Tulsa Race Riot

Black Militancy and Nationalism and The Tulsa Race Riot

Black self-defense in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s infamous race riot of 1921 was part of a wider trend in black America. Armed veterans and other African American men rushed to defend Dick Rowland, a man accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator. As all blacks living in the South quickly learned, any black man accused of touching a white woman was fair game for lynching. This form of resistance, armed self-defense against white lynch mobs, resulted from significant changes in African American racial consciousness and attitude that developed after World War I, Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist message and his Universal Negro Improvement Association’s emphasis on black pride and unity. As blacks throughout the nation returned from service in the Great War and heard the militant and proud rhetoric of Marcus Garvey, the African Blood Brothers, and other black organizations, it became inevitable that they would choose armed self-defense to protect themselves from white violence.

Returning home from military service during World War I was part of the reason for militant black defense of Dick Rowland. In fact, most of the armed black men who came to the courthouse where a white mob initially gathered were veterans, with some who served in France.# The wartime experience these men gained undoubtedly played a role in their preparedness and willingness to fight against the racist white mobs that outnumbered them. These men risked their lives to fight for a nation that denied them civil and human rights, and were therefore radicalized by their experiences abroad. Black men in uniform were treated with respect in France, which expanded their worldview.# After knowing that there alternatives to living in the Jim Crow South or even segregated northern cities, it comes as no surprise that black men would aggressively push for ending racial discrimination. In addition, African Americans were well aware of the obvious contradiction of fighting for a country that deprived them of the rights of American citizenship. Though most blacks in the war were used as labor battalions and perceived as unfit soldiers, some like the Harlem Hellfighters were actually deployed in battle.# Furthermore, while in France, African American soldiers met African soldiers from France’s colonial possessions, which helped form the transnational form of black nationalism and anticolonialism that would emerge with the New Negro and the Negro Renaissance.# 

In addition, the first Pan-African Conference of 1919, organized by W.E.B. Du Bois would be hosted in Paris, and sought colonial reform through ending forced labor, high taxes, providing education and using the profits of colonialism to benefit colonized subjects.# This willingness to meet and cooperate against European exploitation of African colonies exemplifies the strength of international black nationalism. After the War, blacks became more vigilant throughout the South, in order to prevent lynching. Indeed, “black radicalism exploded on the national and international scenes in the forms of the UNIA, Pan-African Congresses, and the African Blood Brotherhood,” which all supported black militancy.#

Another main factor of the rise of black militant self-defense in Tulsa is the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Great Migration. African Americans moved west and north in search of better work with higher wages in industrial jobs, political freedom, employment diversity, and access to information.# Tulsa’s black population did not become significant until 1905, when early black residents came to the oil town from diverse areas of the South and bought property along Greenwood Avenue.# By 1921, the year of the race riot, Black Tulsa had a population of nearly 11, 000, two schools, a hospital, two newspapers, and several successful black businesses, making Greenwood the “Negro Wall Street.”# Black migration to Tulsa in search of work in the booming oil industry also found work as domestics and other service jobs for white employers. Unfortunately, Negro Wall Street’s prosperity was dependent on white employers who hired black workers and whites owned a large portion of the land in Black Tulsa, effectively limiting the prosperity and spread of the black middle-class in the city.# As prosperous and wealthy some of the black businesses were, they were mostly service-oriented and could not provide employment for most African American residents. 

Thus, the migration to the city that began with the oil boom created a small black middle-class and a larger working-class majority. In spite of the class differences, Tulsa’s Jim Crow laws facilitated the creation of a united black population that supported black businesses and organizations. In fact, Tulsa was one of Oklahoma’s strongest Ku Klux Klan centers, blacks were expected to remain in their place, and violence against blacks and lynching had occurred in Oklahoma as recently as 1920.# Therefore, African Americans already radicalized by serving in World War I and becoming an urban population with more opportunities and access to information from national and international organizations, were more likely to choose militant defense. The Negro Renaissance’s emphasis on self-awareness and consciousness of African-American culture promoted black militancy and pride throughout urban Black America at the time.

