Omaha Vice: The Lynching of Willie Brown

OMAHA

Omaha, Nebraska riot aftermath 1919

For forty years Omaha was ruled by a political, criminal gang that was perhaps the most lawless of any city of its size in the civilized world. There had grown up during that period, a powerful group who lived on the proceeds of organized vice and crime. These included about three hundred and eighty-four (384) houses of prostitution, together with saloons, pool halls, organized bank robbers, organized highway robbers, and professional "con" men and burglars.

Thomas Dennison and his second wife, 16-year-old Nevajo Truman, October, 1930.

Source — NSHS

Whenever a plan was made to have a election of officials, certain men in the community would assemble and hold a conference and they would decide what men it would be "safe" to elect, and they would give The Boss for his service a certain sum of money and control of the vice interests, the Police Department, the Police Court, the juries, and then proceed to elect public officials. This condition obtained, without interruption, from the early history of the city until 1908.

Reforms began in 1908 by an early closing law for saloons, followed by laws which took the control of juries and elections from the vice-ring. In 1916 statewide prohibition was carried.

We thus eliminated the whiskey interests which furnished the most of the money for election purposes, the control of the jury and election machinery, from the gang, and the actual disposition of public officers, but we had not eliminated all of the gang. There was still left the Omaha Bee which had been the mouth-piece of the vice-ring, the thugs and murderers who had ruled for years, and these combined to destroy the present city administration and regain control of the Police Department, which was absolutely necessary for the continuation of the reign and control of vice.

A mob of white men marched from South Omaha (rallied and led by a henchman of Dennison's) and converged on the Douglas County Courthouse, where the jail was. In the evening the crowd grew larger and set the courthouse on fire, forcing police to turn Brown over to them. They lynched him, hanging him from a lamppost on the south side of the courthouse, then dragging his body through the streets and burning it.

In order to accomplish this, the Omaha Bee, assisted at times by the other daily papers, began a campaign of slander and vituperation against the Police Department of the City of Omaha, and in order to make it effective they chose a line of propaganda to the effect that Negro men were attacking white women, assaulting them with intent to commit rape, and actually committing rape, with the connivance of the Police Department. They made a majority of the people in Omaha believe that all Negro men were disposed to commit the crime of rape on white women.

Rioters on the south side of Douglas County Courthouse, Omaha, Nebraska, September 28, 1919

For years there has been much illegal cohabitation of whites and blacks in Omaha, with about fifteen assignation houses where colored men met white prostitutes. Leading colored citizens asked the police to suppress these dens, but when this was begun, it only increased the slander and vituperation of the Omaha Bee, the organ of the vice-ring. This was kept up successfully until the people believed that the police were invading private property without warrant of law and arresting law-abiding citizens.

Tom Dennison. The reign of Omaha political boss Tom Dennison ended in 1933. For more than thirty-five years, he controlled gambling, drinking, prostitution and other criminal interests throughout Omaha, particularly in his seedy Sporting District. He controlled bootlegging operations in Little Italy through the Prohibition Era. He was closely allied with James Dahlman, Omaha's only eight-term mayor. Dennison was implicated in agitation of groups related to the Omaha Race Riot of 1919.

There was still left in the Police Department from the old regime a large percentage of the police officers protected by Civil Service, who were loyal to the old vice-ring, and they were doing everything within their power to hamper and discredit the honest efforts of the present city administration to enforce the law. The result of this was that together with the campaign of the newspapers, the morale of the Police Department was broken down and the city administration was unable, in the brief space of time that it had been in office, to get rid of these discordant elements.

The lynch mob white European-born immigrants and ethnic European Americans. The mayor attempted to intervene and was also hanged; he was saved only by a last-minute rescue by federal agents.

There was, furthermore, in connection with these men, fathered by these same influences, an organized gang determined to wreck the administration at any cost, and they deliberately organized a mob; they furnished it with money and liquor, and the leaders of the old vice-ring stood around in the mob, urging the men to go in and assist in wrecking the Court House, lynch the Negro, and kill the Mayor of the City and other officials.

The burning of Will Brown's body, Omaha, Nebraska, Sept. 28, 1919.

Both Brown, who was lynched, and the woman who accused him belonged to the under-world which met at the houses of assignation. They had quarreled and the woman "got back" at Brown by alleging attempted assault. It is said that at the time she was wearing a diamond ring given her by Brown.

United States Citizen, Willie Brown the lynching victim in Omaha, Nebraska, 1919.

