told me is that, you know, it’s not just going to be a place where you go and read some plaques on a wall and you come away with a little bit more information, but it’s really going to be something that you feel as you’re walking through there. Can you talk a little bit about the experience of, there’s going to be a place where you can actually physically cross the railroad tracks in there?
Armstrong: Yeah. So one of the key things that Local Project did early on is that, you know, they are masters at telling the story, that we are not an artifacts collection museum like you would see in in the wonderful museum and exhibits like at the Oklahoma Historical Society or the Gilcrease Museum and our wonderful museums around here. Ours, because one of the reasons, you know, there are just aren’t that many artifacts from, of course, an utter destruction of an entire community. So there’s not many artifacts from that time that’s left over. So it’s more so telling the story and telling that narrative experience of what happened to a community that was so vibrant and so incredible. And one of those things that they did is taking time to come here and speak and sit with community leaders and community members from all areas of the community, including north Tulsa citizens that sat down with them and just ask them, if we were to build a history center, what are the things that you would like to see reflected? And one of the recurring themes was just about Black history, about Black culture in America. And one of the things that people, when they study Black communities and the South and the Midwest are this dividing line of railroad tracks. When you knew that you were on the Black side of town when you walked across the railroad tracks, and that’s reminiscent of many communities in the South. My grandfather was from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, and we used to go to our reunions, and there are areas of Hazlehurst that’s across the railroad tracks, and you knew we were on that side of town. But here in Greenwood, same thing. The Frisco Railway divided white Tulsa from North Tulsa, which was Black Tulsa, on the other side of the railroad tracks. And so when you step into that first gallery, which we’re calling the Greenwood Spirit, you actually walk into that gallery, and you will walk over a representation of lifelike real railroad tracks, to really give that experience of stepping back into time, quite literally over railroad tracks. And those have been completed. I wish I could show you some pictures, but we’re saving it until the debut. But it is— I’ve stood there and just looked. It looks like we just picked up some railroad tracks from, you know, from some community and just placed them in the floor. It is that authentic. It is that realistic. It’s incredible.
Thompson: What do you hope that people will feel? What do you hope that they will maybe be challenged to do after they’ve gone through Greenwood Rising?
Armstrong: Well, we want to respect the wishes of the community with which we built this. This is dedicated to the, to memorializing the victims—number one— that lost their lives from the destruction of the massacre. It is dedicated to the survivors, those that, descendant families who did not get the benefit of receiving the generational wealth of these business owners that businesses were destroyed, and they could not pass that on down to their generations of descendants and to the North Tulsa community for for what was here at one time. And so we are making sure that we don’t brush over, sweep under the rug, or whitewash anything. It is fully immersive in the experience of the massacre, but it’s also fully immersive in the indomitable human spirit, how this community, with resilience and with regard for their pride and what they represented, what they did when you own land and you can, you know, create your own destiny and your own path and just all that they did again, pre- and post-. And so what we want people to see is just be inspired by this community, information that would never taught you never saw in history books, and get inspired that when you leave here you will see what happens when communities allow for false narratives, as the false narrative that was printed by the Tulsa Tribune, how that led to the destruction of a community when they printed in the paper “Nab negro for attacking girl in an elevator,” which is attributed as what started this massacre. But what happens when anxieties, when racial biases and prejudices, and in many cases, racist mentalities, when they go unchecked, when they’re allowed to flourish, when they’re allowed to prosper and continue on, that it can lead to the destruction of entire communities, and that we don’t want to repeat this. A group of people who forget their past are destined to repeat it. And so let’s remember this history. Let’s be reflective on it, but let’s use it as a moment to begin healing. True journey on a racial reconciliation of what healing looks like from racial trauma, what communities of color and other communities outside of those can do to sit and understand and break down barriers and have communication but leave here changed, leave here willing to make a commitment of addressing biases and prejudices that you may face in your own world in your own families, on your jobs, that when they leave here, they will go back to their communities ready to say, you know what? I’m going to change the way I think about people who are different than me. I’m going to speak up when I see injustices of my fellow mankind. I’m not just going to sit on the sideline and shake my head and say, oh that shouldn’t be. I’m going to say something. I’m going to commit to being an active participant and making wrong things right. That’s what we want to see.
Thompson: That’s incredible. What a mission. I know that, you know, it’s probably very tiring, and it’s hard to keep going sometimes with so much to do. But I’m sure that your mission keeps you inspired and keeps you going, and that’s just incredible. Can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that are going on in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Race Massacre?
Armstrong: This summer, you know, literally all eyes on Tulsa. There are a number of several events that will take place. There’s another group of organizations, along with the Centennial Commission, that’s collaborated under this moniker of Legacy Fest, The Black Wall Street Legacy Fest, and it will begin Friday, May 28, and be a series of concerts and programs and events put on by the Greenwood Cultural Center, the Terence Crutcher Family Foundation, the Greenwood Historic Greenwood Chamber Buildings, the John Hope Franklin Park. And so there are various things that are taking place during that weekend. And then the Centennial Commission itself moves forward into its events beginning May 31 through June 6. But all of this begins, it starts off with the annual John Hope Franklin Symposium. This will be their 11th year that they’ve done this, and it’s a three-day symposium that addresses racial reconciliation in communities and addressing things that still keep us divided. It’s a worldwide conference, and so that starts everything off that May 26. So at about 12 days of just continual commemorative activities that will take place during that time, in conjunction with the centennial.
Thompson: This is going to be something we can all look forward to and to commemorate this very important event in our state’s history. Phil, where can people find out more about the work that you’re doing at the Centennial Commission and also Greenwood Rising,
Armstrong: The actual website is Tulsa2021.org, Tulsa2021.org. And they can find out all the information on all the commemorative activities, all the events, how to register and attend, and even with the work that we’re doing with Greenwood Rising and other items that are taking place. But that’s the one-stop shop. One place: Tulsa2021.org.
Thompson: Well, fantastic. Well Phil, we appreciate all the work that you’re doing. We are incredibly grateful to have you as an Oklahoman and to be contributing to our legacy as a state. And thank you so much for taking the time to be on here today.
Armstrong: Thank you so much, Trait.
Thompson: Well, that was a fascinating conversation with Phil, and I was really grateful to him for being on the podcast. I know he’s a very busy man.
Blackburn: Well, Phil is doing work that all of us need to be supporting. And in the tradition of John Hope Franklin and Don Ross and the local leaders who have been trying to bring this to the attention of the public need to be applauded. We need to be helping. And when that museum opens, we should all reach out and do what we can to support him. So Phil is doing good work, and I’m very proud of it.
Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend, and we’ll see you next month for our next episode.
