Black Wall Street- the book

...airplanes swooped down from the northern sky, peppering homes and businesses with nitroglycerin, setting them quickly alight. Others claim the airpalanes droppd incendiary kerosene bombs.

Am I writing about Kosovo 1999? Vietnam 1972? No, I am telling you of the race riots in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921. These kerosene bombs were dropped on the black side of town. On people who had no means of protecting themselves nor their families from the looters, executioners, mobs ranging in the thousands. To understand this "Black Wall Street" and the race riot...which was more like a race attack on blacks the suggested reading is Black Wall Street by Hannibal B. Johnson. Greenwood, before and during the 1920s was a flourishing black business and residential district. There were millionairs, entrepreneurs and hard workers. Actually, they did not have any choice. They were forced to start their own resturants, they could not eat in the resturants in other white towns. They were forced to build their own schools. The structures are quite impressive, too. They were not one room shacks but buildings of brick and mortar. Unable to worship where they chose they worshipped in their own facilities. It was quite fashionable for the men to have a gold coin attached to their watch chain. One shoe shine man had three. In these same times, whites were known to hang a man if a black man dare glance in the general direction of a white woman. A black man, Dick Rowland was on an elevator with a white woman elevator operator. When the elevator lunged Rowland fell in the direction of the attendant. Need there be anymore written? From out of this a race riot (attack) ensued. This is the result... "After they had the homes vacated one bunch of whites would come in a and loot. Even women with shopping bags would come in, open drawers, take every kind of finery from clothing to silverware and jewelry. Men were carrying out the furniture, cursing as they did so, saying, "These {d***) Negroes have better things than lots of white people." This account from an African American woman who had lost her home.

The frenzy started around one o'clock and by 6am that morning the black section had been raped..and so had its people. A car dragging the corpse of an African American man paraded proudly through town for all the world to see. Tulsans reported seeing trucks loaded with corpses in downtown Tulsa and in some white neighborhoods. An elderly couple saying their bedtime prayers were interupted by an invading mob. After executing them they continued going through their home, then to set it ablaze.

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