(source: The Crisis)

Chris Herbert Buys Gravemarker for Victim of the 1919 Omaha Race Riot

LETTER FROM CHRIS HEBERT

To the People of Omaha, Nebraska

Regarding William Brown and the riot of 1919

Chris Hebert. "I wanted to show there's still some decency left," said Chris Hebert, of Riverside, who gave $450 to buy a grave marker.

I was watching a TV show that was talking about the actor Henry Fonda. It mentioned that his life was greatly affected by a lynching that took place in Omaha, Nebraska, when he was a boy.

I guess I am just a curious person. I searched the words Henry Fonda and Lynching and found a story in Wikipedia, about William “Will” Brown.

You will never believe the impact that this had on my reading this story 90 years later.

I am a proud American. I am a person of color. An average guy who loves his wife, his family, and his country.

When I read Will Brown's story, I had tears in my eyes. We have come a long way since the riot of 1919. We witnessed this during the Presidential Election of 2008. I never thought in my lifetime that a black man would ever be president of this great country. Yet it has happened.

We all have rights guaranteed by our Constitution and legal system. We all can vote, worship at a church of our choice, work in a profession of our choosing. Sadly, this would not have come about without the Will Browns and Emmett Tills of the world.

Omaha, Nebraska lynch mob 1919

It is a shame that it took these deaths and others to raise public consciousness and effect the changes that we enjoy today. When I discovered that William Brown was buried in a pauper's grave, I did not want William Brown to be forgotten. I wanted him to have a headstone to let people know that it was because of people like him that we enjoy our freedoms today. The lesson learned from his death should be taught to all. That is, we cannot have the protections guaranteed by the Constitution without law. There is no place for vigilantism in our society.

William Brown, Omaha

The words of the Omaha World Herald after Will Brown's death said it best:

“There is the rule of the jungle in this world, and there is the rule of law. Under jungle rule no man's life is safe, no man's wife, no man's mother, sisters, children, home, liberty, rights or property. Under rule of law, protection is provided for all of these, and provided in proportion as law is efficiently and honestly administered and its power and authority respected and obeyed.

“Omaha has had an experience in lawlessness. We have seen, as in a nightmare, its awful possibilities. We have learned how frail is the barrier which divides civilization from the primal jungle — and we have been given to see clearly what that barrier is. It is the law! It is the might of the law, wisely administered. It is respect for the obedience to the law on the part of the members of society! May the lesson sink deep!” — Morning Omaha World-Herald September 30, 1919.

"Will" William Brown. Lynched in Omaha riot. September 28, 1919. Age 40. "Lest We Forget

"

I hope that people will stop by his headstone, read it, maybe say a prayer for Mr. Brown and reflect on what happened on the 28th of September 1919. We must never let ourselves sink again to this level of inhumanity.

Respectfully,
Chris Hebert

Elaine, Arkansas Race Riot 1919

ARKANSAS

The Crisis reports in, "The Real Cause of Race Riots," on December 1919: ARKANSAS, THE Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has never been enforced thoroughly. This means that involuntary servitude is still wide spread in the southern United States. There are even vestiges of the slave trade in the convict lease system and the arrangements for trading tenants. On the whole, how ever, the slavery that remains is a wide spread system of debt peonage and a map of the farms operated by colored tenants shows approximately the extent of this peonage.

The Arkansas riot originated in the attempt of the black peons of the so-called Delta region, (that is the lowlands between Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana) to raise their income. The center, Phillips County, Ark., has 692,000 square miles of land and its chief city is Helena. In 1910 there were 33,535 inhabitants in the country, of whom 26,354 or 78.6% were Negroes. The county is predominately a farming community with $9,000,000 worth of farm property, and two-thirds of the value of all the crops is represented by the cotton crop. Of the 9,835 males of voting age, 7,479 are Negroes, and of these 5,510 could read and write; nevertheless, all the political power is in the hands of the 4,000 white voters, Negroes having no representation even on juries.

The Negroes are the cotton raisers. Of the 30,000 bales of cotton raised in 1909, they raised 25,000. Most of the Negro farmers are tenants. In the whole county there were, in 1910, 587 colored owners and 1,598 colored tenants. These tenants farmed 81,000 acres of land and raised 21,000 bales of cotton. For the most part the method of dealing with these tenants is described by a local reporter, as follows:

Cotton

All the white plantation owners had a system whereby the Negro tenants and sharecroppers are "furnished" their supplies. They get all their food, clothing, and supplies from the "commissary" or store operated by the planter, or else they get them from some store designated by him. The commissary or store charges from twenty-five to fifty per cent. interest on the value of the money and supplies advanced or furnished. If any one doubts this statement, let him ask any planter or storekeeper. As a whole, they admit it. They boast that the commissary is the safest and best paying department of the plantation.

