White Folks "Embarrassed to Admit" They Just Learned About Tulsa From "Watchmen"

[Recursion]

https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/10/22/white-folks-embarrassed-to-admit-they-just-learned-about-the-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-through-an-episode-of-watchmen/

Truth is patient, and always outs eventually

The series premiere of the HBO series “Watchmen” debuted Sunday night and while the show is inspired by some fictional characters in the DC Comics series of the same name, the plot of the first episode was all too real.

Set in an alternative history where superheroes are seen as outlaws, the initial episode sees Detective Angela Abar and Chief Judd Crawford look into the attempted murder of a Tulsa police officer in 2019 — where law enforcement now shields their faces with masks. The probe comes nearly 100 years after a Black boy and an orphaned baby girl are the lone survivors after planes drop bombs on the community in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The 20th-century incident saw the Ku Klux Klan invade the area of Black wealth known as Black Wall Street on May 31, 1921, and kill at least 300 people — 90 percent of whom were Black. Over the course of 16 hours, the community was left in shambles, burned to the ground after white mobs destroyed 35 city blocks where 1,200 people lived. Moreover, 600 thriving businesses were lost, and among them were 30 grocery stores, 21 restaurants, two movie theaters, and a hospital.

The moment has been deemed the “single worst incident of racial violence in American history, “ according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Greenwood Massacre

I was quite aware of it. Most people are not familiar with this event, including many in Oklahoma.

[bobbieinok]

2. Grew up in Tulsa, HS grad in 57. Zero mention. Grandma told me a bit.

Scott Ellsworth's 1982 book was the 1st to discuss locally and nationally.

IIRC he was 1st to publicize the 'disappearance' from all archives of the newspaper call for whites to 'come to city jail' where black man suspected of 'inappropriate behavior' toward a white woman was being held.

I've long believed it was the Smithsonian publishing an article about the Massacre in their journal sometime in the 1990s that forced Tulsa and OK to start talking about it.

[yellerpup]

3. Haven't seen the movie, but the numbers are wrong.

Archaeologists are radar mapping old graveyards now looking for more mass graves. The population of Tulsa was 374 in 1884 and grew to 72,000 by 1920 the year before the riot. The white rioters selectively assassinated the most prominent black citizens first and thousands fled to the countryside. My great-grandmother, and my grandmother who was 15 lived about 25 miles north of Tulsa at the time made vats of chile, beef stew or beans to serve the streams of refugees going north along the railroad tracks trying to escape with little or nothing except their elders and their children.

[abqtommy]

4. Please do tell us the correct numbers...asking for a friend.

[yellerpup]

7. They are still looking for mass graves.

No one can tell you the correct numbers. I don't have those estimates at hand right now, but the number of killed was more like 3,200 and the ones who fled town are about 20K. Many (most) did not return.

I did a couple of years of research on this event for my play, "Blood Boundary," and as yet, no one has agreed on how many were killed. That's why the archaeologists are mapping now.

[Recursion]

10. Short of finding the burial we'll probably never know the full count

That's one of the reasons the mob burned the hospital: it had the birth registries

[yellerpup]

13. They firebombed 35 Sq, blocks of housing

using "flaming tar balls" dropped from airplanes, according to eyewitness accounts. They destroyed everything, burned to the ground. The only structure still standing were the outhouses in that part of town.

[abqtommy]

17. Thanks for the estimate, even if the facts are incomplete. When a person says "the numbers

are wrong" that implies to me that they know the correct numbers. Language is important, especially in understanding these horrific occurrences.

[negromiconomics]

11. Hard to Quantify

Really not known as the immediate aftermath of the event was the dispersal of much of the black population that in general wanted to put it behind them and not have it follow them. This is a worst kept secret sort of thing. It has certainly been covered and stories in the last 30 to 40 years. The movie Rosewood generated a lot of publicity about a similar event and within that coverage were many passing references to Tulsa. Also... there is still a black Tulsa which lives on over the figurative rubble of the event and this was possible because of the muted remembrance of the event. Anyway... numbers are hard to come by. Some eyewitnesses claim they saw thousands of bodies. Hard to fact check as many fled...networks were disrupted... exchange of information on survivors was secret... communication fractured and intermittent. This happened in 1920... remember how long it took before world trade center casualty estimates went from 20,000 to the verified number of 3,000 plus... it had to have been more than a week in a modern computerized society where the entire world knew and was awaiting the answer. You can imagine how hard the info was to come by when all the important people and information sources just want it to go away!!!!

Anyway...in new York...a local public Access channel used to play a loop of programming featuring an interview with a survivor of Tulsa... she died in recent years but she was not an unknown person whose life path crossed some interesting Lane and people here is a link... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/olivia-hooker-one-of-the-last-survivors-of-the-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-dies-at-103/2018/11/22/f5c03934-ee71-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/olivia-hooker-one-last-survivors-1921-tulsa-race-riot-dies-n939651

[yellerpup]

14. In my research

I spoke with one man who said his uncles were dozer operators on the west side of town (massacre was in the North part of town) and he said his uncles were very busy digging swimming pools and that there were hundreds buried beneath these pools.

[dewsgirl]

5. I misread that and thought it said Tulsi.

[calimary]

6. Kicking this.

[Ligyron]

8. Good Gawd, I thought the last 2 paragraphs were fictional like the Watchmen series above.

At first look I mean.

Then it became clear that no, this was something else altogether and how the hell is it that I, along with millions of other Americans, had never even heard of it? Ever. Not even a mere whisper concerning this horror.

Disgraceful.

[negromiconomics]

12. Easy to miss but not invisible

Certainly not taught or part of the public mind like the burning of Atlanta which enters our consciousness from many sources both historic and ahistoric.... but hardly a totally invisible event. Look at the first paragraph of this obituary of John Singleton from earlier this year.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/john-singleton-rosewood-hollywood-lynchings.html

[Ligyron]

18. Being from Fl myself, I heard of this outrage.

Knew of it well before the movie came out, which I've not seen as yet. 12 Years a Slave was hard to watch at times but an excellent movie. I should go find Rosewood and watch that too but I'll have to do it privately as my SO's can't take violence in movies if it depicts an actual event. They can watch over the top almost cartoonish violence in slasher flicks though. Strange how that works.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. This is why the push for decades

for reparations.

This incident along with Rosewood (both having occurred in the '20s) and most likely others, have plagued the black consciousness for a century. The KKK reemerged full bore during the '20s as well an intensification of Jim Crow laws.

[IronLionZion]

9. Many schools don't teach about these types of atrocities in US history

Especially in areas where they fight to keep confederate statues because "we can't erase history".

A lot of black history is erased, especially if it's of horrible mass murders and human rights abuses. Same with Native Americans and other minorities. There are reasons why we mostly learn about white history in schools.

[Pachamama]

16. +10000

This....