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NEVER AGAIN

A mindset an conviction to through the eyes of history see a world we hope to NEVER AGAIN see or exsperince.

By Erik DeSean BarrettPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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At the embankment of the Elizabeth River In Berkley!!

In 1921, Oklahoma had a racially, socially, and politically tense atmosphere. Many servicemen had returned following the end of the First World War in 1918, and the American Civil War was still in living memory, even though it had ended in 1865. Civil rights for African Americans were lacking, and the Ku Klux Klan was resurgent (primarily through the wildly popular 1915 film The Birth of a Nation), a film portrays African Americans (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women. The film presents the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a heroic force necessary to preserve American values and a white supremacist social order.

Tulsa, as a booming oil city, supported a large number of affluent, educated and professional African Americans. The territory of northern Oklahoma had been established for the resettlement of Native Americans from the southeast, some of whom had owned slaves, while other areas had received many settlers from the South whose families had been slaveholders.

Oklahoma was admitted as a state on November 16, 1907. The newly created state legislature passed racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws, as its first order of business.

On August 4, 1916, Tulsa passed an ordinance that mandated residential segregation by forbidding black or white people from residing on any block where three-fourths or more of the residents were members of the other race. Although the United States Supreme Court declared such an ordinance unconstitutional the following year, Tulsa and many other cities continued to establish and enforce segregation for the next three decades.

Tulsa founder and Ku Klux Klan member W. Tate Brady participated in the riot as a night watchman. This Land Press reported that Brady previously led the tarring and feathering of a group of men in 1917. This T&F is form of public torture and punishment used to enforce unofficial justice or revenge. The victim would be stripped naked, or stripped to the waist. Wood tar (sometimes hot) was then either poured or painted onto the person while they were immobilized. Then the victim either had feathers thrown on them or was rolled around on a pile of feathers so that they stuck to the tar.

The article states that police, "delivered the convicted men into the custody of the black-robed Knights of Liberty)." The provided document attached to the article states, "I believe the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to prevent any of them from wanting to give anyone any trouble in the way of lawsuits...all made the same statement with emphasis that Tate Brady put on the tar and feathers in the 'name of the women and children of Belgium.' The same is true as to the part that Chief of Police Ed Lucas took. Not all the witnesses said they would swear in court as to...[document incomplete]”.

As returning veterans tried to reenter the labor market following World War I, social tensions and anti-black sentiment increased in cities where job competition was high. At the same time, black veterans pushed to have their civil rights enforced, believing they had earned full citizenship by military service. In what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919,The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This Red Summer saw industrial cities across the Midwest and Northeast experienced severe race riots in which whites, sometimes including local authorities, attacked black communities.

Since 1915, the Ku Klux Klan had been growing in urban chapters across the country. Its first significant appearance in Oklahoma occurred on August 12, 1921. By the end of 1921, Tulsa had 3,200 residents in the Klan according to one estimate. The city's population was 72,000 in 1920. In the early 20th century, lynchings were common in Oklahoma as part of a continuing effort to assert and maintain white supremacy. By 1921, at least 31 people had been lynched in the newly formed state; 26 were black, and nearly all were men or boys.

But despite all that there was the Greenwood was a district. It was organized in 1906 following Booker T. Washington's 1905 tour of Arkansas, Indian Territory and Oklahoma. It was a namesake of the Greenwood District that Washington had established as his own demonstration in Tuskegee, Alabama, five years earlier.

Greenwood became so prosperous that it came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street”). Black Americans had created their own businesses and services in this enclave, including several grocers, two newspapers, two movie theaters, nightclubs, and numerous churches. Black professionals, including doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy, served their peers. Greenwood residents selected their own leaders and raised capital there to support economic growth.

It is alleged that at some time about or after 4 p.m. on May 30, 1921, 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner employed at a Main Street shine parlor, entered the only elevator of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 South Main Street to use the top-floor restroom, which was restricted to black people. He encountered Sarah Page, the 17-year-old white elevator operator on duty. The two likely knew each other at least by sight, as this building was the only one nearby with a restroom which Rowland had express permission to use, and the elevator operated by Page was the only one in the building. A clerk at Renberg's, a clothing store on the first floor of the Drexel, heard what sounded like a woman's scream and saw a young black man rushing from the building. The clerk went to the elevator and found Page in what he said was a distraught state. Thinking she had been assaulted, he summoned the authorities.

An explanation offered is that Rowland had tripped as he got onto the elevator, and as he tried to catch his fall, he grabbed onto the arm of Page, who then screamed. Although the police questioned Page, no written account of her statement has been found. However, the police determined that what happened between the two teenagers was something less than an assault. Page told the police that Rowland had grabbed her arm but nothing more and that she would not press charges.