A northern white man bought a big farm in Mississippi. Of course, he had a "commissary." When the season was over, he complained that he had made but little money. His southern neighbors asked him questions as to his methods etc., and found that he had charged the cost price for his supplies and had added ten per cent. for profit, and had settled with his hands at the actual market value of the cotton at the time it was sold. They said, "Hell, man, you haven't got the right system. You don't make money down here on your cotton except in good years. You make your money off your commissary. Besides, never give your niggers a statement of their accounts. If you do, you will ruin every nigger in the country. Just tell them what they've got coming and pay them off and don't let 'em argue or ask any questions."

That is only part of the "system." The landlord takes the cotton, gins it, sells it at the highest market price, and settles with his tenants at the lowest market price for their "share" of the crop. They play both ends against the middle and get the Negro going and coming. If a Negro objects, he is classed as "an insolent nigger" or a "bad nigger." He is beaten by the "agent" or "boss man" and either driven off the place, or else he admits he is wrong, becomes thoroughly cowed, and then is allowed to remain.

Several years ago the United States Government started to investigate alleged peonage among Italian laborers in the South. To their surprise and chagrin they ran across very little Italian peonage, but a great deal of Negro peonage. In Phillips County a white lawyer, named Bratton, prosecuted a number of cases for the government and convicted a half-dozen planters.

Recently the price of cotton has, as you know, greatly increased. It was about nine cents a pound in 1904, eleven cents in 1915, twenty cents in 1916, and twenty-eight cents in 1917. The price at present is forty cents. This rise in price has made it difficult to keep the Negroes in debt, and, therefore, they have become restive in their demands for itemized settlements.

That was the situation in 1918. Many Negroes had their cotton taken by the planter in October, 1918, but did not get a settlement until July, 1919. They had never been able to get a statement of their accounts from month to month, hence when July came, how could a man dispute an account made the year before? How could he say that he did not get certain supplies in June, 1918, when he did not know until July, 1919, what he was charged with?

Weighing Cotton, Arkansas

The Negroes got tired of it. Sixty-eight of them got together and decided to hire a lawyer and get statements of their accounts and a settlement at the right figures. They decided not to hire a Negro lawyer, because they knew that it meant mobbing and death to any Negro lawyer who would have the presumption to take one of these white planters to court.

They were afraid to trust any white lawyer in Phillips County for fear their attorney would lay down on them and fail to get results after getting their money. They canvassed the situation and found that the firm of Bratton and Bratton, white, of Little Rock, was a good, reliable firm, and would fight for a Negro client to the last. They made contracts with this firm to handle all the sixty-eight cases at fifty dollars each in cash and a percentage of the moneys collected from the white planters. Also some of these Negroes and their friends planned to go before the Federal Grand Jury and charge certain white planters with peonage. These men had meetings from time to time for the purpose of collecting the moneys which were to be paid in advance and to place the same in the treasury; also to collect evidence and gather facts which would enable them to successfully prosecute these cases. These meetings had to be secret to prevent harm and danger to the men concerned and to their families.

Meanwhile another organization sprang up. The Negro cotton pickers organized a union to raise the wages of cotton-pickers and refused to pick cotton until they received higher wages for their work. These meetings were secret. Also, at Elaine were a great many Negroes who worked in the saw-mills and who received fair wages, and who refused to allow their wives and daughters to pick cotton or to work for a white man at any price. They did this as a measure of protection to their wives and daughters, who were subject to the advances and insults of white men on the cotton farms.

Planters use child labor. The school year BEGINS in January, after the cotton harvest

All these movements became known to the white planters and they resolved to break up the whole business and put the Negroes "in their place." It is the unwritten law of the cotton planter that his Negro tenants "must not take the boss man to law." Woe be unto the "insolent nigger" who attempts it.

The white men also learned that Negroes were buying guns and plenty of ammunition. The merchants at Helena reported large sales and the express offices also reported shipments of rifles and shell to Negroes. The Negroes had read and heard all about the East St. Louis, Washington, and Chicago riots, and knew of the secret Ku Klux Klan movements among the white people in the South. They knew that race hatred on the part of white people was increasing by leaps and bounds and that riots were liable to break out in that section at any time. They were simply preparing to defend their homes and lives, for experience had taught them that Negroes have no protection at the hands of the law. The police and deputy sheriffs either refuse to check the mobs, or else they join hands with the mobs. The assembling of arms was for purely defensive purposes. No Negro was fool enough to think of an "insurrection" against white people.

