Abigail Walker

5th Hour OK History

The Burning; Massacre, Destruction, & the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

Tim Madigan New York, NY, 2001, 297 pages

The author, Time Madigan, uses the stories of many successful Negros that faced

racism to illustrate how strong the hate towards African-Americans was at that time, such

as Townsend D. Jackson (an ex slave, and a lawyer in the area who had moved there with

his family from Tennessee because of threats from whites) and John Williams (the first

black man in that community to buy a car, and he fixed engines for the whites in their

side of town). Because it was so recent after the Emancipation Proclamation, people in

this time were all either born into slavery themselves, or their parents were before them.

The hatred from the white community was so strong because they had only recently lost

their battle to keep their slaves, and they believed that that was still where the blacks

belonged.

The Greenwood County, right outside of Tulsa, was divided into a white and a

black community. The black community was lively and filled with love, even though

many racist comments, pranks, et cetera happened back then, especially in the south. The

blacks in the community worked on the white side as maids, workers, nannies, gardeners,

etc. On Thursdays, the community would have a sort of celebration on the streets where

everyone would go out and walk in the streets, going into ice cream shops, clothing

stores, and many other businesses to celebrate the day of the week that they had off of

work.

A group called the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK, formed. “The original Klan members

just wanted to amuse themselves with a bit of public mischief…The robed mischief

rapidly became a popular evening diversion for men in neighboring counties, and then
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5th Hour OK History
neighboring southern states…As membership exploded, its members grew quickly bored

with their more innocent pranks…so the robed order turned its attentions toward the

bedevilment of freed Southern Negros.”

In Tulsa, the group was growing larger and larger. “Within just a few years, the

Ku Klux Klan became a terrifying and ruthlessly effective tool for expressing wounded

Southern pride.” The book reads as the attacks on Negros increased and tensions rose

between the communities. “The pranks against blacks became more and more elaborate

and as they did, they were enthusiastically reported by Southern newspapers, which

caused Klan membership to swell even further”. The KKK was very feared, even by

some of the white people in the area who had witnessed the things the Klan had done to

some people. The white mob was taking the lives of numerous colored people for little to

no reason at all.

When a white woman accused a colored man, Dick Rowland, or referred to as

‘Diamond Dick’ in the newspapers, of assaulting her in an elevator, the white community

was furious. Rowland was innocent, and was sent to court. The judge was aware of the

colored mans innocence but still sentenced him to death. The judge had done the same to

a colored man ten years before for killing a white officer, even though he knew the

officer had deserved it.

The white men formed a mob and gathered more people at local bars, clubs,

theatres, and restaurants to plan the attack against the colored community. The elevator

incident had been the ‘last straw’. On June 1, 1921, the white mob attacked the black

community. The riot lasted for 16 hours, over 800 people were sent to a hospital, 26

blacks and 13 white were killed. 10,000 people were left homeless from the 35 blocks
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5th Hour OK History
were destroyed by the many firs started by the white mob during this attack on

Greenwood County.

The people in the community lived in tents on the streets for a long time until,

much later, all the homes were rebuilt. It shows that the white community begins to care

about what they had done. “Negro homeowners sometimes borrowed money from their

white employers, and the white lumber and brick dealers donated materials or sold them

cheap, so by the end of the year, more than six hundred homes in Greenwood also had

been rebuilt. By the spring of 1922, the last of the tents were gone and only remainders of

the burning were the occasional piles of rubble.”

I believe Madigan wrote this book to inform the reader about the severity

of racism in the time period, to explain the events that occurred before, after and during

the riot, and to tell the stories of the many people who lived in the Greenwood

community, and what happened to them in these events.

This book teaches the readers that people haven’t always been treated equally,

even though they should be. When Madigan interviews Otis Clark he says, “and he still

wonders why people could be so mean for no reason at all”. I think this passage describes

well that things like this should never have to happen, but still do, and that’s it’s a part of

human nature that we all have to live through disaster sooner or later.

Although this book was very informative, I didn’t think it was written very well.

It sounded more like a textbook than it should have. It lacked creative writing and

descriptive words. But because I had never even heard of this riot before, reading about

this sad and unfortunately true story was very interesting.