Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riots of 1921

Causes

The events that unfolded in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the summer of 1921 were not isolated. The town had been plagued by the systematic racism that led to the development of both a “White Tulsa” and a “Black Tulsa” (14). Systems of segregation and disenfranchisement accompanied by the resurgence of men’s, women’s, and juniors’ KKK groups assured the oppression of blacks and the supremacy of whites.

Ellsworth cites three key events in setting the stage for the race riots. In October of 1917, the home of a wealthy man by the name J. Edgar Pew, was bombed. Although no evidence supported the claim, the local white newspaper the World blamed the bombing on black workers associated with the labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). 17 people were arrested and found guilty, then were hijacked by the “Knights of Liberty,” stripped, whipped, tarred, and feathered (30).

In March of 1919, O.W. Leonard, a white ironworker, was shot and killed. Racial tensions rose as blacks grouped together to ensure the safety of the three defendants. None were found guilty and no lynching occurred.

In August of 1920, a taxi driver named Homer Nida was hijacked and murdered by a white man named Roy Belton who was later lynched by an angry mob of other whites (43). This case is important in understanding how the massacre could have taken place because it showed that if the police could not defend a white defendant from an angry mob of whites, that they could be complacent in the attacks of blacks in the community.

Impacts

The impact that the race riot had on the African American community is immeasurable. The death toll is still uncertain, with reports ranging from as low as 30 to as high as 300 dead (66). Many blacks fled Tulsa during the riots, but those that stayed and survived were detained in internment camps, holding upwards of 4,000 blacks. White reconstruction committees attempted to purchase the burnt land for cheap in order to build more white businesses, when this was shot down, the white owned land in the black community was quickly rebuilt to begin making profits again (84).