Black Birds in the Sky Page 10

  In 1895, a group of Tulsa residents published the first issue of the weekly New Era, which they created to provide a more positive view of their city—and which they hoped would attract more settlers to the area. Three years later, as more people began putting down roots in the city, the New Era was renamed the Tulsa Democrat. The paper liked to brag on Tulsa’s achievements, such as construction of new railroads, cotton gins, and businesses—and its editors were equally passionate about reporting on its neighbors throughout Indian Territory, who they said couldn’t keep up with Tulsa’s progress. When the paper proved to be unprofitable, the publishers sold it, and the new owner converted the Tulsa Democrat to a daily publication. The first issue of the new iteration was printed in September 1904, with the promise of “the upbuilding of Tulsa morally, mentally, and materially.” Though the town was primarily Democratic, the paper took a neutral political view, stating “no preference will be shown to one [party] over another.”

  The Tulsa Democrat was sold again just a year later in 1905, coinciding with the founding of Republican newspaper the Tulsa Daily World. The World was initially focused on promoting a Republican party faction that included a former congressional delegate and Oklahoma Territory’s governor. Oklahoma wouldn’t become a state for two more years, and the paper supported the two territories combining for single statehood; it also opposed Jim Crow laws. However, from the start, the Tulsa Democrat, which was the largest paper at the time, expressed doubt that the competing daily—and the second Republican newspaper in town—would survive, stating: “Outside of a small number of Republican politicians . . . everyone has thought that for the present the newspaper field was filled.”

  The Tulsa Democrat didn’t change ownership again for more than a decade, when an oil magnate named Charles Page bought the paper in 1916. Page, who had founded the town of Sand Springs, a suburb west of Tulsa, was not exactly buying the paper out of noble journalistic pursuits. He was engaged in a dispute with competitor the Tulsa Daily World about a business transaction and wanted to boost his profile by owning a paper. However, he soon became tired of the media industry, and three years later, the paper was sold once again, this time to Richard Lloyd Jones.

  In contrast to Page, who was known for many roles in his lifetime, including business developer, oilman, and philanthropist, Jones was first and foremost a journalist. He’d been an editor for Cosmopolitan (yes, that Cosmopolitan) shortly after the turn of the century, then worked as a writer and editor for Collier’s Weekly for eight years. In 1911, Jones yearned to operate his own paper, so he bought the Wisconsin State Journal, becoming the editor and publisher. He edited the paper from Madison, the state’s capital, for the next eight years. In 1919, Jones sold the Journal and became the new owner of the Tulsa Democrat.

  Along with a new owner came yet another change: Jones named his new venture the Tulsa Tribune-Democrat. He wanted his paper to reflect the spirit of elected tribunes from early Rome, writing: “Like the tribunes of old, the Tulsa Tribune-Democrat seeks to be watchful day and night of the political rights and liberties of the people, irrespective of party, race or religion.” The first issue was published on December 6, in which Jones wrote an impassioned editorial that clearly laid out the paper’s objective: “The function of a newspaper is to SERVE THE PEOPLE. The function of a pamphlet is to serve a party or a propaganda. The Tulsa Tribune-Democrat is a newspaper and not a pamphlet.” The signed editorial went on to say that while the paper hoped to retain its Democratic readers, “we want to make a newspaper so just and fair and truthful that Republicans will likewise choose to read it. . . . We never want to be so blindly partisan, so oblivious to our own party’s deficiencies . . . so encumbered with prejudice that we fail to tell the truth in our news.”

  Less than a month later, the word Democrat was gone, and the paper was simply called the Tulsa Tribune. The Tribune reported on everything from voter fraud to business scams; Jones even published stories about purported plans to abduct him. And though he had promised to serve the people, to be “fair and truthful” in the Tribune, he was no stranger to being called out for his loose relationship with facts. Back when he was editing and publishing the Wisconsin State Journal, the nearby Madison Democrat accused Jones of employing yellow journalism to attract more readers.

