The drexel building Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 30th 1921 in the 3rd floor lobby stands 19 year old dick Rowland and orphan living with an adopted family who works at the white owned Parlor down the street. He comes here to the Drxel building to use the restroom Tulsa is a Segregated City and he has walked down the street to the Drxel and has taken an elevator three floors to reach the closest colored restroom The door opens and on the other side stands Sarah page the elevator seventeen-year-old operator He must know that being alone in any capacity with a white girl is dangerous for a young black man But he has to get back to work Rowland steps into the elevator not knowing that what happens next will provoke a white mob to kill over a hundred people and burn his entire town to the ground The YouTube revenue of this video will be donated to the n-double-a-cp Legal Defense Fund To help us explain this horrible episode in America's history We've asked triple african-american literary award winner Steven Van Patten to write this episode. Thanks so much, Steven 57 years after the United States abolished slavery the Greenwood district of Tulsa Oklahoma was a surprisingly prosperous slice of Americana Greenwoods population was comprised of blacks who had migrated there from the south seeking improved conditions But found that better life elusive originally they tried to settle in, Langston, Oklahoma But were run off by racist whites before landing in Tulsa despite the city's strict Jim Crow style segregation laws Green woods mostly black residents played an integral part in building up their neighborhood In fact being isolated from their hostile white neighbors may have actually helped them build Greenwood into a prosperous District that civil rights activist and author Booker T Washington nicknamed black Wall Street This state of Oklahoma and Tulsa in particular had done.
Well financially largely due to a bustling oil industry that had caused a population boom around the turn of the century and made many fortunes that success allowed white Tulsans to hire black people from nearby Greenwood as Domestics in turn the Greenwood blacks save their money invested in their communities and started their own businesses and with those businesses came in opulence unheard of it said that on Sundays the women were satin in diamonds and the Men wore silk and gold chains historian James s Hersh reported teachers lived in brick houses Furnished with louis xiv dining room sets fine china and Steinway pianos. It was a monument to black excellence. DrAC Jackson considered the most skilled black surgeon in America lived in Greenwood there was not one but two movie theaters and There was JB Stratford's fifty-four room Hotel the largest in America owned by a black man All the more remarkable considering Stratford had been born into slavery This was in stark contrast to other parts of the country where American blacks were often forced to live in harsher conditions Especially in the Midwest and South where the sharecropping system remained in place there They labored tirelessly on another person's land surrendering the majority of their crops to the landlord as a result They were trapped in debt to white landowners some of whom former slave owners When blacks tried to improve their situation white neighbors often responded with violence whether individual or communal and black men who showed ambition were often targets of lynchings, but in early 1921 life was anything but bleak in Greenwood the town had become a place of pride hope and Opportunity for a time things were so good that others began to migrate there including black veterans from World War one who were eager to Start new lives in the country They had helped defend that nickname black Wall Street coupled with the success of Greenwoods black inhabitants would feed a growing resentment among whites in the neighboring towns by some accounts the black residents of dream wood had become relaxed and stopped caring about Jim Crow loss or any other trappings of white supremacy because Well, why should they not only were they not doing anything wrong?
They had earned everything. They had through hard work and smart practical investments But that resentment was simmering when dick Rowland stepped into the elevator in the Drxel building Now this part gets hazy because there are only two people who can tell us what really happened in that elevator All we have are rumors later observers pointed out that the elevator was faulty and never stopped level on the third floor They claimed that Roland must have tripped and grabbed page to prevent a fall some say he stepped on her toe Another Theory even suggests that the two knew each other and something more personal was in play though. That was never proven but what we do know is that whatever happened miss page screamed a building employee call the police and Rowland was seen running out of the Drxel police pursued Rowland for assault a local paper Printed a story about the incident saying that pages dress was ripped which was a common euphemism newspapers used to imply sexual assault details of the alleged crime swelled as the story travelled from person to person until it was so Exaggerated that people said Roland head raped page in the elevator and he was arrested the next day Vigilante justice was nothing new to Oklahomans And after Roland's arrest a mob of armed angry white men appeared at the courthouse with the intent to lynch him Then black men from Greenwood arrived to protect young Roland two dozen at first but finally around 75 some of whom were trained world war 1 combat vets and Hotel owner JB Stratford tried to act as a peacemaker as racial slurs and threats filled the air then a gunshot Returned fire a running gun battle ensued as the black men retreated back home to Greenwood What followed was a siege the men who had sought to protect Roland took positions and readied themselves?
But they'd soon be overwhelmed Tulsa's white vigilantes were better armed had them outnumbered and now had official support from the police Angry white men from neighboring towns quickly answered the call to arms many of them hastily deputized by local authorities before indulging in the chaos During the attack the whites deployed a machine gun on a hill and fired into a church killing the people sheltering inside cars filled with rioters drove through Greenwood firing from every window white Vigilantes dragged black men out of their homes to shoot them in the street or tie them to the back of cars and drag them through town mob smashed windows and kicked in doors to loot personal items like jewelry first and other valuables and as many as six airplanes, Flew overhead raining dynamite and accelerant on the entire area destroying homes and workplaces From attorney's offices and beauty salons to hardware stores and funeral homes This went on until the next afternoon. When the Oklahoma National Guard arrived in declared martial law It was too late ten thousand black people were left homeless The official death toll was 39 but later historians would put it between 75 and 300 among the Dead was surgeon ac Jackson JB Stratford by contrast Sir, though His route hotel was nothing more than rubble and it wasn't alone 35 blocks had been destroyed with over two million dollars in damage and property loss roughly 33 million in today's currency Because local police told the National Guard that there had been a Negro uprising 6000 Greenwood residents were arrested and detained for a week Upon release many joined the rest of the homeless living in Red Cross tents with nowhere left to go Many stayed and suffered through a brutal winter under the canvas Greenwood had been rendered unlivable and Tate Brady a Klansman in the local government warded any plans to rebuild Efforts were made to relocate the disenfranchised even further away But the displaced of dream wood dug their heels in and took the case to the Oklahoma Supreme Court they won but Greenwood would never be the same and today much of whatever was left of black wall street has been paved over as part of Interstate 244 JB Stratford and 20 others were wrongly accused of instigating the riots but other than that There were surprisingly few charges brought up on anyone Stratford jumped bail and later became a successful lawyer in Chicago and the Tulsa Police Chief was relieved of duty But neither he nor the rioters saw a day of jail time yet Perhaps the most startling part of the story is what happened to dick Rowland Sarah page left town after the massacre leaving written instructions not to press charges and upon release Roland left Tulsa and never came back both disappeared from the pages of history We don't know where they went or what became of them. They were gone like Greenwood on a Personal note.
