The Tulsa Riot: Hoisted from the Archives

Hoisted from the Archives: 1921���six years after the Ku Klux Klan revival sparked by "Birth of a Nation"���the early 20th Century's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in reverse: 39 officially dead, 800 wounded, more than 35 blocks destroyed, more than 10000 people left homeless: Erik Loomis (2016): Tulsa: "The Tulsa Race Riot is one of the most shameful events in all of American history and as we know, that���s a high bar to meet...

...That event took place 95 years ago today. Amazingly, an account of this event written by the father of the legendary African-American historian John Hope Franklin, who was a leading black lawyer in Tulsa at the time, was recently discovered.

���I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building. Down East Archer, I saw the old Mid-Way hotel on fire, burning from its top, and then another and another and another building began to burn from their top,��� wrote Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960).

The Oklahoma lawyer, father of famed African-American historian John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), was describing the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving black neighborhood known as Greenwood in the booming oil town. ���Lurid flames roared and belched and licked their forked tongues into the air. Smoke ascended the sky in thick, black volumes and amid it all, the planes���now a dozen or more in number���still hummed and darted here and there with the agility of natural birds of the air.���

Franklin writes that he left his law office, locked the door, and descended to the foot of the steps.

���The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught from the top,��� he continues. ���I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape. ���Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?��� I asked myself. ���Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?������

The Tulsa Race Riot needs to be a much more central event to our national history. A national park site would be a good place to start, but given that the city of Tulsa is pretty much unwilling to deal with this event, that���s unlikely to happen soon. The discovery of this manuscript may help.

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