Reparations For Tulsa Riots Ignore History
By Bob Small
A friend of mine in poetry, Lamont B. Steptoe, first told me about the 1921 Tulsa Race “Massacre”, This hadn’t been taught in any history course I had taken, including Black History.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols says “There is not one Tulsan, no matter their skin color, who wouldn’t be better off today had the massacre not happened…or if generations before us would have done the hard work to restore what was lost.”
This plan was announced on June 1. It’s called Road to Repair to be managed by the Greenwood Trust without requiring City Council approval.
Evanston, Ill., was the first US city to offer reparations.
The Justice Department says there are ‘credible reports’ that law enforcement members participated in the Tulsa arson and murders.
But the first article written about this in 1971, Never A Massacre In Tulsa & Not Hidden paints a different, but still terrible, picture of what had happened 50 years before There were a number of failures of the municipal authorities to take control of the situation, perhaps unsurprising in a city where the Ku Klux Klan had a headquarters.
There were close to a thousand of both races either injured or killed and “thirty-five city blocks were completely looted and burned to the ground.” The Negro community was denied compensation, due to the rioting or civil insurrection clause in their insurance policies.
A white woman had claimed rape by Dick Rowland. A white mob was gathering to raid the county jail and lynch Rowland.
This is the point, if not before, that the authorities needed to take strong direct action. They did not.
The subsequent grand jury led to “the impeachment and conviction of chief of police John A. Gustafson who was suspended and later convicted in a district court trial” “for failure to take proper precautions for the protection of life and property during the rioting . . . and conspiracy to free automobile thieves and collect rewards.”
My idea for reparations is the inclusion of the 1921 Tulsa events, the 1985 MOVE Events, and the toll that reconstruction meted out to the South in all our future Histories.
See also Black Wall Street’ Before, During and After
