For more than a century, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 has been a source of debate and dismissal. On Jan. 10, the Department of Justice issued a report that may clarify some of the questions about what many historians consider one of the worst crimes in the nation’s history.
When the incident happened, over a century ago, the state of Oklahoma and the government conducted only a cursory investigation, but this new report — an outgrowth of research on the Emmett Till cold case — offers an account detailing the systematic assault on Black residents and the total destruction of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” district.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department (DOJ) Civil Rights Division. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps. Until this day, the Justice Department (had) not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past.”
The DOJ notes that the massacre was “systematic and coordinated,” like a military attack on the Greenwood community. We have yet to read the full report and whether it confirms some of the earlier reports from Tulsa newspapers and research about the number of African Americans killed and what stipulated the riot. According to these early accounts, some 300 Black residents were killed.
It all began because of an erroneous report of a Black man attacking a white woman on an elevator.
Among the victims was Dr. A.C. Jackson, a leading Black surgeon. According to the report, Jackson walked out of his home with his hands in the air, “surrendering to armed white men.” A white landowner pleaded with the men not to hurt Jackson, “but a young white man … nonetheless shot Dr. Jackson, who later died from his wounds. The shooter and his companions then looted Dr. Jackson’s house.”
Only the most thoroughgoing account of the massacre mentions the heroic stance of “Peg Leg Taylor,” who single-handedly fought off a dozen white attackers. There was also J.B. Stradford, a hotel owner who held off intruders from the second story. He surrendered only when the men promised not to burn his hotel “a promise they did not keep.”
Agent T.F. Weiss of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation (a forerunner of the FB) submitted an early account of the massacre. To his credit, and in contrast to the attitude he displayed in his report toward those responsible for destroying Greenwood, he insisted on being kept informed of “any radical organization … among the Negroes, including the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) that were rumored to be planning an attack in revenge for the massacre …” An article from the “Tulsa Post” charged the ABB with “fomenting and directing” the riot, something that a spokesperson for the ABB could neither confirm nor deny.
A member of the ABB told this reporter that there were instances of ABB members coming to the rescue of Black citizens under attack by a white mob.
No matter how horrific the massacre was, there were no federal hate crime laws then. “Federal prosecutors did not pursue charges in 1921 under the narrowly constructed civil rights statutes that then existed,” the report concluded. “It may be that federal prosecutors considered filing charges and, after consideration, did not do so for reasons that would be understandable if we had a record of the decision. If the Department did not seriously consider such charges, then its failure to do so is disappointing, particularly in light of the local grand jury exonerating most white participants in the massacre, despite evidence that they had committed crimes. Because the statute of limitations on all federal offenses has expired and because of the death of perpetrators and the limitations imposed by the Confrontation Clause, federal prosecution is not possible in this instance.”
While reparations were mentioned, “[t]he main goal of the Reconstruction Committee seemed to be to appropriate the land for industrial purposes and to move Greenwood further away from the white community. The Reconstruction Committee raised no significant funds and provided no reparations.” That continues to be the situation today; the report said nothing about recent efforts to obtain reparations for the living relatives of the victims and their property.
The report provides a decisive step toward closure, but so much remains inconclusive: the number of Black fatalities, the role of the police and presence of the Ku Klux Klan, and if Greenwood was bombed by planes. Little evidence is now available to suggest that these questions will ever be answered.