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Selects: The Tulsa 'Race Riots' · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham for this week's select I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our January twenty twenty episode on the Tulsa massacre.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's such a vile event that it left us stain
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: that spread out of Tulsa and even out of Oklahoma
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to become a blemish on the history of the entire US.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And it's a lesson and how important it is to
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: talk about the past, even the worst of the past,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: to move forward to heal. It's also a lesson on
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: how you just can't bury the past no matter how
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: hard you try. I hope you get a lot out
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of this episode.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, there's Jerry over here.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We have all come together in the year twenty twenty
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: to wear a silver jumpsuits as always I know, right,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and talk about a buried, overlooked blemish in the history
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of the United States.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Are we not going to recount no anything about this
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: past year, no talk about this being the first recording
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: of the new year. Nope, all right, we've had a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: break here I'm going to push forward. We've been off
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks, which was pretty glorious to
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: not have to just over text my brain. But it
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: was also nice to get back in here into the
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: stank of this room.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: This room, I don't think this room stinks.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Well right now.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: It smells like you're caramel vanilla Freppa lape.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: This is just black coffee. This happens to be flavor blake.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: It's really I mean, it smells great.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It's I think a green mountain or something. Caramel vanilla coffee.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Pod man. It is super fragrant. Yeah, it's nice in
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: a great way. It makes me. It smells like an
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: ice cream Sunday.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: It's pleasant.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It is very.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Pleasant, but it's not doing the job. Like I'm still
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a little tired, a little groggy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: You know, I had a four shot latte earlier. Oh yeah,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: and so I'm kind of gotcha.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's what I mean.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I'm zippy and go downstairs to I know you don't
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: like to pay for coffee, but yeah, go downstairs to
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Spiller Park.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Okay, Hugh Atchison's place.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: A four shot latte?
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, that that has me going.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I give it about a half hour before Chuck
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: crashes everybody.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, seriously, anyway, I'm glad to be back.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you're back to You know, we've been
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: here the whole time. This is where you spent Christmas
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and New Year's Yes, both in this room and Thanksgiving.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: And I guess you, me and Momo slept over there
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: in the corner.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: They come to visit sometimes they say, please, please come on,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: please stop working. I say, I can't.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: They slide the food tray through the slot.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: You know where I got this idea, And I know
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: you haven't watched it, but the Watchmen.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I came across mentioned of that. I was like, why
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: is everybody talking about the Watchmen with the Tulsa race riot?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Or more appropriately, why is everyone all of a sudden
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: talking about the Tulsa massacre?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the Watchmen really put it on the map
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: in a big way.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's great.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Utilize it quite well in the storyline, and I have
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a recommendation for everyone, even though it is a marketing piece.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: There's a thing in the Atlantic called the Massacre of
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Black Wall Street, paid for by HBO, but it tells
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: the story in a comic book.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Form in the Atlantic. H Oh cool, very cool.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: And I didn't notice it was a marketing piece until afterward.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: But well, it's still.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Good sure, as long as the content's good.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool and very well done.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: So this is like, it's great that the Watchmen has
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: brought attention to this, yeah, because it wasn't until about
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one, maybe the late nineties, really that
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: people started talking about this.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And this event that we're going to talk about happened
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, and almost the week after, basically
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the week after, everyone said, don't talk about this, Yeah,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: just forget it ever happened. We're's moving forward and we're
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: going to bury the past, literally buried people, the evidence,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. It was buried, and people just acted
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: like nothing happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma for like eighty years.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And when you hear what we're about to talk about,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it's astounding that the community, both black and white, agreed
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to just basically pretend this never happened, at least publicly
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: or civically.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's hard to find some information still on
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: some of the key events and definitely some of the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: key players.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of them died of old age without
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: ever having been interviewed.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no follow ups, Like, I mean, we'll get to it,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: but a couple of the most key players.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: It's like, this is kind of all we know, right.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I looked them up too, and it's like, what do
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: you mean you have no idea? Yeah, even who this
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: guy was let alone? You know, what became of him?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Or what do you mean? Like just no one kept track.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: But that's how complete and total this cover up was.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: It was a cover up. Yeah, so let's talk about
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: it first. Let's talk about Greenwood, which I was not
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: familiar with. But Greenwood was an affluent i guess almost