While the white men were meeting secretly and discussing means of "nipping the niggers in the bud," matters came to a head very suddenly in an unexpected way. On Sunday, before the riot, John Clem, a white man, from Helena, came to Elaine loaded up and drunk on "white mule." He proceeded to bully and terrorize the whole Negro population of over four hundred people by continuous gun play. The Negroes, to avoid trouble, got off the streets, and phoned to the sheriff at Helena. He failed to act. Monday, Clem was still on a rampage. The Negroes avoided trouble, because they feared that his acts were a part of a plan to start a race riot. Tuesday, some Negroes were holding a meeting in a church at Hoop Spur. A deputy sheriff and a "special agent," white, and a Negro trusty came by in an auto. The white men stopped and proceeded to "investigate" the meeting. They were refused admittance. They attempted to break in and fired into the building. Some Negroes returned the fire, killing the special agent and wounding the deputy sheriff, so it is said.

White mob

However, when the Negro trusty reported the shooting, he said that they had been fired upon from ambush by two white men and a Negro. The wounded deputy also first reported that the party had been fired upon from ambush by two white men and he was quite sure he saw a Negro running from the scene. Later all mention of the white men was carefully avoided and suppressed, and the entire blame was laid upon the Negroes at the church and it was charged that all of them were armed, that the white men were proceeding peaceably on the road and only got out to fix their car, which just happened to break down right in front of this particular church, and that the Negroes fired on them without any provocation whatever. Later another white man was fired on, and it was claimed that he just happened to be coming along the road an hour later and was shot by Negroes who were at the same church.

It never seemed for a moment unreasonable to the white men to believe that the Negroes would kill and wound white men at the church and then deliberately stay there for an hour or two longer for the purpose of killing another white man. Every sane man knows that those Negroes would have fled from the scene after the first shooting, if they had been guilty.

Anyhow, the hue and cry was raised. "Negro uprising," "Negro insurrection," etc., was sent broadcast. The white planters called their gangs together and a big "nigger hunt" began. They rushed their women and children to Helena by auto and train. Train loads and auto loads of white men, armed to the teeth, came from Marianna and Forrest City, Ark., Memphis, Tenn., and Clarksdale, Miss. Rifles and ammunition were rushed in. The woods were scoured, Negro homes shot into, Negroes who did not know any trouble was brewing were shot and killed on the highways.

White mob, Elaine, Arkansas

Telegrams were sent to Governor Brough. He called for Federal troops and five hundred were rushed from Camp Pike, armed with rifles, cannon, gas masks hand grenades, bombs, and machine-guns. The Colonel took "charge of all strategic points," and "mobilized his men to repel the attack of the black army." The country was scoured for a radius of fifty to one hundred miles, covering all of Phillips and part of adjoining counties, for "Negro insurrectionists."

Soldiers escorting sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas 1919

The soldiers arrested over a thousand Negroes, men and women, and placed them in a "stockade" under heavy guard and kept them there under the most disgusting, unwholesome, and unsanitary conditions. They were not allowed to see friends or attorneys but all of them had to be separately and personally "investigated" by the army officers and a white "committee of seven." Even after "investigation" had proven completely that a Negro was wholly innocent, still no Negro was released until after a white man had appeared and personally "vouched" for him as being a "good nigger." The white man was usually a planter or employer and they refused to "vouch" for the Negroes until the Negroes had given assurance and "guarantees" as to work and wages. Finally, all but two or three hundred were released. All Negroes who owned their own farms or were otherwise independent, were held, as a rule, because no white man would vouch for them. In addition to those held by the soldiers, over three hundred were arrested and placed in the jail at Helena, charged with murder and rioting, and refused bond. They were not allowed to see friends or attorneys and were "investigated" by the "committee of seven." This committee was secret at first. Its membership was not disclosed, but was organized and did its work with the direct sanction of Governor Brough.

Arkansas Governor Brough

The next day, after the first killing of the special agent, which occurred at Hoop Spur, 0. G. Bratton, a son of U. S. Bratton, arrived at Ratio. There he met many Negroes who had employed the firm of Bratton & Bratton to obtain their settlements. The Negroes represented the sixty-eight tenants on the Fairthy plantation. They had had no settlement of their 1918 cotton crop until July, 1919, and then no itemized account. Two carloads of their 1919 crop were about to be shipped without settlement and they determined to take the matter into court.

