[NARRATOR] By 1921,
Tulsa’s Black population had grown to almost 11,000,
and the Greenwood community was booming —
15 grocery stores,
two Black movie houses,
two Black newspapers,
four drugstores,
two Black public schools,
a Black public library,
four barbecue and chili parlors,
and about 13 churches.
[JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:] In Tulsa, Oklahoma,
we did have a little separate enclave
where Blacks had some measure of financial, social, political independence,
maybe even some clout.
You had a whole group of Black entrepreneurs
who came together and formed a kind of union
to help develop Black businesses.
The Black business grew so in Tulsa
until in 1936, it was announced
that we had the largest Black business in the whole United States.
[JOE R. BURNS:] But when we went on the white side of town,
now, you’d have white guys picking at you all the time,
and you might get involved in a fight.
And the Ku Klux Klans were pretty rampant.
[NARRATOR:] It was a dangerous time to be Black in America.
Between 1917 and 1921,
racial violence was rampant.
In cities across the country,
Blacks were being beaten, burned and lynched in alarming numbers.
In Tulsa, the Ku Klux Klan included political leaders and members of the police.
Even local newspapers supported mob violence.
[Mr. JOHNSON:] It was always a hostile relationship between the Black and white community,
and part of it was because
the Ku Klux Klan was located in an area just west of the Black community itself,
on Main and Eastern.
This was about four blocks west of where the primary Black community was located,
and we had to pass by this to go to places of employment
and to go to and from school,
if we lived in service areas of the quarters.
And it was just a hostile situation.
There was always a potential for violence there.
Black people were not about to put up
with the attitude that the white community was putting before us.
The whites felt that they could instill fear in the Black community,
and Blacks wasn’t going for it,
and it was a confrontational type of attitude that existed.
[NARRATOR:] But no one, Black or white,
was prepared for what happened on the night of May 31, 1921.
[Mrs. LITTLE:] There was a merchandise store
that had one of these old-fashioned elevators that you ran by hand,
and some white girl was the operator,
and this young man got on the elevator.
Well, when he went to get on it, he stumbled,
and in the effort to keep from falling, he grabbed whatever he could,
and of course, the operator was in the way.
And she assumed that he was trying to attack her,
and she reported it,
and he was arrested.
My husband asked to make a speech.
He’s the one that predicted that riot.
Don’t let nobody fool you.
I don’t know who else says they predicted it,
but T.R. Davis, the father of my children,
he stood up and told the people.
He said, “There’s going to be a destruction in Tulsa.”
And that afternoon, the Tribune came out and said what had happened,
and that they had arrested Dick Roland,
“And it looks like there’s going to be a lynching tonight.”
And of course, when the Negroes in the community saw this,
they says, “Oh, no. No, we’re not going to have that.”
After we went home from church, here come one by the house.
“Man, get your guns.
Get your guns."
Looked like I can hear them lousy people—
them loud-mouthed people right now.
And there they were,
hundreds of Negroes standing around,
talkin’, using profanity and what-have-you,
and shooting their gun every now and then.
And then,
they felt, “Well, we better get on down to the courthouse.”
And they went down to the courthouse,
and everybody was just standing around,
nobody saying anything to one another.
Finally, when a little old white man came up to Barry
and said,
“Nigger, what you doin’ with that pistol?”
He say, “I’m going to use it if I need to.”
He said, ‘No, no, you give it to me,”
and he tried to take it,
and that scuffling set the riot off.
So the Negro decided they were going to make a stand
at Cincinnati and ‘Frisco Railroad tracks,
but by being outnumbered, they had to leave.
And of course, as they left, the white moved in,
and as they moved in, they looted,
and to hide their behavior pattern, they set fire to the building.
[Ms. SKINNER:] When T.R. woke me up, he said, "Rose,’
he said, “We got to get up and leave here.”
He said, “They done started.”
And I didn’t want to go.
I balked on it.
He had to kinda get rough with me before I would leave,
but I did leave.
And he told to— not to bring nothin’.
He said, “Don’t bring nothin’.’
I just had on some barefoot sandals
and a towel tied on my head,
and that’s the way I went,
‘cause I was fussin’ and disgusted and scared, too.
[GEORGE D. MONROE:] I remember my mother puttin’ us
— my sisters and my brother —
under the bed.
I remember the people comin’ in,
white people comin’ into our house with torches,
settin’ the curtains on fire
and settin’ our house on fire.
And one stepped on my finger while I was under the bed,
and my sister put her hand over my mouth to keep me from screamin’.
And they was burnin’ and everything.
They set houses up there, comin’ this way, burnin’.
It reminded me of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible.
And we was goin’ that way.
He said, “Everybody get out in the opening where they’ll see,
and won’t nobody get hurt,”
and he was right.
He was right.
Long as we was out where they could see us, they didn’t bother,
but they were shooting from airplanes and everywhere.
It was a hot time.
My dad had heard, as other Black men in that park had heard,
that the white marauders were approaching them.
And my dad was joining other Black men
to protect the Black people, the wives and the children who were there.
The next thing that I remember was
that we saw a railroad train with boxcars attached to it,
and in at least two of those boxcars,
there were soldiers in uniform,
and they were— they were white soldiers.
And they was just like this with them shotguns,
just like this.
And of course, I just knew everybody goin’ be killed myself.
[Mrs. LITTLE:] We were afraid that they came to kill us,
and they said, “No, we came to help you.”
And they wanted to take the men
and leave the women and children out there.
I spoke up.
I said, “No, we want to go with our husbands.
If you’re going to kill them, kill us all together.”
[NARRATOR:] During the riot, Black men had taken up arms to protect their families.
Now, they were charged with incitement,
taken off to jail or the county fairgrounds
and tagged for identification.
And babies were born that night,
two or three babies and everything.
I had some personal friends
that had a baby born the night before the riot started,
and they lost that baby during that riot,
tryin’ to keep up with them.
They had him in a shoebox— no, in some kind of a box like a shoebox,
and that baby got away from ‘em.
I never had any feeling — it was such a shock
— until I don’t know, that the Lord just strengthened me.
But my husband was— he was so tender,
and he just broke down.
He says, “Baby, we’ve lost everything we had.”
I said, "But we have each other, honey."
I never shed a tear over that.
In fact, I never have been angry.
I felt sorry for the people that treated our folks like that.
[NARRATOR:] The Red Cross reported more than 300 people had been killed.
Newspapers listed almost 100 deaths,
but city officials put the death toll at 36.
More than 35 blocks of Black Tulsa was burned to the ground.
Over 4,000 people were left homeless.
Still, most of the people of Greenwood refused to leave.