For many descendants, the past is still present. They explain how the legacy of the massacre, which was suppressed for so long, lives on today
Earlier this month, three known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre testified in Congress about the world when their thriving community burned their thriving community to the ground. "The neighborhood I slept in that night was rich - not only in terms of wealth, but in culture, community and heritage," said Viola Fletcher, who visited the US capital for the first time in 107 years. "Within a few hours, all of that was gone."
After being deliberately suppressed from national memory for nearly a century, in many ways the history of genocide is now more visible than ever - in the media, popular culture, and even in the US Capitol. But this history, and the question of who has the right to tell it, remains controversial. This is also true in Tulsa, where Black Tulson states that official centenary commemorations have obscured its impact on their community and failed to meaningfully include survivors and descendants of victims.
We wanted to hear directly from the descendants about how the genocide affected their families in 1921 and to this day. Many topics emerge from the responses we receive. There is a culture of silence that has long surrounded the genocide. Most readers who responded told us that they had not heard of it until their adult years. Another thing is that there is a sense of pride in their relationship with such a historical destination of black prosperity. And yet there is another profound loss, on the killed and displaced relatives, the community wiped out and the wealth wiped out - money that could have changed the course of entire generations.
'I didn't hear about the massacre until I recovered in my adult years'
My grandparents, an aunt and an uncle survived the massacre. My grandparents were the owners of the land as well as the owners of the business. I had not heard of the breed massacre until I recovered in my adult years, probably in my 40s.
My grandmother, Daisy Scott, was a political cartoonist for the Tulsa Star. He made cartoons depicting the racial injustice of the time, and the funny thing is that his pictures are still right with the injustice being done to black people today. My grandfather, Jack Scott, was a professional boxer and was one of the men who went to the courtroom to defend Dick Rowland. Very brave man!
This massacre affected our family in terms of generational property. My grandparents owned the land at Greenwood Place that the city of Tulsa took to build the University of Oklahoma. That land could have remained in the name of our family and we could have benefited from it. The land never degrades and this would give our family members an ongoing start. - Barbara Barros, 65, writer and retired teacher
'Before 1917 the J.B. Stradford Empire was worth in the millions. But my great-grandfather was not able to recreate what was lost. '
I am the great-granddaughter and great-granddaughter of JB Stradford and her father, Julius Caesar, who was born into slavery. He was not given a last name during his slavery and adopted the surname Stradford.
Julius gave his education and moral values to his son. As a result, J.B. Stradford emphasized education, earned a law degree from Indiana University, and became an advocate for himself and others.
In 1881, J.B. enrolled at the Oberlin School in Ohio, where he met his wife, Bertie Willey. After the start, they moved to Kentucky. He became the principal of a college and the owner of a barber shop. After watching lynchings in Kentucky, Indiana was his next stop. JB opened another barber shop and became a bicycle retailer. After hearing about the business opportunities and growing black cities in Oklahoma, he decided to move there in 1905. Bertie died unexpectedly shortly before the move.
JB arrived in Tulsa on 9 March 1905, and eight months later, oil drills hit a primary gusher not far from Tulsa. Tulsa became a boomtown and the Black Labor Force was plentiful and well in demand.
Five years after coming to Tulsa, he met and married his second wife, Augusta L., in 1910. His independent projects included the Stradford Hotel, his Crown Jewel, 301 N. Greenwood as well as considerable other rental property, land lots and a. apartment building. It was estimated that before 1917 the JB Stradford Empire was valued at over $ 3m dollars.
Twenty-three years after the resettlement of JB in Oklahoma, the Tulsa race riots changed the landscape of Black Wall Street, Tulsa, and the many accomplishments of my great-grandfather.
For his part in trying to protect Dick Roland, my great-grandfather was called a riot-monger and was arrested. With few resources, he managed to escape to his brother in Kansas. From there, he joined his son, a lawyer, in Chicago.
In Chicago, my great-grandfather was not able to recreate what was lost in the Black Wall Street Massacre; However, before he died he owned a sweets retailer, barbershop and pool corridor. He died at the age of 74 in 1935 and was saddened by the loss and horrors he witnessed and endured.
JB Stradford's descendants became judges, doctors, professionals, musicians, artists, designers (of which I am one), entrepreneurs and activists. We acknowledge our African heritage and continue the legacy of self-improvement and personal development through determination.