About fifty of them began to pay the cash fees agreed upon. Many had no cash, so they offered him their Liberty Bonds, which he accepted. While collecting this money and giving receipts, a crowd of white men, who were engaged in the "nigger hunt," came upon him. They arrested Bratton and all the Negroes with him and sent them to jail at Helena, where they were imprisoned on charges of "Murder," and held without bond.

Bratton was on the train on his way to Ratio, which is twelve miles from Hoop Spur, and he and the Negro clients had not yet heard of the trouble when they met to close up the payment of the cash fees intended for his firm. All this time the white press of Arkansas kept up a hue and cry to the effect that Bratton was there "inciting an uprising of the Negroes and teaching them social equality." The feeling was so bitter against young Bratton that there were grave threats and fears of his being lynched. The Governor ordered special guards sworn in, patrols were stationed about the jail, and only the utmost precautions prevented the lynching of a man who was not even a lawyer and whose only crime consisted in collecting fees for his father's firm. It is now openly admitted that Bratton is clearly innocent of any part in the trouble, still he was held thirty-one days without bond in jail and then released without trial, because his father was about to obtain justice for Negro tenants.

Elaine, Arkansas

The saddest and worst feature of the whole miserable slaughter of Negroes was the killing of the four Johnston brothers. They were sons of a prominent and able Negro Presbyterian minister, who is now dead. Their mother is a very prominent woman and was formerly a school teacher. Dr. D. A. E. Johnston was a successful dentist and owned a three-story building in Helena. One brother fought in France and was wounded and gassed in the battle of Chateau-Thierry. Dr. Louis Johnston was a prominent physician and lived in Oklahoma. He had come home on a visit.

On the day of the first trouble the four brothers had gone squirrel hunting early that morning and started for home in the evening, wholly ignorant of the trouble at Hoop Spur. While they were miles out in the woods hunting, word of the trouble reached Helena. A merchant told the deputy sheriffs and posse that he had sold some shells to the Johnstons a day or so before the trouble.

A crowd of men in an auto went to hunt for the Johnstons. They met them returning from the hunt. These white men were supposed friends of the Johnstons. They told them of the trouble and a riot was in progress and that it would be dangerous for any Negro to be on the country roads, especially armed. The Johnstons told them they had just been hunting and had nothing but shot-guns and squirrel shot. They were advised by their friends to turn back and go home by a train that would pass a little station several miles down the road. They took this advice and went to the station to go by rail to Helena. They left their car with a friend, whom they told of the situation. They had bought their tickets and were on the train when up rolled a car with some deputies. They arrested three of the men and took them from the train. The fourth brother, from Oklahoma, also got off. The officers had with them a man named Lilly, a friend of another white man with whom Dentist Johnston had had trouble, the week before. When Dr. Johnston got off the train, the officers told him to go back. He refused, saying, "These men are my brothers. If you arrest them, I will go too." Then the officers said, "Well, if you are one of the Johnston brothers, we want you, too." They then arrested the Oklahoma man, whose only crime was that of being a brother to the other three.

A brilliant black Little Rock attorney Scipio Africanus Jones

The men were loaded into an auto and the car went back down the same road they had come over. After going a few miles, a crowd of white men appeared, led by the very "white friends" who had warned the Johnstons to take the train. They had telephoned or sent word to the officers as to where they could get the Johnstons. As the mob approached, Lilly and the officers began to get out of the auto. The Johnstons then saw that they had been led into a trap by their supposed "white friends." They were handcuffed, but they tried to put up a fight. Just as Lilly was climbing out of the car, preparing to turn the helpless men over to the mob, Dr. Johnston, although shackled, managed to grab Lilly's pistol from his hand and shot him. The officers and the mob then shot the men literally to pieces. They were sowed with bullets so much so that their faces had to be covered at the funeral, and parts of their bodies were in shreds. The noble mother had to endure the terrible ordeal of seeing four of her fine, promising sons buried in one grave.

The main results of the whole miserable business are as follows: five white men and between twenty-five and fifty Negroes were killed in the riots; the stench of dead bodies could be smelled two miles. One thousand Negroes were arrested and one hundred and twenty-two indicted. Evidence was gathered by a committee consisting of two planters, a cotton factor, a merchant, a banker, the sheriff of the county, and the Mayor of Helena. They are said to have used electric connections on the witness chair to scare the Negroes. Sixty-six men have been tried and convicted-twelve sentenced to death, and fifty-four to penitentiary terms. The trials averaged from five to ten minutes each; no witnesses for the defense were called; no Negroes were on the juries; no change of venue was asked.

