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The Tulsa 'Race Riots' · Stuff You Should Know

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