In 1949, 65 years after the Tulsa Caste massacre, JB Stradford was acquitted for all wrongdoing in the Tulsa Caste riots charges against JB Stradford. -Tig Stradford-Dow, 76, fashion designer and teacher
'Loss cannot be calculated'
Some of my distant relatives were both survivors and victims of the Tulsa caste riots. My great-grandfather, Andrew Chasteen Jackson (Dr. AC Jackson), was murdered by white teenage thugs. He was shot in the stomach and shed blood, eventually dying on 2 June 1921. His father, Captain TD Jackson, rode the horse for five days to bury his son in Guthrie. Captain Jackson did not want his son to suffer the ultimate humiliation that most other victims and families experienced; Most of the dead black people were thrown into the Arkansas River. It was said that white citizens threatened death and destruction of black funeral homes if they cremated any black victim.
My other relatives survived the riots. Ha Ges, a prominent Tulsa lawyer and my great-grandfather, hid in his chicken coop, while his wife, Minnie Mae, hid in the family home with their daughters. (His son grabbed his father's gun and ran to the city to join the fight.) His house was to be burned until a white citizen threatened to prosecute him. If things had happened the other way, I would not share this story with you.
The damage caused by the riots cannot be counted. Dr. Jackson was at the pinnacle of greatness. If he had survived, he could have made some successful treatments for infectious diseases. When she was just eight years old, she saved my aunt Wilhelmania from scarlet fever. No one can tell how many lives he could have saved in Tulsa, including the white citizens of Tulsa. As far as my family members are concerned, those who survived were shocked and heartbroken; My aunt could no longer bear to see Dr. Jackson's picture in her house. The rest of my family suffered trauma for the rest of their lives. Nearly 45 years later, Dr. Jackson's widow, Julia A. Jackson, met my family in Washington DC. She was still in shock and broken about Dr. Jackson's death.
My family never talked about the riots. I and my siblings did not get to know about this terrible tragedy until we were adults. Perhaps it was too painful to talk about it. Our children have just come to know about this tragedy and are eager to know more. Right now, my family does not want to leave any stone unturned in our research on the lives of Dr. Jackson and other family members. We are particularly committed to creating a digital footprint of Dr. Jackson's life, trying to understand how he died, rather than how he lived. In his honor, we laid a tombstone at his tomb in Tulsa a few years ago.
There is a line from this disaster to many of the racial conflicts today, from the "berther" dispute to the many deadly conflicts of law enforcement of our youth. None of us remained untouched by Tulsa; None of us will remain untouched by recent events. -John Stuart Adams, 64, federal government employee
'Just look at North Tulsa to see how the massacre affected our community'
I am 61 years old. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a house built by my grandfather, the late John Regin Emerson Sr..
Mr. Emerson was a prominent businessman who bought and developed large-scale land in the city of Tulsa during the 1920s. Born on February 22, 1885 in Tennessee, John was the second child of Jerry D. and Sally Emerson. The Emerson family left Tennessee and moved to Arkansas and later to Indian territories, in present-day Logan County, Oklahoma. It was there that the family set up shop in 18 with a mercantile business. The store and its building provided goods to the farmers of the area and the growing town of nearby Guthrie.
After the untimely killing of his father as a Guthrie jailer, John felt that his family would get more opportunities within the newly developing city of Tulsa. John built, developed and became the owner of the Emerson Hotel on Greenwood Avenue.
As the massacre unfolded on the morning of May 31, 1921, John and his daughter took refuge under the railway tracks. When the time came that they felt safe enough, they found a home in a ruined Emerson Hotel. It was vandalized.
After the massacre of the Tulsa race in 1921, John built a second hotel at the corner of Lansing and Pine Streets. This new hotel offers storefronts on the street level and hotel rooms on the upper floor. He also started the Bluebird Cab Company in 1924.
John expanded his financial portfolio by building more than 140 homes in the Tulsa area. He also owned a large working cattle farm. They had five children.
John Regin Emerson Sr. was awarded posthumously in 2001 by the North Tulsa Heritage Foundation. His contribution before and after the 1921 Tulsa caste massacre played an important role in its early development and subsequent reconstruction of destruction.
I have just come to know about the massacre in the last 15 years. It was removed from textbooks and forbidden to speak for decades.
The black money that was there before the 1921 genocide massacre is no longer in Tulsa. Northern Tulsa, where most blacks live, has been a food desert for more than a decade. Blacks have a much lower life expectancy than whites. There are no hospitals in the community. To see how the massacre has affected our community, you just need to look to North Tulsa. - Jacqueline Vary, 61, retired insurance consultant
'Racial discrimination and civilization continue to help destroy Greenwood'
My aunt Jenny Edwards was at the Dreamland Theater on a secret date when the massacre took place. She managed to escape with her date and fled to the nearby town of Claremore. It took him eight years to muster the courage to go back to Tulsa.