Elaine 12

The work of "cleaning up" our people is not yet finished. The Grand Jury is at work and hundreds are to be indicted on charges of murder, rioting, conspiracy, etc. White lawyers at Helena are preparing to reap a harvest of fat fees from Negroes against whom there is no evidence, but who have saved money and property and Liberty Bonds. The Negroes are to be stripped to the bone.

The Negroes in the Black Belt are much demoralized, discouraged, and depressed. Hundreds are preparing to leave. Many Negro leaders, who have stood by the white people and who have counseled their race to stay here, now have not a word to say and many of them are also preparing to wind up their affairs and get out of the South. Negroes here live in fear and terror, afraid even to discuss the situation except in whispers and to well-known friends.

Arkansas Governor Brough

Governor Brough has issued a statement to the public press that he intends to have the Defender and THE CRISIS suppressed. The Arkansas Gazette, white, has issued an editorial demanding that Negro leaders give their people "proper advice," and warning them that their race is in danger of annihilation unless Negroes cease to be led by the lure of Liberty and equal political rights and also warning them that the freedom of the Negro from bad economic conditions is not to be obtained by the methods which were resorted to by the Negroes of Phillips County. Also any white man who fights, either in court or elsewhere, for the rights of the Negro is to be put in jail and suffer social and business ostracism from the white people of the South. (source: "The Real Cause of Race Riots," The Crisis, IXX , December, 1919; p. 56.)

“The Eruption of Tulsa”

“The Eruption of Tulsa”: An NAACP Official Investigates the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

The years following World War I in the United States saw devastating race riots around the nation: in small cities like Elaine, Arkansas, and Knoxville, Tennessee as well as in larger ones such as Chicago, where a four-day riot in 1919 left two dozen African Americans dead and more than 300 injured. But the Tulsa race riot was perhaps the worst. In fact, white Tulsans' 24-hour rampage was one of the most vicious and intense race riots in American history before or since, resulting in the death of anywhere from 75 to 250 people and the burning of more than 1,000 black homes and businesses. Walter White, an official of the NAACP, traveled to Tulsa in disguise to survey the damage caused by the 1921 race riot. His report, one of many articles on the riot, was published in the Nation in the summer of 1921.

A hysterical white girl related that a nineteen-year-old colored boy attempted to assault her in the public elevator of a public office building of a thriving town of 100,000 in open daylight. Without pausing to find whether or not the story was true, without bothering with the slight detail of investigating the character of the woman who made the outcry (as a matter of fact, she was of exceedingly doubtful reputation), a mob of 100-per-cent Americans set forth on a wild rampage that cost the lives of fifty white men; of between 150 and 200 colored men, women and children; the destruction by fire of $1,500,000 worth of property; the looting of many homes; and everlasting damage to the reputation of the city of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma.

This, in brief, is the story of the eruption of Tulsa on the night of May 31 and the morning of June 1. One could travel far and find few cities where the likelihood of trouble between the races was as little thought of as in Tulsa. Her reign of terror stands as a grim reminder of the grip mob violence has on the throat of America, and the ever-present possibility of devastating race conflicts where least expected.

Tulsa is a thriving, bustling, enormously wealthy town of between 90,000 and 100,000. In 1910 it was the home of 18,182 souls, a dead and hopeless outlook ahead. Then oil was discovered. The town grew amazingly. On December 29, 1920, it had bank deposits totaling $65,449,985.90; almost $1,000 per capita when compared with the Federal Census figures of 1920, which gave Tulsa 72,076. The town lies in the center of the oil region and many are the stories told of the making of fabulous fortunes by men who were operating on a shoe-string. Some of the stories rival those of the “forty-niners” in California. The town has a number of modern office buildings, many beautiful homes, miles of clean, well-paved streets, and aggressive and progressive business men who well exemplify Tulsa’s motto of “The City with a Personality.”