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: suburb adjacent to Tulsa, just north of Tulsa. And what
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: was odd about the fact that it was affluent is
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that it was an all black community in you know,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the turn of the last century, and yet it was
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: one of the most affluent communities in the entire United States.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, now it's just part of Tulsa, like a neighborhood.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: But back then just sort of like my neighborhood would
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: have been a suburb of Atlanta in the nineteen twenties,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: even though I'm you know, five miles from downtown.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Right exactly.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: But in nineteen twenty one, it was, like you said,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: super affluent. They had a lot of I think there
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: were ten thousand black residents there. It's called the Black
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Wall Street, like I mentioned, Yeah, and six hundred businesses.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: There were fifteen African American millionaires living in this district.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fifteen black millionaires in nineteen twenty one in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wasn't I mean, like the whole area
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: was very well to do. There was like indoor plumbing,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the public schools there were like top not. Yeah, and
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: in many cases Greenwood had a lot to boast about that.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Like the white areas in Tulsa just over the railroad tracks,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: literally on the other side of the track, Yeah, didn't
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: have like like this is far better off than some
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: parts of white Tulsa.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, including one of the top African American surgeons, if
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: not the top in the country, endorsed by the doctor
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Mayo himself.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: The Mayo brothers.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: This guy's doctor A C. Jackson, and he was one
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: of the people murdered in this massacre.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say there was a spoiler,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: but I guess we've already kind of mentioned there's a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: massacre coming, right, Yeah, so just to take a step
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: back even further, so it's pretty impressive to think of, like,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: this is the Jim Crow era United States. Yes, this
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: is we're talking about. You know, this massacre took place
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, that's you know, fifty years after
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War. In many ways, the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Jim Crow era was just as bad as the Antebellum
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: slavery era. But so the idea to us today looking
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: back at this time of well, there's a black community
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma that was one of the most affluent areas
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: in the country. It's kind of mind boggling. But if
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: you dig even deeper into how it was formed, it
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: almost you developed like a sense of pride in this
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that these these people came together under these conditions and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: not only survived, but like thrived and create a carved
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: out a place for themselves where like being black was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: celebrated and where you could be proud and you took
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: pride in your home, in your children, and your children's
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: education and the healthcare that they were getting, in the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: bus service, and the quality of the theater that you
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: went to. The confection area, the soda fountain, like that's
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: where you went to go like proposed marriage. Like. There
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: was this incredibly developed community. And one of the ways
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that it was that it was able to flourish and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: was able to kind of grow like this is because
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the first thing that Oklahoma did when it became a state.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Remember it was originally a territory for forced relocation of
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Native Americans and their African slaves to this area. When
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it became a state, when white side came in and said, no,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: we want this instead, we're going to take this territory
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: we gave you away and turn into stay. The first
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: piece of legislation they passed was that black people have
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: to stay in their own area. They can't marry outside
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: their race, they can't frequent white owned businesses, they have
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: to stay over here. And so the people of Greenwood said,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: fine with us. We're going to pass a covenant that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: says you have to be a black person to own
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: land here, or to even rent a place here, to
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: own a business here. It's a covenant restricted community, and
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: we're going to take a tremendous amount of pride and
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: in circulating our currency, our hard earned money that we're
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: making by working for these white businesses that we're not
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: allowed to patronize. We're going to go make our own
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: businesses over here, and we're going to support them with
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: our community, not only because we can't spend our money elsewhere,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: but because we have a lot of pride in the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: businesses that we've built over here. And so in this way,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Greenwood flourished because of and in spite of these Jim
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Crow era laws that black people had to deal with
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma at the time.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was Dave Ruz helped put us to
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: put this together, and some of the research he got
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: was from the book The Burning Colon, Massacre, Destruction and
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the Tulsa Race Ride of nineteen twenty one by Tim
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Madigan and various Stuteley points out that this was this
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: happened in Oklahoma, of course, but this kind of thing
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: was happening all over the country, not just in the
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: South or the whatever you call Oklahoma.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I guess it's the West Midwest, Yeah, but not Midwest.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you just call it Oklahoma.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: It's interesting some people there identify with the South, but
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: if you're from Georgia, Oklahoma it's not the South might
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: as well be you know, Montana.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I think of Oklahoma as like Native America. Yeah, and
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: then what it says on the license.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Plate, maybe it says middle of the country with a
