An American Mass Grave

I don't generally watch television; haven't for years and years. On my last trip to DC, however, I stayed with some friends who do watch TV on a daily basis. They were watching a show called Watchmen, which I recognized from having encountered the comic book as a teenager. I couldn't remember the first thing about the plot of the story or the characters. As a consequence, the show was almost as fresh to me as if I'd never heard of it at all. (On balance I rather enjoyed the first few episodes, which was all I saw. I liked the habit of never explaining anything, but leaving it to the viewer to figure out what on earth is going on with a setting that is so similar to our own, yet so substantially different. It was intellectually engaging.)

The show begins with a dramatization of a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Archæologists have just uncovered a mass grave associated with that riot.

The story is worth reading both because we have a duty to know and remember things like this from American history, and also as a warning about our own political moment. Racial tensions are not as high as in 1919, thank goodness, but other tensions are getting there.

“They had created the most successful Black-owned business district in the country,” Brown tells TIME. “Booker T. Washington, when he visited initially referred to it as the ‘Negro Wall Street of America,’ and it later took on the moniker ‘Black Wall Street.'”

There were several hundred businesses in Greenwood — hotels, restaurants, beauty parlors, “everything you can think of,” Brown adds. “There was a sense of self-sufficiency.”

But Greenwood wasn’t immune to the racial violence that plagued much of the era. More than two dozen race riots had broken out throughout the country In 1919 — which meant mobs of white people attacking black neighborhoods, according to Ellsworth. Oklahoma was starting to see a rise in membership to the KKK.

Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old black shoe shiner, used an elevator to go up to a segregated bathroom on May 30, 1921. In the elevator was Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white woman and elevator operator. Whether or not the two knew each other is uncertain, but it is believed that Rowland tripped entering the elevator and caught himself on Page’s arm, and she let out a scream. An onlooker who heard the scream summoned the police, believing Page had been the victim of an attempted sexual assault. No record exists that Page said anything about a sexual assault to the police, according to Ellsworth’s report, but Rowland was arrested the next day.

An angry crowd of white people began to gather in front of the court house holding Rowland, calling for him to be turned over to them. The sheriff set up a row of armed guards to protect the building. Then a group of about 25 armed black veterans of World War I showed up, ready to protect Rowland. The mob of white people had grown to an estimated thousand by that evening. Some attempted to break into a local armory for weapons.

Tensions increased through the night and the white mob continued to grow. At about 10 p.m. a group of armed black men made their way to the court house, offering help to authorities. Then one white man approached a black World War I veteran and tried to take away his gun. When the gun went off, the race riot began.