KGOU Readers Club; Tulsa Race Massacre Episode 4 Part 1

Well, good afternoon. I'm KGOU managing editor Logan Layden. Thanks for listening this afternoon. As the KGOU Readers Club continues its look at the Tulsa Race Massacre, as the 100th anniversary of the destruction of Tulsa's Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street Approaches. Today, Dr. Carlos Hill, author of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre of Photographic History. For our listeners who've been reading along with us, here's your chance to talk with the author. Give us a call at 405-325-KGOU, or you can email me directly, news editor at KGOU.org. Dr. Carlos Hill, thanks for joining me this afternoon. How are you today? Well, how are you? Doing well, doing well. We have done these Tulsa Race Massacre live shows over the past month or so, and this is our last one, as we're just a week away from the anniversary, and it's really great to have you with us, because as I've sort of, I think it's probably a common

story that you've heard, I've come to this late whenever I was going through school. This wasn't taught. The history of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and it's something I've learned the most about over the last month or so, and so it's nice to have you here to kind of round out and answer some of the some of the lingering questions that I still have. But first, we want to talk about your book, and again, that is the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre of Photographic History, and it's someone who's tried to learn as much as they can about the facts of the matter and reading various books to actually see it in photographs, really brings it home, gives it a whole new level of life than just trying to read the facts of the book. Before we start here, let me give, let you introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be associated with the History of the Race Massacre. Yeah, so I'm Dr. Carlos K. Hill. I am Associate Professor

as well as Chair of the Clare Lupert Department for African-African-American Studies here at the University of Oklahoma, and I am a historian of lynching and racial violence. My whole career as a scholar, as a historian, as an academic, has revolved around telling the stories of how Black people, Black Americans, have been afflicted by racial violence, terrorist violence, across American history. And so the Race Massacre is something that I have been studying for years, but only until I came to Oklahoma in 2016 to join the Clare Lupert Department for African-African-African Studies. Did I begin to really do a deep dive into this history and my deep dive into the history really meant spending time in Greenwood, talking to some of the Black cultural organizations, such as the Greenwood Cultural Center, the General Franklin Center, as well as others, to begin to really wrap my mind, my head around this history. And even for someone like me who

has been a career working on this kind of history and trying to educate people about the importance of this kind of history, I didn't know a lot of things about the Race Massacre until I really did a deep dive into some of the archival materials connected to it. And in doing that deep dive, discovered the photographs. And since I first looked at them, I haven't been able to look away. I've continued to want to know more, want to help others understand more about this history through its photographic legacy. And so my connection with the Race Massacre really began with my conversations with the Centennial Commission in 2017, early on when the commission was still figuring out its identity, still figuring out some of the key initiatives

that it would launch. One of the key initiatives that I ended up launching with the support of the commission has been a teacher, a professional development institute that are designed to really support Oklahoma educators in teaching this history at a very high level across great levels in Oklahoma. And so that work began in earnest in 2017, we taught our first institute in 2018, we taught one in 2019, we taught one in 2020, we will do one in the summer of 2021, as well as we have a spring institute occurring right now. And so a lot of my work on the Race Massacre since coming here has evolved around working with teachers. And my latest sort of project is the book project that was sort of the culmination of all that work. I say, again, on Twitter, if you want to have a discussion with us here with Dr. Carlos Hill,

that's at KGOU News on Facebook, more 405-325 KGOU. And I've been gathering questions and I'll have them kind of peppered out through the interview here. I want to kind of go through the book just a little bit. And one of the first things I want to discuss is even from people who were in the massacre, who were victims of it, you see them sort of talk about the riot. I remember the riot, but the monitors change and we call it the Tulsa Race Massacre now. And you spend some time at the beginning of your book kind of talking about the difference between the two. And I wonder if you would do a little bit of that right now, as far as why did it change from Tulsa Race Riot to Tulsa Race Massacre? What's the difference? Yes. So if you had on right now with me the Commissioner, Commissioner Matthew, Senator, state Senator Kevin Matthews, he would likely say that the change from Race Riot to Massacre

in terms of the commission had to do with the ways in which the community, Greenwood, constituencies within really wanted the main change from Race Riot to Massacre because the belief was that a more accurate sort of framing of it would be a massacre versus a Race Riot. And so because of the kind of community's desire for the community to have the most accurate sort of telling of it framed, we kind of shifted it to Massacre. I can say, as a historian on letching and racial violence, not only is it the most accurate way of framing it, it is the way that many survivors framed what occurred. They framed it as a Race Riot,