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: with a little apostrophe.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And there's a picture of the Mountain DO logo on.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: But this was happening everywhere. There were In nineteen nineteen,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: there were two dozen.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Race riots in places like Chicago, Washington, d C.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Saint Louis.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: In between the end of the Civil War and World
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: War Two, there were more than four thousand lynchings in
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the United States, right, which is, you know, it's important
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: to point that out because what and we'll get into
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: the story here, but a lynching is what was the
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: aim of the white people of Oklahoma on this night.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Right, But I have seen also one of the reasons
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I went to so much lengths to explain Greenwood, Yeah,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: in part was to because to show what was lost here,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: but also to show there are a lot of people
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: who consider this massacre to have been carried out or
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: fueled in part by envy, right, because the people of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Greenmaw were so much better off in some instances than
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the white people who were carrying out this massacre.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: All right, maybe we should take a break, No, and
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: then we'll come back. Man, we got to start twenty
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: twenty with an argument over a break.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: All right, let's take a break.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: We'll come back and talk a little bit about the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: beginnings of what would end up being the Tulsa massacre.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: All right, So we should talk about the key player here,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: or players, And in this case it is Diamond.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Dick Rowland, one of the greatest names I've ever heard
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: in my life.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: It's pretty good.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: He was a shoeshine boy in Tulsa, and by all accounts,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: he was smart. He was a handsome young guy, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: he was sort of a man about town.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: He was popular with the.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Ladies, had the world on a string.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: And there was a girl named Sarah Page who ran
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: an elevator at the Drexel Building, a building that I
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: have walked past with my own two feet Oh wow.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Right, And she was white.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: She was white, and you know, Dick thought she was cute,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and he would go down there and basically kind of
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: make up excuses to ride her elevator.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, I saw something different than that, Oh yeah, I
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: saw that he was on the elevator because he was
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: he could use the segregated bathroom on the top floor
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: of the Drexel building only, so he had to ride
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: up the elevator up and down, okay, to get to
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the bathroom, the closest bathroom for him to be able
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: to use. That's what I saw.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: So you're saying he didn't fancy Sarah Paget, Oh No,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: But I also saw a different explanation for why he
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: would have been on the elevator as often as he
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: supposedly was.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: All Right, maybe it was both.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he went to the bathroom a little more
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: often than he had to because they did, think Sarah Pegq.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Who knows. I'm not saying they necessarily contradict each other.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying I've seen other explanations as well. I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: got you that sounded very lowyally for some reason, didn't it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Man, Maybe this is the new YU in twenty twenty
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Matt Locke, Josh Clark Esquire.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a spree.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: That's different than Esquire.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: So at any rate, we should probably also point out that,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: and you know, mixed race couples still get sideways looks
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: in some parts of America today, but certainly in nineteen
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: twenty one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the idea of a black
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: man fancying a white woman.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: He was even looking at a white woman.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was not only untoward, but like a threat
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: worthy of a lynching.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: It was still that time in America where if you
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: made any advances, that was sort of the biggest fear
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: for some white men was black men coming in and
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: takingquote unquote their women.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is character I are popularized thanks to Birth
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: of a Nation, which depicts the clan, you know, coming
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to the aid of white women who were about to
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: be raped by maniacal black men who just could couldn't
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: help themselves. They were just so in love with white
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: women that they just had to rape. That was just
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: what black guys did. That was the view of black
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: guys at the time, right, that that's just how it was.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: So to white people, like you kept an eye out
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: for that, Like when you saw a black man and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: there's a white woman over there, you wanted to make
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: sure that he wasn't going to you know, rapeer. Yeah,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that was the mentality that people were walking around with
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: back then.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that movie was actually partially shot in my old
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: neighborhood in LA.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: You have a lot to do with this episode.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just weird to think about birth of a nation,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: you know, being shot in Los Feeless, which is this
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: very like kind of hip community and on the east
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: side of Hollywood.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: But anyway, on May thirtieth, nineteen twenty one, Dick Roland
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: went into that elevator to either flirt or use the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: restroom or both. And what I saw was that the
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: It was well known that the third floor landing did
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: not land flush with the threshold, and supposedly this is why,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: as the story goes, Dick Roland tripped when he was
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: getting onto the elevator. So maybe if that bathroom was
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: on the third floor, that could make sense.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I heard top floor. I don't know how many floors
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: of the dot I don't remember. Actually, was it more than three?
