Hostility

Exit78 Photo of the Day #135

Hope Plaza, a 16-foot granite structure at the entrance to John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, contains three larger-than-life bronze pieces by sculptor Ed Dwight inspired by photos from the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. One of them, titled Hostility, is of a “white man fully armed for assault​.”

“Hostility,” a “white man fully armed for assault​,” Hope Plaza, John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 26, 2013 (Pentax K-r)

Photo from Tulsa Race Riot, May 31 – June 1, 1921, used as a subject for sculpture by Ed Dwight titled “Hostility” in Hope Plaza at Tulsa’s John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park

Tulsa Race Riot (Wikipedia – accessed May 16, 2018)

The Tulsa race riot, sometimes referred to as the Tulsa Massacre, Tulsa pogrom, or Tulsa race riot of 1921, took place between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a white mob attacked residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma.This is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the nation. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 39 dead, but the American Red Cross estimated 300.

The riot began over a Memorial Day weekend after a young black man was accused of raping a young white female elevator operator at a commercial building. After he was taken into custody, rumors raced through the black community that he was at risk of being lynched. A group of armed African-American men rushed to the police station where the young suspect was held, to prevent a lynching, as a white crowd had gathered. A confrontation developed between black people and white people; shots were fired, and twelve people were killed, ten white and two black. As news of these deaths spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of white people rampaged through the black community that night and the next day, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. About 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 ($31 million in 2018).

Some black people claimed that policemen had joined the mob; others said that National Guardsmen fired a machine gun into the black community and a plane dropped sticks of dynamite. In an eyewitness account discovered in 2015, Greenwood attorney Buck Colbert Franklin described watching a dozen or more planes, which had been dispatched by the city police force, drop burning balls of turpentine on Greenwood’s rooftops.

Many survivors left Tulsa. Both black and white residents who stayed in the city were silent for decades about the terror, violence, and losses of this event. The riot was largely omitted from local and state, as well as national, histories: “The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place.” (New York Times, June 19, 2011)

(Note: I am also posting photos in a series called Photography Now & Then at Haw-Creek.com)

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.