This little boy is not holding a baby doll, but an injured child

So much for the setting. What are the causes of the race riot that occurred in such a place? First, the Negro in Oklahoma has shared in the sudden prosperity that has come to many of his white brothers, and there are some colored men there who are wealthy. This fact has caused a bitter resentment on the part of the lower order of whites, who feel that these colored men, members of an “inferior race,” are exceedingly presumptuous in achieving greater economic prosperity than they who are members of a divinely ordered superior race. There are at least three colored persons in Oklahoma who are worth a million dollars each; J. W. Thompson of Clearview is worth $500,000; there are a number of men and women worth $100,000; and many whose possessions are valued at $25,000 and $50,000 each. This was particularly true of Tulsa, where there were two colored men worth $150,000 each; two worth $100,000; three $50,000; and four who were assessed at $25,000. In one case where a colored man owned and operated a printing plant with $25,000 worth of printing machinery in it, the leader of the mob that set fire to and destroyed the plant was a linotype operator employed for years by the colored owner at $48 per week. The white man was killed while attacking the plant. Oklahoma is largely populated by pioneers from other States. Some of the white pioneers are former residents of Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and other States more typically southern than Oklahoma. These have brought with them their anti-Negro prejudices. Lethargic and unprogressive by nature, it sorely irks them to see Negroes making greater progress than they themselves are achieving.

One of the charges made against the colored men in Tulsa is that they were “radical.” Questioning the whites more closely regarding the nature of this radicalism, I found it means that Negroes were uncompromisingly denouncing “Jim-Crow” [railroad] cars, lynching, peonage; in short, were asking that the Federal constitutional guaranties of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” be given regardless of color. The Negroes of Tulsa and other Oklahoma cities are pioneers; men and women who have dared, men and women who have had the initiative and the courage to pull up stakes in other less-favored States and face hardship in a newer one for the sake of greater eventual progress. That type is ever less ready to submit to insult. Those of the whites who seek to maintain the old white group control naturally do not relish seeing Negroes emancipating themselves from the old system.

A third cause was the rotten political conditions in Tulsa. A vice ring was in control of the city, allowing open operation of houses of ill fame, of gambling joints, the illegal sale of whiskey, the robbing of banks and stores, with hardly a slight possibility of the arrest of the criminals, and even less of their conviction. For fourteen years Tulsa has been in the absolute control of this element. Most of the better element, and there is a large percentage of Tulsans who can properly be classed as such, are interested solely in making money and getting away. They have taken little or no interest in the election of city or county officials, leaving it to those whose interest it was to secure officials who would protect them in their vice operations. About two months ago the State legislature assigned two additional judges to Tulsa County to aid the present two in clearing the badly clogged dockets. These judges found more than six thousand cases awaiting trial. Thus in a county of approximately 100,000 population, six out of every one hundred citizens were under indictment for some sort of crime, with little likelihood of trial in any of them.

Last July a white man by the name of Roy Belton, accused of murdering a taxicab driver, was taken from the county jail and lynched. According to the statements of many prominent Tulsans, local police officers directed traffic at the scene of the lynching, trying to afford every person present an equal chance to view the event. Insurance companies refuse to give Tulsa merchants insurance on their stocks; the risk is too great. There have been so many automobile thefts that a number of companies have canceled all policies on care in Tulsa. The net result of these conditions was that practically none of the citizens of the town, white or colored, had very much respect for the law.

So much for the general causes. What was the spark that set off the blaze? On Monday, May 30, a white girl by the name of Sarah Page, operating an elevator in the Drexel Building, stated that Dick Rowland, a nineteen-year-old colored boy, had attempted criminally to assault her. Her second story was that the boy had seized her arm as he entered the elevator. She screamed. He ran. It was found afterwards that the boy had stepped by accident on her foot. It seems never to have occurred to the citizens of Tulsa that any sane person attempting criminally to assault a woman would have picked any place in the world rather than an open elevator in a public building with scores of people within calling distance. The story of the alleged assault was published Tuesday afternoon by the Tulsa Tribune, one of the two local newspapers. At four o’clock Commissioner of Police J. M. Adkison reported to Sheriff [Willard] McCullough that there was talk of lynching Rowland that night. Chief of Police John A. Gustafson, Captain Wilkerson of the Police Department, Edwin F. Barnett, managing editor of the Tulsa Tribune, and numerous other citizens all stated that there was talk Tuesday of lynching the boy.