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't remember. Actually, I just I
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: don't think they'd call a building the something building if
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it only has three floors, you know what I mean,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: You're probably right, that's like an eight plus floor like Moniker.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I think you're probably right. But at any rate, he
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: gets on the elevator. As the story goes, stumbles getting
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: on and kind of falls forward and grabs her arm,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: which was kind of the first thing that he could
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: get a hold of from falling. As the story goes,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: she started beating him over the head with her purse
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: because I guess it's an old Looney Tunes cartoon and
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: she didn't have a rolling pins And the elevator opened.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: On the ground floor, people see this sort of scuffle
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: going on, or what appears to be a scuffle. She
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: allegedly cries out that she had been assaulted, and people
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: on the first floor called the police as Dick flees
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: on foot.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Right takes off.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, no one knows exactly how this
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: all went down.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: No one even knows exactly who Diamond Dick Roland.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Was or Sarah Page. Yeah, for that matter, always are. Yeah,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: all we found out what was that she was an orphan.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: She could have been a young at sixteen. I've seen
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: reports of seventeen and was working to pay her way
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: through business college.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And that's what the Tulsa Tribune reported like the day after.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw that elsewhere, But I also saw
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: like literally nothing else about her.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't find anything.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And then Dick Roland. They think that he might have
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: possibly been named Jimmy Jones, right, I saw that too,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and who was raised by his grandparents whose last name
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was Roland, so he took their name. And there is
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a guy who would have matched his birth date named
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Jones that they found buried in Tulsa, but he
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: died like two months before these events took place, so
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it couldn't have possibly been him.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there were a few years apart too, I think, Right,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: how was it? Yeah, okay, but it's unbelievable that so
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: much of this is lost to history.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, these two people who set off this one of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the most despicable events that it's ever taken place in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: this country's history just vanish almost after this point. It's
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: just you guys played your role. Now everyone else is
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: going to step in.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: So Dick goes home his mom, I guess. He tells
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: his mom what happened, and she obviously was pretty scared
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: right away because she knew probably what this meant. But
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: for that night, at least, nothing really happened. The next day,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: he goes out to meet up with some friends and
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: the Tulsa police pull up and take him in.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Basically on an assault charge.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Right, which is I don't know why they didn't go
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: pick him up at home or whatever, but they I
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: also read somewhere that they had arrested him on the spot.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: But what you're you're recounting matches what I've seen most right, right, Yeah,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: But that's that's history, especially suppressed history.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: One person writes, and then somebody else reports, and then
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: enough people report it, and then that's.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Fact exactly, that's the story.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: But so either way he came into police custody, we
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: know that is the way it is. And then this
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: is like a white sheriff named William Sullivan.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I think, right, William McCullough.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: McCullough I was very close.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And when you're starting to read the story, you
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: hear about this, you know, white mustache sheriff and immediately think,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: oh boy, this guy's in trouble.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Well, this guy had replaced the last guy that it
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: was trouble, right, who had allowed a white mob to
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: take an arrested black man out of his custody and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: lynch him.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Oh it says here it was a white person. Is
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: that not true?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's wrong. Oh, okay, either way, he let
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: somebody be lynched by an angry mob.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which I thought for sure Sheriff McCullough was going
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: to do. But apparently McCullough was intent on kind of
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: going by the book.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: He followed the Hectate school of sheriffing. Do you know
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: what that from to kill a mockingbird?
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Right, right, which was, hey, let's let the law play out,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: let's give him a stay in court. There will be
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: no lynchings on my watch.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Right, So he took Diamond Dick up to a room
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: on an upper floor. The only way to get there
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: was this one staircase, so he basically strategically hit him out,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: went down to this white crowd and said, there's not
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: going to be any lynching today, Like Chuck said, The
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: thing is, we've left out a really important point here.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like why was there a white crowd to begin with? Right? Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: There is a newspaper that was called the Tulsa Tribune
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: that ran an article about Sarah Page being assaulted. This
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: is a news article and the headline for said news
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: article was nab negro for attacking girl and elevator. Not
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: people might nab negro for attacking girl in elevator. Police
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: worried white mob. Might it's nab like go do this? Yes,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that was the headline for the article. The editorial took
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: it even a step further. And this is the day
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: after this event took place.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the editorial was to Lynch Negro tonight.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And I gotta say, whoever's writing these headlines, it's inflammatory,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: of course, but they also don't make much sense.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're of poor construction.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: They're very poor construction. And I went to try and
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: find the microfilm of this, and I think the first
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: one is available, but blurry.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: The second one.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: The only copy of that paper they have is a
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: front page with an article cut out that scanned in
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: and everyone's like, it must have this must have been
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: that editorial, But I literally couldn't find any you know,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: because I was kind of curious to read just how
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: poor of a writer this person was and get you know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: probably what would not have been accurate details.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: No, no, so no, they I mean they basically reported
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: in the first one, in the actual article that her
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: clothes had been torn at. They really characterized it.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Like he attacked her, like a sexual assault, right exactly.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And then the second one is just basically like an
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: all out editorial calling for Dick Rowland's lynching. Yeah, this
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: is in the paper. So the local newspaper has inflamed
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the white citizenry into basically calling them to action, to
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: go do something about this. And they all show up
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: at the courthouse to demand that Sheriff McCullough hand over
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Dick Roland to them so they can go lynch him.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, no, back off, no. But so
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: before but I think he tells him like, no, I'm
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: not I'm not doing that like you said. But before
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the crowd disperses, a second group comes and it's actually
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a group of World War One veterans from Greenwood who
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: had found out that this white mob was going to
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: lynch Dick Roland. And they were like, no, no, they're not.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: We're going to go see to it that doesn't happen.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there were hundreds of w W One veterans,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Black veterans in Greenwood. They were people who fought for
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: this country. And it's sort of that familiar despicable story,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: shed blood on European soil, come back home to America
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: and you're still a second class citizen. They had petition
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: to and this is just sort of a sidebar. The
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: petition to walk in the Memorial Day Parade for many
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: years and were always refused. And May thirtieth was Memorial Day,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: and that that same year they had once again said
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: can we participate in the Memorial Day Parade as veterans?
