---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shaka Barak [email protected]
Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riot/Massacre May 31, 1921 Exactly 90 years ago May 31, 1921, the 11,000 African residents of the Greenwood District of the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were bombed after preparing to celebrate Memorial Day. Previously, several generations had settled in this community, with some having arrived to escape terrorism in the southern states. Others came there on the Trail of tears, as Native Americans were being resettled in Tulsa. Many were indigenous people of African descent who were there before the era of the mass murderer Christopher Columbus. This striving segregated 4½ square miles community had millionaires and hundreds of well-established businesses of every description. Some even had their hands in the oil business in Oklahoma. In some of their homes, men purchased Baby Grand Pianos; table dishes from China and filled their wives' closets with silk and satin dresses. There were tailor made suits (often made by their own seamstresses and tailors), and mink, raccoon, rabbit and fox furs. Booker T. and Garvey Impressed Impressed with its economic success were men like Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856- November 14, 1915) who visited there and Marcus Mosiah Garvey (bn. August 17, 1887-di. June 10, 1940) who had a division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League there. The district was nick-named Negro/Black Wall Street as a compliment and Little Africa as an insult. This wealth they created was the result of segregation that allowed some Africans to work and earn money in the white community, but social segregation did not allow them to spend that money in white-owned stores. The unintended effect was "buy Black and shop Black" economics, that made the spent dollar circulate right back into the hands of some other person of African descent and thereby making the community prosper. This economic cooperation on Black Wall Street spilled over into the development of a middle class, of doctors, dentists, and lawyers, but the highest level of literacy among school children of any African community in the United States. This success also spilled over into inflaming white jealousy, hatred and envy on the part of those who lived across the tracks in the all white community where many did not do nearly as well as Blacks. Under the pretense that a white girl had been raped, led by the white print media that misrepresented the facts, a young African was arrested, imprisoned and threatened to be lynched. In front of the police station between 9:00 P.M.-9:30 P.M., about twenty-five African men faced down a mob of 2000 whites, in an attempt to protect the boy, Dick Rowland, from this lynch mob. After the first attack Blacks fought and died bravely but were outnumbered and were chased across the tracks to prepare to defend their community. The Attack The whites soon organized 10,000-armed men and women from the police, elected officials and Ku Klux Klan, and at the sound of a secret signal attacked Black Wall Street with machine guns and bombs from air support. First, moving from house to house to house, the African men, women and children were fired upon, chased from their homes and shot in the back. White women quickly entered the homes and loaded shopping bags with everything they could carry. Secondly, white men backed up trucks outside the homes, entered the homes and took out everything of value, from furniture and sewing machines to paintings on the walls. Thirdly, these homes, businesses, institutions and churches were burned down. After 18 hours of fighting the outnumbered and out-armed Africans had 300 confirmed dead and an estimated 1000 killed. Black Wall Street was never rebuilt. Shaka Barak, President of The Marcus Garvey Institute, has interviewed several survivors who were eyewitnesses, regarding their accounts of the 1921 riot/massacre along with their descendants. He has also consulted with Eddie Faye Gates, author of Riot on Greenwood, The Total Destruction of Black Wall Street,2003. Sister Gates was also on the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa riot of 1921, one of Americas secrets for over 75 years. Shaka can be contacted at [email protected], [email protected], ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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