The new form of racial consciousness that evolved in the early 1920s also defined the New Negro in terms of masculinity.# One’s manhood was measured by the extent of protection they could afford black women, possession of military training, and racial pride. Thus, black veterans of the war, seeing another black person in danger, probably felt compelled to defend another black man since their masculinity was defined by racial pride, solidarity, and dignity. The Negro Renaissance also had international connections, mostly through the black expatriate community in Paris, Caribbean immigrants in New York and other northeastern cities.# These writers, leaders, and artists contributed to the birth of a self-conscious black Atlantic culture opposed to imperialism and racism, and exemplified by Negritude, the Negro Renaissance, and the spread of the UNIA’s membership and pan-Africanist messages. 

In addition, Marcus Garvey, UNIA, the African Blood Brotherhood, and other radical leftist groups also contributed to the militancy of blacks in Tulsa. Though in the course of the riot they soon realized they could not stop the white mobs that looted black homes and black businesses, ultimately destroying 1,115 residences, looting 314 homes, and being helped by Tulsa police during the riot.# Black veterans and other men who approached the white mob and inadvertently discharged a gun when a white tried to disarm one of them ignited the spark. However, blacks fought back throughout the riots by sniping white invaders into black Tulsa and gathering for an “invasion” of the white section of town.# Of course black men and women lost their homes, were held in detention centers, and were mistreated by National Guardsmen and police who used excessive force and epithets when escorting blacks to detention centers. But black militant responses to the white mob’s wanton destruction of the black district were partly influenced and motivated by some of the more radical and leftist organizations. For example, Marcus Garvey’s UNIA urged blacks to defend themselves from lynching when possible.# Other black groups, such as the African Blood Brotherhood, which had a local group, also influenced Tulsa’s black population since it encouraged unionization, cooperatively owned businesses, and creating paramilitary units to safeguard the community, along with black separatist views.# Of course the blame for the riots was placed on blacks and these radical black organizations, but its important to remember that white mobs and their intention to lynch Rowland precipitated the riot in the first place. Even the more liberal NAACP supported black self-defense against lynching in its journal, The Crisis.#

Likewise, the cooperation of the police, court system and government with the white mobs because of perceived threat to the racialized sexual and social order also encouraged black militancy. By assuming Rowland raped or assaulted a white woman and preparing to lynch him, whites in the city who surrounded the courthouse, could have easily endeavored to capture him and take justice into their own hands. The courts could not be relied on for ensuring Rowland was not executed by mob violence or the judicial system since all-white juries and racist judges often pushed for the death penalty. The police also mishandled the situation by allowing whites who were part of the mob and who volunteered their services to work with them in preventing blacks from leaving the black section of town.# The police, during the mob’s looting, burning, and murder of African Americans aided these men in the destruction of Tulsa’s black community. The city government and governor of Oklahoma also delayed calling in the National Guard, which could have prevented the riot by disarming and preventing the white mobs.# The use of airplanes to monitor the locations of blacks who were resisting the white mobs and the possible use of planes for bombing Greenwood illustrates how little the government cared about protecting black lives. Blacks would rationally want to protect themselves since they knew from other lynching mobs and race riots that the government would not protect black men.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was part of a larger trend in African American racial consciousness. Black militancy became more pronounced after many men had served in World War I, made connections with the African diaspora in Africa and the Caribbean, experienced life without Jim Crow while fighting abroad in France, and the beginning of the Negro Renaissance propelled black transnational consciousness. Not surprisingly, blacks in Tulsa, at the news of a large gathering of whites outside of the courthouse while a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman was there would catch black veterans’ attention. They understood the importance of protecting themselves from white violence since the government would do little, if anything at all, to protect their lives in court or in the presence of a white mob. Thus, choosing self-defense and protecting another black man made perfect sense to blacks. As one can imagine, whites blamed it on blacks for taking the law into their own hands and challenging white supremacy in the aftermath of the riot.

Bibliography

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Halliburton, Jr., R. "The Tulsa Race War of 1921." Journal of Black Studies 2, no. 3 (1972): 333-357.

Pratt Guterl, Mattehew. "The New Race Consciousness: Race, Nation and Empire in American Culture, 1910-1925." Journal of World History 10, no. 2 (1999): 307-352.

Watson, Steven. The Harlem renaissance: hub of African-American culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.