  The front page of the Tulsa Tribune on June 2, 1921, the day after the massacre

  The Tulsa Star, the city’s first Black-owned newspaper, was founded as a weekly in 1912 by A. J. Smitherman. Originally published as the Muskogee Star, the paper’s Democratic views contrasted deeply with the primarily Republican mindset among the Black community at the time. The paper shifted to a more frequent publishing schedule in 1913 when the headquarters were moved to Tulsa, and the name was subsequently changed to the Tulsa Daily Star.

  Though the paper deviated from traditional Black American political views, it focused wholeheartedly on issues that affected the Black community. The Tulsa Star was a place for Black Tulsans to see themselves. It ran announcements for graduations, weddings, and anniversaries, along with obituaries, and differentiated itself from white newspapers by actually printing photos of Black Tulsa residents.

  Smitherman would become an important figure in the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre, but his own story started in December 1883, when he was born in Alabama. The next decade, the Smitherman family moved to Indian Territory, where A.J. (short for Andrew Jackson) was raised. After attending prestigious universities in Kansas and Illinois, and earning a law degree in Philadelphia, Smitherman married a woman named Ollie. They had five children together.

  The conservative stance of the Tulsa Star was undoubtedly informed by Smitherman’s personal views. He believed in the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, meaning he didn’t think Black people should accept help from anyone else in the pursuit to not only survive but thrive. He aligned himself with the Democratic Party because he didn’t believe Republicans were doing enough to help the Black community.

  Once back in Oklahoma, Smitherman used his law degree to fight injustice for citizens of the Native Nations, as well as Africans who were formerly enslaved by citizens of the Native Nations, whose land was in danger of being taken by white settlers due to thin land-ownership laws and racist guardianship regulations. Smitherman was also focused on enfranchising Black people; he set up a precinct for Black voters, where he was also appointed the inspector of elections at a time when Black Americans were often threatened, intimidated, or even killed for trying to vote in the South.

  Smitherman took his first newspaper job in 1908, when he began working for the Muskogee Cimiter. He gained enough experience after three years to start his own paper, the Muskogee Star, which was also focused on Black progress. He was a member of the Western Negro Press Association (later called the Associated Negro Press), and eventually served as president of the organization for nearly a dozen years. In 1917, Smitherman investigated a story about a white mob that burned the homes of about twenty Black families in Dewey, Oklahoma. He submitted his report to the governor and also published his findings in the Tulsa Star; both of these actions were responsible for the arrest of thirty-six white people involved in the mob—including the mayor of Dewey.

  A year later, Smitherman interfered in two attempted lynchings in the state, in one instance getting arrested during his effort to save the life of a young Black boy. Smitherman believed that Black people should arm themselves when necessary to protect their community, and he wasn’t afraid to say so, whether in person, in a letter, or in his own publication. In fact, in September 1920, shortly after Claude Chandler was lynched under false murder charges in Oklahoma City, Smitherman wrote: “While the boy was in jail, and while there was danger of mob violence, any set of citizens had a legal right—it was their duty—to arm themselves . . . and take a life if need be to uphold the law and protect the prisoner.”

  Richard Lloyd Jones may have had every intention of changing his journalistic style by the time he took over
the Tribune, but he certainly broke his own oath to be “fair and truthful” in 1921. No sole entity or person is responsible for the Tulsa Race Massacre; blame can be laid in many directions, and it is shared by many people, laws, and customs of the time. But the Tulsa Tribune is in large part to blame for its inflammatory and premature headline that reportedly ran the afternoon before the massacre:

  TO LYNCH NEGRO TONIGHT

  Historian Scott Ellsworth wrote: “The Tribune, through its May 31 issue, was the single most important force in the creation of the lynch mob outside of the courthouse; anything Dick Rowland might have done was secondary.”

