James S. Hirsch - Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race Riot and Its Legacy

Second Mariner Books Edition 2021

Copyright 2002 by James S. Hirsch

Preface 2021 by James S. Hirsch

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hirsch, James S., author.

Title: Riot and remembrance : the Tulsa race massacre and its legacy / James S. Hirsch.

Description: Second Mariner Books edition. | Boston : Mariner Books ; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021003071 | ISBN 9780618340767 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780544374188 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Okla., 1921. | African AmericansOklahomaTulsa History20th century. | RacismOklahomaTulsaHistory20th century. | MassacresOklahomaTulsaHistory20th century. | ViolenceOklahomaTulsaHistory20th century. | African American neighborhoodsOklahomaTulsaHistory20th century. | Tulsa (Okla.)Race relations.

Classification: LCC F704.T92 H56 2021 | DDC 305.8009766/86dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003071

Cover design Adrienne Krogh

Cover photograph courtesy of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum

v5.0721

The author is grateful to Richard K. Dozier, representing the Smitherman family, for permission to reprint the poem by A. J. Smitherman; and to Peermusic for permission to use lines from Take Me Back to Tulsa by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan. Copyright 1941 by Peer International Corporation for the world except Mexico and the U.S. Peer International Corporation controls Bob Willss share in the U.S. only. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

To Gloria and Ed Hirsch,
who put their children first

A NYTIME YOU WRITE a book about a historical event, the question inevitably arises: What relevance does that event have today?

No one is asking that anymore about the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.

The riot has entered the American Zeitgeist: In the tumultuous summer of 2020, it took center stage with the Black Lives Matter movement, with the restart of President Trumps divisive presidential campaign, and with Americas long overdue reckoning with race.

Now on its hundred-year anniversary, the Tulsa riot may be the most famous in our nations history, and that in itself is stunning. For decades, it was shrouded in a conspiracy of silence or, more accurately, a culture of silence. Few people outside the city were even aware of it, and its own residents knew very little. Tulsa didnt teach the riot in its schools. Its newspapers overlooked it, its city histories ignored it, and its leaders were content to bury it. The anniversary of the riotMay 31came and went with little mention.

That silence had cracked by the time I began researching this book in 2000. In 1997, the state of Oklahoma created a commission to investigate the massacre, and thanks to the commission as well as efforts by other journalists and authors, details of the riot emerged and were given a national audience. My book, published in 2002, tells that storyof what happened in 1921 and how Tulsa, eighty years later, sought both justice and reconciliation in a still-wounded city.

And I thought that was the end of it.

But this story had legs, and an HBO series, one about race and vigilantism, had a lot to do with it.

In 2019, HBO aired Watchmen, which became a surprise blockbuster, winning eleven Emmy Awards and millions of loyal fans. The series opened with a graphic re-creation of the Tulsa riot, and that set off a storm of social-media inquiries (a riot in Tulsa?). Articles, blogs, and podcasts followed. I didnt see the series, but I got emails myself. Watchmen turned the riot into a cultural touchstone and exposed it to a completely new audience, in this country and abroad, and many viewers wanted to learn more.

Then in June of 2020, President Trump announced that he was going to resume his rallies for his presidential campaignhe had shut them down because of COVID-19and his first event would be in Tulsa on June 20, just three weeks after the ninety-ninth anniversary of the riot. That was no accident, according to the presidents critics, who accused Trump of using Tulsa as an insulting backdrop to spread his message of racial division. Whatever his motives, Black Tulsans marched in protest, and the national media, print and television, descended on the city and retold the story of the riot, all of which was amplified on social media.

What happened? Why? How?

Next came new documentariesone will be produced by LeBron Jamess production company in collaboration with CNN Films, another will be directed by Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams and will be aired on the History channel.

Meanwhile in Tulsa, the city formed another riot commission in 2017 to consider initiatives for Black residents, and its work in 2020 included a search for mass graves (a similar search occurred about twenty years earlier). Archaeologists found ten coffins at the Oaklawn Cemetery that might have been the remains of riot victimsresults were inconclusivebut the inquiry yielded national news coverage.

The summer of 2020 also saw nationwide protests in the aftermath of George Floyds killing. The protests were not simply about the brutal slaying of one Black man but about our nations systemic racism that for centuries had denied justice, equality, and life itself to African Americans. A racial reckoning was long overdue.

In that context, the Tulsa riotor massacre, as some prefer to call itresonated.

As I document in the book, the Tulsa riot was not unique. It was one of many that occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century (New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, East St. Louis) and foreshadowed those in the 1960s (Watts, Newark, Detroit) and beyond. Nonetheless, Tulsa stood apart for several reasons.

First, the scope of the destruction.

Second, the betrayal of Black Tulsans after the riot.

Third, the refusal, even years later, of the city or the state to pay reparations or make any meaningful amends to the survivors or to the Black community in general.

If justice was not possible in Tulsa, what does that say for the rest of America?

Finally, I wrote this book in part because I wanted to explore the racial schism that had long existed in Tulsa and how that divide created two different narratives of the riot and of history itself. Look at America today. We may not live with Jim Crow laws, but the divisions are as bitter and intractable as they were in 1921.

There is no easy path forward, but the first steps surely lie in asking questions, listening, and learning. Reading as well.

Redemption is possible wherever there are good people, and there are good people in Tulsa, Black and white. If they can heal their wounds, maybe America can as well.

James S. Hirsch

Needham, Massachusetts

January 2021

O N A WARM EVENING in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a dozen black women were gathered at Mount Zion Baptist Church to discuss expanding its role in the community when Pressley Little bolted through the doors, his face glistening with sweat.

Baby, theres a riot starting! he yelled to his wife, Mabel. Theres shooting at the courthouse.

A black youth had been jailed for allegedly assaulting a white girl in a downtown elevator, and an incendiary front-page article about the incident had set off rumors of a lynching. About 75 armed black men marched to the courthouse to prevent a possible hanging. They were met by about 1,500 whites. A shot was fired and bedlam erupted.