I mostly read histories and I probably learned about the massacre during my college years in the 90s. I couldn’t tell you where I first came across it, but I’m fairly positive it wasn’t ever mentioned in any of my history classes.
Came across it on-line a couple years ago.
First read about it maybe a decade ago, and I grew up in Georgia in the 70’s and 80’s. I’m sure my ancestors “saw some things” during their days, too, although the scale of the Tulsa riot trumps alot of other incidents.
Growing up in the South, there wasn’t much taught in the schools about Jim Crow or about the KKK or anything that we in the South did to black people after the civil war. It’s like we learned about slavery and the civil war, and then moved on to other topics…
I remember getting a few talks from my grandparents and parents about race back in the early 70’s. It was a different world back then.
No, Rosewood was based on an another white-on-black massacre that occurred in Rosewood, Florida back about 100 years ago. It was similar to Tulsa, but on a much smaller scale, as Rosewood only had a few hundred people.
I knew what the OP meant, but when did it default to being called a “massacre”? It was called a “riot” when I first read about it.
Probably around the time White people didn’t get to make all the history, or a little after. So, 2018?
Oops, 80th anniversary, if I heard about it 20 years ago.
History Channel will run a documentary on Sunday the 30th
Watch Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre | HISTORY Channel.
Yes, and every year when it comes up it feels like my white friends (I’m white myself) rediscover it - that same people every year - and I start to wonder what rock they’ve lived under all their lives. And hey, Juneteenth is coming up, so I’ll get to re live the “all my facebook friends apparently live under a rock and relive turning that rock over every year” for that one as well.
In related news, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission removed Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt for signing legislation that prohibits teaching anything about race that might make white students feel bad.
Smithsonian magazine also did a cover story on the Tulsa Race Massacre in April. I first read about it years ago. Not sure when.
I think I first heard of the Tulsa Massacre around 1997 when the move Rosewood was released.
It’s been called the Tulsa Race Riots for a long time. It’s only been quite recently that there’s been a transition from “riots” implying that both sides were participants to “massacre”.
I worked on the most recent update of academic standards for history in Oklahoma that came out in 2019 and we worked hard to get better on the uncomfortable history. (Though I was 8th grade, which ends at Reconstruction. This is HS Oklahoma History and HS US History), and in those standards it’s officially called the Tulsa Race Riots, though there is a sup-point getting into some debate.
OKH.5 The student will examine the Oklahoma’s political, social, cultural, and economic transformation during the early decades following statehood
....OKH.5.2 Examine multiple points of view regarding the evolution of race relations in Oklahoma, including:
........A. growth of all-black towns (1865-1920)
........B. passage of Senate Bill 1 establishing Jim Crow Laws
........C. rise of the Ku Klux Klan
........D. emergence of “Black Wall Street” in the Greenwood District
........E. causes of the Tulsa Race Riot and its continued social and economic impact.
........F. the role labels play in understanding historic events, for example “riot” versus “massacre”.
.
USH.4 The student will analyze the cycles of boom and bust of the 1920s and 1930s on the transformation of American government, the economy and society
....USH.4.1 Examine the economic, political, and social transformations between the World Wars.
........A. Describe modern forms of cultural expression including the significant impact of people of African descent on American culture as exhibited by the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age.
........B. Describe the rising racial tensions in American society including the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, increased lynchings, race riots as typified by the Tulsa Race Riot, the rise of Marcus Garvey and black nationalism, and the use of poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise blacks.
........C. Assess the impact of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 on the American Indian nations.
........D. Examine growing labor unrest and industry’s reactions, including the use of sit-down strikes and court injunctions, and why socialism and communism appealed to labor.
........E. Describe the booming economy based upon access to easy credit through installment buying of appliances and inventions of modern conveniences including the automobile.
Heard about it? I taught it for over 20 years. It was not in our history textbooks until a few years before I retired–a good opportunity to teach the systemic racism behind the exclusion.
I know I already knew about the massacre before reading that book, because one of the primary characters was an African American man who talked about going to Greenwood, OK. I just said “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit”.
It probably was only a few years before that that I’d learned about it, though.
I saw somebody speaking today about the Tulsa massacre and they referred in the present tense to the survivors and the surviving descendants.
I would have assumed anybody who was present has since passed away. But it’s possible. Are there any living survivors?
There are, I believe, about four. They were children at the time.
ETA The NYT says there are three:
Have you heard of the Colfax Massacre? It is estimated to be the worst mass murder in American history and I guarantee most people have never heard of it. It also pretty much ended Reconstruction, and guaranteed White Supremacy for another 100 years.
Have you heard of the Coushatta Massacre? In the same vicinity as Colfax, La.
Have you heard of the New Orleans riot of 1866?
The Opelousas massacre (riot) of 1868?
The Memphis riots of 1866?
The Wilmington, North Carolina insurrection of 1898, an actual successful insurrection that overthrew a democratically elected government in the United States.
Have you heard of the Elaine, Arkansas massacre of 1919 (250 blacks murdered by whites, many of whom were members of the national guard)
Have you heard of the East St. Louis riots of 1917?
The Chicago race riots of 1919?* In fact 1919 was a nationwide race war, with riots from Houston to Omaha.
Thank you.
Just goes to show, I should be careful making assumptions.
Tulsa was front-page news in the Montreal “Gazette” of June 2, 1921.
“Bolshevik propaganda, which was inciting the negroes of this city and elsewhere in Oklahoma to become antagonistic to the whites because of the apparent failure of their pleas for race equality, was the principal cause of the terrible race riot that broke out here last night and was only quelled late today with the city being put under martial law…”
The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies”) were also mentioned as instigators.
The article also mentions that the deputy sheriff (Barney Cleaver) was black, and was “well respected by both races”.