  While several people reported seeing this incendiary headline and the editorial beneath it, to this day no complete copy of the May 31 Tulsa Tribune has been found. Archived versions on microfilm show a missing space where it likely would have run, and historians surmise that this was where the editorial was set. But if a copy containing the full editorial exists, no one has come forward to offer it up.

  The May 31 article about Dick Rowland with the headline “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator,” on the other hand, has survived. The five-paragraph, front-page story used the word assault, which may seem ambiguous now but at the time was synonymous with “rape.” And nonconsensual relationships were always assumed when a Black man and a white woman were associated. As such, the Tribune’s competitor the Tulsa World blamed the afternoon paper for instigating violence with the article. The World interviewed Tulsa Police Department chief of detectives J. W. Patton, who said the Tribune’s “colored and untrue account . . . incited such a racial spirit upon the part of the whites, and under the impression there would be a lynching the armed blacks invaded the business district. If the facts as told the police had only been printed I do not think there would have been any riot whatever.”

  (To be clear, the Tulsa World, while somewhat sympathetic toward Black Tulsans at the time, had its own questionable perspective on race relations when the massacre occurred. Although it printed “the only bylined story about the massacre and its aftermath to appear in either Tulsa daily newspaper” on June 2, in which its reporter Faith Hieronymus interviewed Black people after the events of June 1, the World published an editorial two days later with the headline “Bad Niggers.” The intent was to persuade the “innocent, hard-working colored element” in Greenwood to keep the people who “boast of being ‘bad niggers’” in check. And Hieronymus’s story featured a subhead that read “Black, but Human.”)

  Walter White, an anti-lynching activist and NAACP leader, also blamed the Tribune’s front-page article for inciting the Tulsa Race Massacre. “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 percent Americans set forth on a wild rampage,” he wrote. (The “100 percent Americans” description is a reference to terminology used by the Ku Klux Klan, which had reemerged in recent years.)

  Whether the “To Lynch Negro Tonight” editorial ever existed is still up for debate by some historians. Skeptics believe that, if it had run as witnesses claimed, the Tulsa World or Oklahoma City’s Black Dispatch, run by Black activist Roscoe Dunjee, would likely have mentioned it. Both covered the massacre, and both were openly critical of the Tulsa Tribune in those years. But there is no record of either paper mentioning the infamous editorial. And according to the Tulsa World, a reward was offered for a copy of the editorial back in 1997, and still no one came forward. While it is surprising that a copy of it has never been found, both Black and white Tulsans reported having read it. And as Tulsans and Oklahomans worked hard in the years following the massacre to hide those eighteen hours of racial terror, it would not be surprising if any existing copies had simply been buried for eternity.

  One thing is certain: words matter. With newspapers serving as the primary source of information back in the 1920s, journalists had a great responsibility to report the truth, just as journalists do today. And while many underlying issues led to the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Tulsa Tribune’s reckless, sensational, and factually dubious reporting on May 31, 1921, had a tragic effect on the city it represented.

  A family friend came from a hotel on Greenwood where he worked and knocked on our door. He was so scared he could not sit still, nor lie down. He just paced up and down the floor talking about the “mess” going on downtown and on Greenwood.

  —Ernestine Gibbs,

  Tulsa Race Massacre survivor

  June 1, 1921

  By the time the clock struck midnight on June 1, Black Tulsans were officially in danger. It was late. It was dark. But the violence was just beginning.

  A white-presenting Black Tulsan had attended the meeting where white men were being sworn in as “special deputies” by the Tulsa Police Department and headed back to Greenwood to share the news. He found his roommate, Seymour Williams, and told him that the white mob was going to attack the Black neighborhood from the west. Williams was a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School—and a Black army veteran who had served in France during World War I. He grabbed his army-issue revolver and hurried over to Greenwood Avenue, where residents had begun to gather.

  After explaining what he’d heard, Williams tried to convince his neighbors off Standpipe Hill to come with him to protect the district. But “not a damn one” would join him, so he ended up guarding the area to the west of Greenwood by himself.