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: They say, no, we're only going to honor the white veterans.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: No.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I think they wanted to be integrated in the parade
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: with the white veterans, just as World War One veterans
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: marching together. And they said, no, whites only, you can
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: march by yourself. Oh really, And when they did march,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: they were taunted and jeered at, oh gotcha by the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: people who are watching the parade.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: So these are the people that got guns and came
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: down there and said not on our watch.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: We're not going to let this happen.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And it kind of plays out as a film, you know,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: from the sounds of it is like these cars pull
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: in and part the crowd, and these black veterans get
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: out with their guns and they're like, no, you're not
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: taking this kid, this is not going to happen.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: So apparently Sheriff McCullough was able to to convince the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Greenwood World War One veterans who showed up that he
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to hand over dick roll and that he's
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: going to protect a role, and then they should probably
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: just go he's gonna get rid of this white crowd too,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: But don't worry. I'm I'm not like the old sheriff.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And there's about seventy five armed men. Yeah, and I
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: drive it home, like, how many people.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I read that there were? I saw a thousands somewhere
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of white people of white people at the courthouse, like
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: it was just this calling for a lynching.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah it was. They were heavily outmanned.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but seventy five, the seventy five black veterans showed
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: up in the midst of this. Let's even say it's
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: just a thousand, let's even say it's like five hundred
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: people calling for a lynching. Yeah, and you're seventy five
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: black men showing up armed saying like no, it's not happening.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Just pretty courageous stuff, right.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: So before they can leave or as they're leaving, it's
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: actually not clear what this event name gets its name from.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Happens what you would call a race riot.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it looked like It might have been
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: on the way to being a scene that the sheriff
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: managed successfully. They might have been on the way out
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: that white crowd might have dispersed if not for this
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: one incident.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: And even if we did know, you know, just beat
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: by beat, the history of this, you still wouldn't be
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: able to say what would have happened. Yeah, exactly, that
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: is a possible outcome. There was a there was an
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: older white man who demanded that one of these black
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: veterans give him his gun, and the black veterans said, no,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that, and the old white
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: man went to go grab it, and the gun went off,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and both sides just started shooting at one another.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what triggered it. It was chaos. There was
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: a hail of bullets.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: People on both sides just started, you know, dropping dead
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: from the bullets flying, and it became a full on
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: war scene basically for the next couple of days.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, So at that point, the black veterans are like,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: we really should get out of here.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They leave toward Greenwood.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Toward Greenwood, which is their home. They're going back to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: their homes, and along the way, some of them, like
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: kind of drop back and like stake out positions and
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: start sniping at the white rioters who are coming after them.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And at that point they go further back into Greenwood.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: And by this time it's like the early morning hours
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of I believe June first, right.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: I don't think it was the early morning at that point.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: It was like midnight. I mean like midnight one something
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's during the night time.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: And this is when the white people started breaking into
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: the hardware stores and looting businesses to get weapons.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. So that's Sheriff McCullough, who you're
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, okay, as far as this whole
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: story goes, that's not so bad. Like he at least
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: tried now. The moment this race riot happened and the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: black veterans took off back for Greenwood, he started deputizing
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: white rioters, handing out guns and ammunition and basically saying,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: go get them, Go get those guys. Yeah, And rather
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: than saying like this is not your job, this my responsibility.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I'll go home. I'm going to go handle this, he
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: enlisted the help of these people who were involved in
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: this riot on the white side and at that point
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: any semblance of what you would call a race riot
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: ended and what became a revenge massacre just started. So
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: people call this the Tulsa race riot, and I think
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: maybe a tenth of it qualifies as a race riot,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and the rest it just should be called the Tulsa massacre.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So what happens is, like you said, some of
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: these veterans get staked out in strategic positions on rooftops
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: and behind houses, behind cars. The White Army, for lack
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: of a better word, is advancing into Greenwood. They start
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: setting fires at these strategic locations to flesh out these snipers,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: and then they just start burning everything, basically setting fire
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: to every house in every business to burn down Greenwood.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Well, I think also about for about the five or
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: about four or five hours from the time where they
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: managed to flush the snipers out until about five in
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the morning, they were quietly taking up positions inside Greenwood,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and then a whistle blew at about five am and
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: all of them just came out from their positions and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: then they just went berserk. It was a charge, a
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: full on military coordinated assault on Greenwood. And so this
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: assault involved driving people out of their homes at gunpoint
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: any resistance that people were shot on site. There were