In the meantime the news of the threatened lynching reached the colored settlement where Tulsa’s 15,000 colored citizens lived. Remembering how a white man had been lynched after being taken from the same jail where the colored boy was now confined, they feared that Rowland was in danger. A group of colored men telephoned the sheriff and proffered their services in protecting the jail from attack. The sheriff told them that they would be called upon if needed. About nine o’clock that night a crowd of white men gathered around the jail, numbering about 400 according to Sheriff McCullough. At 9:15 [p.m.] the report reached “Little Africa” that the mob had stormed the jail. A crowd of twenty-five armed Negroes set out immediately, but on reaching the jail found the report untrue. The sheriff talked with them, assured them that the boy would not be harmed, and urged them to return to their homes. They left, later returning, 75 strong. The sheriff persuaded them to leave. As they complied, a white man attempted to disarm one of the colored men. A shot was fired, and then—in the words of the sheriff—“all hell broke loose.” There was a fusillade of shots from both sides and twelve men fell dead—two of them colored, ten white. The fighting continued until midnight when the colored men, greatly outnumbered, were forced back to their section of the town.

Around five o’clock Wednesday morning the [white] mob, now numbering more than 10,000, made a mass attack on Little Africa. Machine-guns were brought into use; eight aeroplanes were employed to spy on the movements of the Negroes and according to some were used in bombing the colored section. All that was lacking to make the scene a replica of modern “Christian” warfare was poison gas. The colored men and women fought gamely in defense of their homes, but the odds were too great. According to the statements of onlookers, men in uniform, either home guards or ex-service men or both, carried cans of oil into Little Africa, and, after looting the homes, set fire to them. Many are the stories of horror told to me—not by colored people—but by white residents. One was that of an aged colored couple, saying their evening prayers before retiring in their little home on Greenwood Avenue. A mob broke into the house, shot both of the old people in the backs of their heads, blowing their brains out and spattering them over the bed, pillaged the home, and then set fire to it.

Another was that of the death of Dr. A. C. Jackson, a colored physician. Dr. Jackson was worth $100,000; had been described by the Mayo brothers “the most able Negro surgeon in America”; was respected by white and colored people alike, and was in every sense a good citizen. A mob attacked Dr. Jackson’s home. He fought in defense of it, his wife and children and himself. An officer of the home guards who knew Dr. Jackson came up at that time and assured him that if he would surrender he would be protected. This Dr. Jackson did. The officer sent him under guard to Convention Hall, where colored people were being placed for protection. En route to the hall, disarmed, Dr. Jackson was shot and killed in cold blood. The officer who had assured Dr. Jackson of protection stated to me, “Dr. Jackson was an able, clean-cut man. He did only what any red-blooded man would have done under similar circumstances in defending his home. Dr. Jackson was murdered by white ruffians.”

It is highly doubtful if the exact number of casualties will ever be known. The figures originally given in the press estimate the number at 100. The number buried by local undertakers and given out by city officials is ten white and twenty-one colored. For obvious reasons these officials wish to keep the number published as low as possible, but the figures obtained in Tulsa are far higher. Fifty whites and between 150 and 200 Negroes is much nearer the actual number of deaths. Ten whites were killed during the first hour of fighting on Tuesday night. Six white men drove into the colored section in a car on Wednesday morning and never came out. Thirteen whites were killed between 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. O. T. Johnson, commandant of the Tulsa Citadel of the Salvation Army, stated that on Wednesday and Thursday the Salvation Army fed thirty-seven Negroes employed as grave diggers and twenty on Friday and Saturday. During the first two days these men dug 120 graves in each of which a dead Negro was buried. No coffins were used. The bodies were dumped into the holes and covered over with dirt. Added to the number accounted for were numbers of others—men, women, and children—who were incinerated in the burning houses in the Negro settlement. One story was told me by an eye-witness of five colored men trapped in a burning house. Four burned to death. A fifth attempted to flee, was shot to death as he emerged from the burning structure, and his body was thrown back into the flames. There was an unconfirmed rumor afloat in Tulsa of two truck loads of dead Negroes being dumped into the Arkansas River, but that story could not be confirmed.

What is America going to do after such a horrible carnage—one that for sheer brutality and murderous anarchy cannot be surpassed by any of the crimes now being charged to the Bolsheviki in Russia? How much longer will America allow these pogroms to continue unchecked? There is a lesson in the Tulsa affair for every American who fatuously believes that Negroes will always be the meek and submissive creatures that circumstances have forced them to be during the past three hundred years. Dick Rowland was only an ordinary bootblack with no standing in the community. But when his life was threatened by a mob of whites, every one of the 15,000 Negroes of Tulsa, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, was willing to die to protect Dick Rowland. Perhaps America is waiting for a nationwide Tulsa to wake her. Who knows?

Source: Walter White, “The Eruption of Tulsa,” Nation 112 (29 June 1921)

Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma - Pt 1


Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma - Pt 2


Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma - Pt 3