  By this time, Black people and white people were firing guns at one another across the Frisco railroad tracks that separated the two communities, a shootout that lasted about an hour and a half. Then, not content with the damage they’d already done downtown, white people set off in their cars toward Greenwood, randomly shooting into the homes of Black Tulsans. They began breaking into houses, murdering people at close range.

  At 10:14 p.m., Major Byron Kirkpatrick of the Tulsa National Guard had called Adjutant General Charles F. Barrett of the state National Guard in Oklahoma City to tell him things were getting bad, but he didn’t receive word that they were sending anyone. Now, just past 12:30 a.m., Major Kirkpatrick called Oklahoma City again to report things were not improving and perhaps would get even worse if they did not send help immediately. Governor J. B. A. Robertson told him to draw up a request for help signed by Police Chief Gustafson, Sheriff McCullough, and District Judge Valjean Biddison, and he would see what he could do. Even as the city was quickly devolving into chaos, proper procedures had to be followed to get the state troops into Tulsa.

  The fires started at around 1:00 a.m. White people knew how valuable the homes, businesses, schools, churches, and other property were to the Black community, which had worked so hard to build up Greenwood over the years after being shut out of white neighborhoods in Oklahoma and many other states before settling there. So white people began setting fire to Black homes and businesses along Archer Street, torching building after building. Before the sun would come up, the mob would set fire to more than twenty-four Black businesses, including the Midway Hotel.

  On the other side of the train tracks, the local National Guard was gathered at the armory on Sixth Street, where just hours before, the white mob had tried to steal weapons and ammunition. However, the Tulsa National Guard, though tasked with protecting all residents, was not impartial. Many members of the all-white unit also believed the trouble had started due to a “Negro uprising,” and almost immediately, they began patrolling the Greenwood District, rounding up Black people and turning them over to the police, even as the Black community was clearly under attack.

  Some Black Tulsans had fled town hours before, terrified of the violence that had already overtaken the city. Irene Scofield told the Black Dispatch newspaper: “Early in the evening when there was first talk of trouble, I and about forty others started out of the town and walked to a little town about fifteen miles away.” Unfortunately, Billy Hudson, who had gathered his grandchildre
n and was setting out in their horse-drawn wagon for Nowata, a town about forty miles northeast of Tulsa, never made it. He, like many others, was killed by white people before their journey could begin.

  Major Kirkpatrick had been working to get the signatures for authorization to send the state troops, but the task was proving difficult among all the turmoil—especially when it came to Sheriff McCullough, who was still protecting Dick Rowland at the courthouse. But, finally, he obtained all the signatures, and at 1:46 a.m., sent the following telegram via Western Union:

  Race riot developed here. Several killed. Unable handle situation.

  Request that National Guard forces be sent by special train.

  Situation serious.

  When the gunfire at the railroad tracks stopped around 2:00 a.m., some people in the Black community, including Tulsa Star editor A. J. Smitherman, mistakenly assumed the fight was over, that they had prevailed. Unfortunately, many more hours of destruction and violence awaited them.

  Rumors about the “Negro uprising” had spread to various white communities, including a story that a train full of five hundred armed Black people from Muskogee, Oklahoma, about fifty miles northwest of Tulsa, was headed into the Midland Valley Railway station off Third Street. At about 2:30 a.m., a group of white men with guns, plus a member of the National Guard, hurried over to the station, only to find that the train, of course, didn’t exist. But the rumors persisted. One began to spread that a white woman had been killed by Black men shooting into white houses on Sunset Hill, north of Standpipe Hill. The National Guard believed this, too, and, taking a machine gun with them, deployed down Sunset Hill, which overlooked the Greenwood District. They eventually moved to Detroit Avenue between Brady Street and Standpipe Hill, establishing a “skirmish line” that directly faced the Black neighborhood.