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: people who were shot who weren't offering resistance. There was
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a story about an elderly couple who were kneeling in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: their house praying and they were both executed by these
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: white mobsters. Yeah, in their home.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: People were burned alive.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, houses and people doused with kerosene and burned alive.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: There was another story of a blind beggar who was
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: tied to a car and dragged through the streets.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was just bedlam.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And Watchmen actually gets pretty graphic in how they depict this,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: even though it's an alternate history show, just like the
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: movie in the graphic novel where they I think they
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: did pretty decent justice. They didn't follow the origin story
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: of how it started, but it just placed heavily into
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: the plotline, right, Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, should we take another break? Sure? All right, let's
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: take another break and we'll tell you what happened from here.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we actually took a commercial break in the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: midst of a massacre. So the the thing is like
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: people are being driven out of their houses and shot
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: in some cases, but more often than not, they're being
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: like just flushed out. But no house, no building, no business,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: no nothing was spared. They're in the intent of these
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: these white terrorists. There's really no other name for him.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Was to burn down Greenwood.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we kept at bay.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They said, do not come in here, like the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: rioters will kill you. Yeah, do you just stay away.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: They burned Greenwood to the ground. Thirty five blocks, thirty
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: five blocks. Do you know how many blocks that is?
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of blocks.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Think about how many blocks is thirty five blocks, and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: then add like ten, because I guarantee your conception is
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: less than actually thirty five blocks. That is a lot
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: of blocks of buildings burned to the ground. People killed
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: in their front yards, including doctor Andrew C. Jackson, the
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: famous surgeon, shot like a dog in his own front
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: yard in the chest. There's a picture of him.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Twelve hundred homes, churches, schools, hospital, library. I think I
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: mentioned there were six hundred businesses total. They were all torched,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: just torch.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: There were six people who owned airplanes. They were that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: wealthy in Greenwood.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Their airplanes were stolen by the rioters and used to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: drop bombs, dynamite, nitroglycerin, fire, and then there was also
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: accusations the National Guard was helping coordinate this too.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the National Guard was called in and when they
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: got there, by all accounts, they did not try to
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: help quell the riot. They more acted as helping to arrest.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Blackma that's just historical facts.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they were bringing in I mean, they were
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: killing people for sure, but they were also arresting black men.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: The women and children fled. I think six thousand people
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: were arrested, and the women and children fled toward the woods,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: basically like leaving behind everything they owned.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Who are homeless. There was ten thousand people who lived
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: in Greenwood at the time, and after this one night,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: this orgy of like violence, there were like nine thousand
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: left homeless and hundreds dead.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently back to the National Guard, they said
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: that they brought in planes just to spot fires and
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: coordinate ground security. But there are reports from people there
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that said that they were actually shooting at people on
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: the ground.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Say that that's a rumor. Yeah, even setting that aside,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the National Guard didn't come in and quell anything. They
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: just started arresting and detaining the victims of this massacre.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: That was the role that they played in this situation.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: So the whole thing culminates with I mean, in the end,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to get the amount of people killed.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: I think the official report says thirty five black people.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: It's certainly way more than that. I've seen all the
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: way up to three hundred.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: That's what I saw, is almost across the boards. Three hundred.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that again might be one of those things that
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: everyone just sort of settled on a number. But it
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: was not thirty five people, to be sure.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not. And so like as the sun comes
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: up the day after I think June first, Green would
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: burn to the ground, there's people hiding in the woods.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands of former affluent residents of this black
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: community homeless, are now homeless. Well, no, they're not homeless
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: because the National Guards very kindly put them into tention
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: centers at the fairgrounds.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: That doesn't qualify as a home right.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: That's my point, yeah, is that it's not a home right.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: They're kept detained at the fair grounds for months. I
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: saw that in some cases most of them had to
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: endure the winter. This happened in May. Yeah, these people
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: were still a lot of them kept in detention camps
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: at the fair grounds through the winter.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Tulsa winters and summers are both tough.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: They were kept in detention camps because white rioters burn
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: their town to the ground.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was in June, so right in the math.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Right, so yeah, it was June. I guess it was
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the end of May. So the way that you got
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: out of these detention centers was your white employer came
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and vouched for you and said, this person works for me.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I need them back. Yeah, please let them go. That's
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: how you got out.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: So in the aftermath, no one was arrested, There were
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: no prosecutions.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: No, no, I'm sorry, Chuck. There was a grand jury
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that was sat convened. They indicated twenty people. All of
