By Amelia Faircloth
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is viewed by many as the single worst incident of racial violence in American history. But despite its severity and the lasting effect it has had on members of Tulsa's Black community, people around the nation have refused to acknowledge the event for decades, author and historian Scott Ellsworth told a UC Santa Barbara audience last week.
At a recent UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center event, author and historian Scott Ellsworth spoke on the Tulsa Race Massacre and the culture of silence that followed it.
"In less than 12 hours, more than 1100 African American homes and businesses were looted and burned to the ground by white mob numbers in the 1000s," Ellsworth said. "But the massacre has been cast into the shadows across most of its existence."
While the Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially reported that 26 Black people and 13 white people were killed in the attack, recent estimates put the number closer to 300 killed and 800 injured. Years after the massacre, the actual number is still unknown due to Tulsa's long effort to cover up the event.
After decades of silence, Ellsworth was one of the first historians to dig into Tulsa's violent past. Author of the groundbreaking book Death in a Promised Land and a leading historian on the massacre, Ellsworth told the audience at a recent Interdisciplinary Humanities Center event that learning about the causes and consequences of the Tulsa Race Massacre are essential in helping Tulsa, and the U.S. as a whole, confront a long history of racial violence.
In the early 1900s, the discovery of oil in Tulsa prompted a period of rapid economic and population growth. In just 20 years, the Oklahoma city went from a dusty town with a population of 100 to a bustling community with 20 skyscrapers and over 100,000 residents, Ellsworth said.
As Tulsa experienced an economic boom, so did the neighboring Black community of Greenwood. Home to 10,000 Black residents, Greenwood was composed primarily of thriving, black-owned businesses.
"There were dozens and dozens and dozens of different kinds of stores," Ellsworth said. "Hardware stores, clothing stores, dressmaking operations, photography studios, dry cleaning stores, hay and feed stores, a gas station, you name it."
The streets of Greenwood, a thriving Black neighborhood in Tulsa, were destroyed by 1000s of white mob members in May of 1921. But despite the event's severity, historian Scott Ellsworth told a UCSB audience that the massacre was covered up for decades.
But as Greenwood was becoming wealthier, the nation was in a particularly dark period in terms of race relations, Ellsworth explained. "The years right around World War I are those of this increasing racist white militancy that is now taking over the country and taking over institutions," he said. "This is a time lynchings are still going on as well. And even though the number of lynchings is starting to decline, the barbarity has increased."
Lynch mobs became how white Tulsa residents dealt with the rising crime rates that accompanied the city's rapid growth. It was this mob mentality that ultimately led to the massacre, Ellsworth said.
In May of 1921, a Black man named Dick Rowland was arrested after he allegedly assaulted a young woman in an elevator. Although the claims were false, information spread by the news media triggered a lynch mob to assemble by the courthouse. Members of the Greenwood community arrived to defend Rowland from a potential lynching, but the gathering quickly turned violent, Ellsworth said.
White mob members gathered in the thousands, with weapons stolen from sporting goods stores and pawnshops, and marched through the streets of Greenwood, systematically destroying the town "building by building, house by house, block by block," Ellsworth said. "You have 35 square blocks that have just been obliterated. There's nothing left but rubble, blackened trees. You'll see photographs of it that look like Hiroshima."
Ellsworth said that more than 10,000 people were left homeless and between 100 and 300 people were killed, according to a 2001 report by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.
After the massacre, Tulsa's white city leaders realized a negative national response to the massacre would make it harder for them to continue growing the city. In response, they began efforts to cover it up, Ellsworth said.
In his recent talk hosted by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Scott Ellsworth explained that confronting America's difficult history can help people better understand the present.
Police officers were sent to photography studios to confiscate and destroy photographic evidence, editorials were cut out of local newspapers, and official National Guard records disappeared. "Word soon becomes: this isn't something we talk about," Ellsworth recounted.
Silence regarding the massacre continued in Tulsa for decades. It wasn't until Ellsworth began his research 45 years ago that the event started to receive attention. Ellsworth worked to gather information from different maps, databases, and interviews to publish his 1982 book Death in a Promised Land , the first book to detail the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
In 1996, the history of the massacre began to gain even more traction. With the help of Don R. Ross, a journalist and eventual Oklahoma State legislator, Ellsworth reached out to different news organizations and got the story picked up by the Today Show, National Public Radio, The New York Times, and other major media outlets.
Though the massacre occurred over 100 years ago, Ellsworth says it is not something that can be left in the past. Instead, looking back at events such as the Tulsa Race Massacre is essential to help us understand the present.
"William Faulkner said, 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.’ And that's the case in Tulsa," Ellsworth said. "The reality is that the massacre is not over."
Ellsworth believes that shying away from the hard parts of America's historical past is counterproductive. Instead, he hopes more people find opportunities to integrate painful historical events such as the massacre into academia.
"If our history means anything, we have to teach it all," Ellsworth said.
Amelia Faircloth is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in English. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.