As a child, my family always told stories about Creek Freedman and my aunt's experience as a victim of the 1921 Tulsa Caste Massacre. One day while watching TV, I overheard former state Rep. Don Ross talking about the history of Greenwood and the massacre. It was around that time that I realized that this was the story I heard about my aunt Jenny as a child. I then knew what to do.
The 1921 Tulsa caste massacre has directly affected my family and community in more ways than one. It has had a wide impact from the judicial system, loss of land, loss of homes, loss of businesses. In the 1920s, black home ownership was 30% and white homeowners 35%. Today, black home ownership is 32% and white home ownership is 57.9%. Racial discrimination in home evaluation and Gentrification has continued to help destroy the Greenwood and Black community here in Tulsa. To address this history, we need compensation in the form of cash and land. Also, we need policies to end racial discrimination in home appraisal and lending and to support black businesses, health and education.
After the centenary year of the 1921 Tulsa caste massacre, cameras will go away, journalists will move on to the next popular story, but I will still be here. I will never stop fighting for my community or my ancestors. It has never been about photo ops or fame for me. It's all about my community and ancestors. -Christi Williams, community activist and chairman of the Greater Tulsa African American Affairs Commission
'Our family history is something that was not stolen from us'
Right around the time I enrolled in undergraduate, my grandmother gave me a manuscript written by my great-grandfather, JB Stradford. It was a memoir that began with his father buying his freedom from slavery in Versailles, Kentucky, and continued through JB's life as a successful business owner and hotelier in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Reading this memoir I understood the part of the family history that I had only heard about in passing - the massacre of the Tulsa race that destroyed our family business and criminalized our patriarch, JB Stradford. I know how lucky I am that this family history has been passed down from generation to generation. This is something that has not been stolen from us.
Educated at Oberlin College and Indianapolis Law School, JB owned a hotel business in Tulsa that would have cost more than $ 2 million in today's money. His hotel, the 54-room Stradford Hotel on historic Greenwood Avenue, was sacked and burned to the ground during the 1921 Tulsa massacre, along with 44 square blocks of black-owned property, that led to Kansas and later I ran into Chicago. To save his life. He was falsely accused of inciting a riot by a white grand jury, for daring to stand with his community, to prevent a mob from entering prison and beating up a black man. That was where the massacre began.
The history of theft from my black community continues to this day in many open and insidious forms, for example through the historical reintegration of black communities and under-evaluation of black homes during evaluation. Like compound interest, this evasion increases rapidly over time.
Additional judicial killings by both police and civilian whites continue, as in the case of Ahmoud Erby, as both groups are still led at some level to believe that black people are more property than their brothers . -Loren Usher, 32
'If this history was shared with us when we were young, it may have changed the lives of many descendants'
My grandparents were Jack and Daisy Scott. Jack was a professional boxer in his younger years and worked as a janitor. My grandmother Daisy was an artist and worked as a political cartoonist for the Tulsa Star. His work can be found on the front page of issues before the massacre. They were present during the massacre and were able to escape with their two-year-old daughter, my aunt Juanita Parry, and their unborn son, my uncle Julius Warren Scott. Both my aunt and uncle are among the survivors whose pictures hang on the walls of the Greenwood Cultural Center.
My grandfather was one of those who bravely went to the courthouse to defend Dick Rowland. My grandparents lost their home, property, business, and most importantly, almost their lives as a result of the massacre. They raised 11 children in Tulsa, although things were not the same. My grandparents, although they survived, were not able to fulfill their dreams. He and other victims were denied insurance claims, as is well documented. Although I did not get the honor of meeting him, I am sure that he revived the trauma of the devastation that he endured every day.
I first heard about the Tulsa massacre as a young adult. It was then called Race Riot. As a descendant, it is my duty and honor to continue to share my (our) story so that future generations understand what strength and perseverance is and help to "re-write" history so that it can give itself Do not repeat.
The generational wealth that was destroyed by the acquisition of land and other assets had a direct impact on my grandparents, their children and their descendants. I am sure that many people experiencing this genocide certainly experienced PTSD and exhibited symptoms that were seen and passed on as generational trauma. It is difficult to break this cycle, especially after years of not communicating about this tragedy. A major health disparity still exists not only in Tulsa, but across the country. It has been discussed for many years, but now it is being recognized in the true sense.
I think if this history was shared with us when we were younger it would have changed the lives of many descendants and it would have helped us understand and appreciate what our ancestors were living every day.
My family is enriched by the talent of my grandmother Daisy, who has amazing musical and artistic abilities, and my grandfather demonstrates the entrepreneurial qualities of Jack. I am sure he would be proud to know of many college graduates who are his descendants. -Maurine Scott, 65, nurse practitioner