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: them were black. Well none, we're white.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I meant on the white side.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: There were in today's dollars between fifty and a hivehundred
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: million dollars worth of damage everywhere I look, said. The
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: only organization that really helped, and they really helped was
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: the American Red Cross, super Brave and did a whole lot.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: And I also saw where you know, it wasn't the
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: entire city of Tulsa, Apparently there were some white communities
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: that reached out in the aftermask, of course, to help
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: with the recovery efforts to take people in. So we
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: don't want to paint the entire town as doing the
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: wrong thing. Apparently some people did step up.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, just nothing is that literally black and white? Yeah,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: you know, like there's always shades of gray in that situation,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: in any situation.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but Greenwood came back. They it's probably not a surprise,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: but the insurance companies had it classified very quickly as
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: a riot instead of just a violent massacre because that
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: means they wouldn't have to compensate people for their homes
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: being businesses being burned to the ground.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Right, because if they were rioting, then they were culpable
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: for the damage. And that insurance company went, yeah, so
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: also despicable. The county commission said, no, we're not accepting
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: any outside donations, will take care of our own, and
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: then didn't didn't follow through on that at all. So
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: there were no funds paid to the Greenwood people.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: And people were trying to right as.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Reparations or to even help them rebuild, and the county commission,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: I guess proposed at one point that they would handle
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: us by buying the land for like a fraction of
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: its market value and then auctioning it off to the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: high spider.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: That was one proposal, an old scam.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: And they also said, well, you know what, just to
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: make sure that this doesn't happen again, we're going to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: establish a new building code for Greenwood. No building can
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: be rebuilt unless it's built with fireproof bricks. And then
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: they went to the fireproof brick producers and said, do
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: not sell any materials to the black people of Greenwood.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: So despite this, they managed to rebuild in about five years. Astoundingly,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the people whose houses in town was burned to the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: ground came back and rebuilt. And from just about everything
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I read, Greenwood was actually better, more prosperous, and more
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: affluent from the second time around. Then it was even
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the first, and it was pretty affluent the first time.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: And Chuck, we said, like hundreds of people were killed, right, yes,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: so get this. Funerals were forbidden, like you weren't allowed
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: to have a funeral. That's how covered up this thing became.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons we will never know how
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: many people were killed is because the people who were
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: killed were taken off and dumped in the river, or
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: stashed in coal mines or buried in mass unmarked graves.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Well, they think they found two of those, like a
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: month ago. Yeah, they were archaeologists in Tulsa and this
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: was from Time magazine from Jasmine Aguilera. They have identified
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: two sites that they thought were that they think now
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: are mass graves. And they've been looking since I think
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one because they knew people, you know,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: there were reports of mass graves, and so archaeologists have
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: been looking. In twenty eighteen, they started like a legit
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: investigation and they think that they have found one, at
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: least one, maybe two of these sites.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: But even which is in a cemetery ironically, yeah.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I saw that. But even this whole thing is like
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: fairly new. It wasn't like until the late nineties that
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: people even started talking about this.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, nineteen ninety seven was when the state of
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma introduced a bill. And this was after just not
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: talking about it. No, in the black community, they would
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: talk about it in stories and whispers. The white community
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: just buried it and the state of Oklahoma just didn't
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: acknowledge it.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The last thing I saw about it was. The
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Tulsa Tribune ran another editorial on like June fourth, a
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: few days after, basically saying.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Like lynching failed, thank you.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: No, they said thank you to the police and all
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the white citizens who cleaned up Tulsa by getting rid
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: of Greenwood. It's actually way worse than what I just depicted,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't possibly bring myself to read it verbatim.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just vile. Yeah, what it says, it's really bad.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: But in ninety seven, this is when they introduced a
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: bill for reparations and creation of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: And that report was released in two thousand and one,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: and it did hold police and public officials to blame,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: but it didn't do anything. Basically, there were no reparations.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: As for Dick Roland, the case was the actual case,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: remember the case of the assault that was dismissed in September.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Apparently Sarah Page didn't want to press forward with charges
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: and she's lost the time. He supposedly immediately moved to
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Kansas City maybe and no one else really knows anything
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: else about him.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Huh. That's just so surprising.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and if not for the watchmen, coming out.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: This might still be a fairly buried story outside of Oklahoma.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, it's really brought a lot of attention to it.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and good for them for doing that. Yeah. So
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I saw about Greenwood itself
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: was that it kept prospering and flourishing for decades after this,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: until about the sixties. And one of the reasons I
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: saw that explained why not just Greenwood, but a lot
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: of black areas started to decline in the sixties was