The Tulsa Tribune, one of two white-owned papers published in Tulsa, broke the story in that afternoon's edition with the headline: "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator", describing the alleged incident. According to some witnesses, the same edition of the Tribune included an editorial warning of a potential lynching of Rowland, titled "To Lynch Negro Tonight”. The paper was known at the time to have a "sensationalist" style of news.

It is mainly known as Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalist journalism, (usually dramatized and sometimes unverifiable or even blatantly false.Notable tabloid publications include the National Enquirer, New York Post, New York Daily News, and Globe in North America; and the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Record, Sunday Mail, The Sun, the Toronto Sun, and the former News of the World in the UK.

Just a funny note, All original copies of that issue of the paper have apparently been destroyed, and the relevant page is missing from the microfilm copy.Other newspapers of the time like The Black Dispatch and the Tulsa World did not call attention to any such editorial after the event. So the exact content of the column — and whether it existed at all — remains in dispute. Chief of Detectives James Patton attributed the cause of the riots entirely to the newspaper account and stated, "If the facts in the story as told the police had only been printed I do not think there would have been any riot whatsoever.

But it happen and caused mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street.” Some 10,000 black people were left homeless, and property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $32.25 million in 2019).

Many survivors left Tulsa, while black and white residents who stayed in the city kept silent about the terror, violence, and resulting losses for decades. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories.

The racial crisis has been underlying for decades, but never before has society on such a wide scale come together to address equality and political reproaches. Many have, up until this point, performed a collective play-act of ignorance by supporting a fair system on media platforms, but at the same time staying silent when it comes to physically speaking out against racial inequality. Many have avoided the unease and embarrassment of looking at white privilege and racism squarely - until now.

Ice hockey Jets captain Blake Wheeler broke his silence on American racism. In a conversation with his son, he unpacked growing up in Detroit in the late 1960s, when the city was wracked by race riots and painful divisions.

“My generation didn’t get it right, “Hopefully yours does.”

Well How have we done?

  • 60 and 2.2.
In 1940, 60 percent of employed black women worked as domestic servants; today the number is down to 2.2 percent, while 60 percent hold white- collar jobs.
  • 44 and 1. In 1958, 44 percent of whites said they would move if a black family became their next door neighbor; today the figure is 1 percent.
  • 18 and 86. In 1964, the year the great Civil Rights Act was passed, only 18 percent of whites claimed to have a friend who was black; today 86 percent say they do, while 87 percent of blacks assert they have white friends.

Progress is the largely suppressed story of race and race relations over the past half-century. And thus it’s news that more than 40 percent of African Americans now consider themselves members of the middle class. Forty-two percent own their own homes, a figure that rises to 75 percent if we look just at black married couples. Black two-parent families earn only 13 percent less than those who are white. Almost a third of the black population lives in suburbia.

Because these are facts the media seldom report, the black underclass continues to define black America in the view of much of the public. Many assume blacks live in ghettos, often in high-rise public housing projects. Crime and the welfare check are seen as their main source of income.

The stereotype crosses racial lines. Blacks are even more prone than whites to exaggerate the extent to which African Americans are trapped in inner-city poverty. In a 1991 Gallup poll, about one-fifth of all whites, but almost half of black respondents, said that at least three out of four African Americans were impoverished urban residents. And yet, in reality, blacks who consider themselves to be middle class outnumber those with incomes below the poverty line by a wide margin.

Fifty years ago most blacks were indeed trapped in poverty, But that was then, and this is now. Beginning in the 1940s, however, deep demographic and economic change, accompanied by a marked shift in white racial attitudes, started blacks down the road to much greater equality. New Deal legislation, which set minimum wages and hours and eliminated the incentive of southern employers to hire low-wage black workers, put a damper on further industrial development in the region.

What do I believe, I am trying to say. The moment humanity gets it through its skull. That this isn’t a black world, or a white world. That I am connected to my culture, but it should never define my personality. That I am not what some societal big shot with a keyboard, and massive amounts of thirsty readers say I am. But I am who I was created to be.

My full discussion of this conversation will go down on my podcast. If you're interested, feel free to check it out the preview pod to this chat, which is listed below.

Until the Next Time we can chat; From Me and Mine, Unto You and Yours!! - LATTERZ -EDB

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About the Creator

Erik DeSean Barrett

Blogger👨🏾‍💻 Vlogger🎥 Podcaster🎙Life Enthusiasts!!! On mission to prove one can do what they believe despite what anyone says.

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