“from hope to homeless, overnight”
“Your country is shooting at you” are words a six-year-old little girl should never have to hear. However, the reality is that these words were spoken amidst an act of terrorism and violence in our own state. 58 years after the end of slavery, segregation remained and the KKK was turning Tulsa into a stronghold, yet Black Wall Street was thriving. But an incident in an elevator would spark a massacre on Greenwood Street that would be recorded as one of the worst race riots in American history. The biggest problem today is that this horrendous event remains the “best kept secret in the white community of Tulsa.”
May 31, 1921, Black shoeshine boy, Dick Roland, supposedly “attacked” Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, and was quickly accused of assault. The only charge required in the primarily hostile atmosphere in Tulsa was that a Black man assaulted a white woman and drastic action was automatically taken. The boy was arrested and to be lynched. That night, the attempt by Black Americans to protect one of their young, would finally give the white community a reason to “exorcise Blackness from the Tulsa community.”
As white citizens brought their children to Greenwood Street to watch the massive destruction, Black children hid under beds as hooded men looted their homes and ignited their houses on fire. People hid in chicken coops to avoid stray bullets. Children watched their fathers be dragged away and murdered. Machine-gun fire filled the air and hundreds of Americans were slaughtered.
To further exacerbate the situation, the National Guard that was originally sent to calm the riot joined in the rage. The American people betrayed their neighbors and the American “government turned its back on its citizens and its own Constitution.” A community was wiped out for speaking out against terrorism while the government did nothing to prevent the acts, protects the rights of the Black community, or provide punishment post-deed.
After the riot was somewhat pacified, insult was added to injury in a truly outrageous way. Black men were asked to clean up the Greenwood District. When none came forward, all Black males without formal employment were FORCED to clean Greenwood without pay, a situation which too-greatly resembled the holocaust of slavery. Graves were dug for the deceased without dignity, bodies likely poured into mass graves or dumped into the Arkansas River.
Even worse, for more than eight decades the Black community has felt it needs to remain virtually silent about the issue in an effort to avoid further animosity and retribution.
This film was created when a few special people finally realized that “you can’t fix what you don’t know is wrong.” The documentary was produced to raise a much-needed awareness of a horrific event in history that people have chosen to forget about, to “wake up the conscious of America.”
“Not Nazi Germany… Not Darfur… This is Oklahoma…”
No one wants to take responsibility for what happened in Tulsa over 80 years ago, just as no one wants to take responsibility for the countless lives lost when the institution of slavery reigned in our nation. Survivors have filed multiple suits with America’s best legal minds representing them, yet the Tulsa race riots remain as the ONLY ethnic-based atrocity that has failed to receive government reparations.
Well…true reparations…
Approximately 118 survivors were given a bronze medal of distinction inscribed “Survivor of the 1921 Race Riot”.
It has been asserted by courts as high as the Supreme Court that nothing can be done in this case because survivors were “sleeping on their rights” for over 80 years.
“The Government has chosen to sit this one out.”
BUT someone needs to realize…
“I didn’t do it…but I have a moral responsibility to correct it.”
The movie was intended to keep the story alive and get help and support for survivors.
What needs to be done is to secure justice for those who have already passed…80% of those survivors interviewed for the documentary had died by the time the documentary was made. For those who still have to live with the vivid memories of the Tulsa race riot, let us help them obtain justice “before they die.”
Pictures obtained from the following sources:
"Black Wall Street" : http://pumabydesign001.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/blk-wall-st1.jpg
"Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator" : http://www.subliminal.org/tulsa/NabNegro_Tulsa-paper.jpg
Children left homeless : http://www.robdedob.com/images/blackwallst3.jpg
"Running the Negro out of Tulsa" :
http://www.blackpast.org/files/blackpast_images/Tulsa_Race_Riot__1921__Ok__Hist__Soc__.jpg
Portrait of Otis Clark (Survivor) : http://archive.uua.org/news/2002/images/020411survivor.jpg
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