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a byproduct of integration. Was that you could, as a
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: black person in America, spend your black dollar at a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: white owned business now, right, And like they didn't teach
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: us that in public school, like that, this was a
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: byproduct of it. But as a result, these black owned
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: businesses started to decline more and more and more, and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: so Greenwood wasn't as prosperous as it was before. But
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the death blow, the death blow is that remember in
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: our Interstates episode where in a lot of the poorer areas,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: lot of the areas of color, that that's where they
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: built the highways. I saw that they built I two
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: for four right through Greenwood.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Tulsa is an interesting place I spent a few
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: weeks there a few years ago. Yeah, and it's, uh,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: it's interesting because it's got this old oil money. Yeah, neighborhoods,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: some of the most amazing estates and houses I've ever seen.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: It's got some very poor communities, a lot of meth problems.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting place.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Sounds like it. Yeah, Well that's a Tulsa for you.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: And you know what, I spent a few weeks there
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: in this neighborhood and I didn't know anything about it.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: I didn't Maybe there is a memorial or something, but
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't notice it. I'm not saying there isn't one,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: but I didn't see it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: So, you know, Desmond tou too Sure who helped bring
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: about just the changeover from apartheid to reconciliation.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: I love his work.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: He came, Yeah, a big fan. He came to to
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Tulsa basically said, you guys are sitting on a powder
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: keg here, like when this not very long ago, I
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: think we were in the nineties, maybe even in the
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: two thousands, just basically saying like you can't how could
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you possibly heal when you still have bodies in on
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: mark graves? Like no one's talking about this still. I
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: believe there is a park that they found, like a
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: reconciliation park or something like that, but it sounds like
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: there's still a ways to go. Yeah, I won't it
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: be ironic that it was Watchman that basically is forcing
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: this issue to be discussed.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Be pretty ironic.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the power of comic books right, well, not even TV,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Of graphic novels. Yes, So if you want to know
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: more about the Tulsa massacre also known as the Tulsa
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Race Riot of nineteen twenty one, there's a lot for
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: you to go read, thankfully, and you should just type
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that into your favorite search bar. Since I said that,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Hey guys, this email is mostly for Chuck. I need
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: to get something off my chest and clear some things
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: up about my involvement with your pronunciation of Carrie.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Oh eyes, Elvis, Elvis.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Sometime over the summer, I made a comment in the
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: corrections corner threat a movie crush on the Facebook page
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: where you were pronouncing Carrie l wise l wise, I
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: posted I had read on I read at Ama, his
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: name sounds like Elvis, But what I meant to say
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: was it rhymes with Elvis.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Is that why you said Carrie Elvis?
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, it's because of Eli. He says this.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: When I finally heard my name pop up in the podcast,
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: I was thrilled and couldn't wait to hear your reaction.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Not only did my comment get understandably misunderstood, but I've
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: heard your reference to comment two or three times now
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: and continue to correct yourself, saying Elvis, most recently on
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the Andre the Giant Live episode parenthetical. Josh said it right,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I try to issue another I tried to issue another
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: comment immediately afterward to clear the air, but it was
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: too late. You discontinued corrections corner I did. I was
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: gonna do that on Movie Crush, and it just became
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: like you said this wrong and your inflection and I was.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Like, you said Kubrick was great. He was very great.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: I was a minute, as like movie corrections, but you
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: know how it goes.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: So I just said, no more of this.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: You don't understand how something like this, something as small,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: has been tearing me apart inside every time I hear
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: you reference it. There's one thing worse than giving someone
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: bad information, it's having them proliferate that information out in
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: the world, in this case to millions of well.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Not millions of people, trillions.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I just want to apologize officially for correcting you on
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: something so silly. And any way you want to say
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: the name is fine by me as long as it's
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: what do you say?
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Elvis?
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Ellis?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I think Elvis. Thanks for the decadeh No, Now Eli's
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: got in my.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Head too, Thanks for the decade of great content. I'll
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: see you both in January and Seattle for my third
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: live show. Nice, all the best, Eli.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: It's Eli's third live show birthday.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: And I think it's pronounced el I.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, it could be Ellie could be. Yeah, we're just
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: gonna go with you.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: I think Ellie's c O l I E.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: It could be. I think Ellie Golding is something different
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: than that, isn't it.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know who is that or does.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: She pronounce her name Eli?
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: I don't know who that is.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: You do too, you've heard her pop songs before when
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: you're working out. Okay, if you want to get in
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: touch with this like Eli did to let us know
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: we're saying something wrong because of you, well you can
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: get in touch with this by going on to stuff
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: youshould know dot com, and you can also send us
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: an email send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.