some of them did, some of them framed it as a disaster, some of them framed it as a war, some of them framed it as a massacre. But some of the deepest felt perspectives talked about it as a massacre. They talked about the death and the destruction, the ways in which the community was blocked from rebuilding initially, all those things, survivors talked about when they referred to it as a disaster or a massacre. And so on the 100th anniversary of the centennial, excuse me, the 100th anniversary of the Race Massacre, I think is very important for us to center the story, center the understandings of this history from the vantage point of victim survivors and descendants. And I think Massacre allows us to do that better so than Race Riot. And Riot, I mean, when you think of Riot, you think of this kind of disorganized chaos,

and that's one of the things that I've learned, no, particularly as you headed into the morning of June 1st, this was a organized, concerted, almost military action, wasn't it? Yes. So Massacre is for me about really highlighting the willful actions, the deliberate, intentional systemic actions that not only the mob took, but also local authorities took to destroy Greenwood. And so I talk about it in the book as a intentional military style assault on a civilian community. And Race Riot just does not capture that. It does not help us to understand the ways in which, you know, city leaders, local authorities willfully destroy, eight in the bed at the destruction of a community. Race Riot would suggest that there was just

general chaos on all sides and violence on all sides. And it just was not what Black survivors and then even Black victims attempted to do was to prevent the destruction of the community violently. But, you know, it became very clear by 5 a.m. and thereafter that they did not have the manpower, they did not have the ability to hold off thousands of whites who were entering the Greenwood community, armed, and began to burn and moot pillage, ultimately destroy the community. And so Massacre is not only the most accurate way of talking about what happened, it's a way of talking about what happened from the vantage point of victim survivors of the sentence. Yeah, Massacre, the most sort of accurate way to put it. And you can have a discussion

about Riot, what it was not. And you can see it edged on several of the photos in your book was a Negro uprising. And this was, you know, the day of, I guess, or whenever they got these photos processed, that it's over the course of the last century, how the understanding of the event has changed. But there in just the days after it was thought up of this as this uprising of black people. And I don't know how that ever even came to be thought of as the truth other than, you know, white people were trying to cover up the situation quite a bit. Yeah. Well, I think that there is that part of it. The, the, the willful kind of cover up of what really occurred and race right as a way of framing it in a very vague and loose way so that culpability and accountability wasn't clear. I think that's a part of it. But also, I would say that race,

riot, race, riot were conventional ways to talk about outbreaks of violence, particularly when they involve two or more different racial groups. This was, this was a default, because this was a default way of talking about these kinds of incidents in American society. So it makes sense why, you know, newspapers, particularly Tulsa area newspapers talked about it as a race riot. It was the term of the day. But it also was a way again to sort of obscure. It was clear that if this was no mere riot where you had a mob or even several mobs attacking, this was a concerted effort, aided and abetted by law enforcement, law enforcement also participated. There are eyewitness accounts they are. There is, there is survivor accounts of national guards

men as well as Tulsa police participating or is simply refusing to prevent the destruction of homes, you know, the loss of life. And so we, we have to, if we're honest, being honest about this history, we have to talk about those components, because those are going to components that frame for me why this is a race massacre and not a race riot. Yeah, not to mention the hundreds of folks who were deputized there on the street that day and given the authority of law enforcement and just when they were the ones helping to burn down people's houses and kill and loot, of course, as well. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but I want to get a little bit more detail because this is an area of expertise for you as far as the history of lynching. The Tulsa race massacre didn't just happen one day in a vacuum. There was an environment at the time with

these lynchings. Can you tell us a little bit about what was going on at that point in history or something what was going on before the month and the months before the massacre, not just in Oklahoma but in other parts of the country too? You know, the great American writer Mark Twain referred to the United States in 191901 as the United States of Lentardom. And what Mark Twain was trying to get Americans to understand is that the country by 1901 was not a country of law, or at least a country that respected the law as it related to people of color, especially Black people. You know, between 1880 and 1900 when Twain is sort of thinking about this, even writing about this, you know, a Black person in 1890 was lynched every three days. And so that is what Mark

Twain was talking about. The ways in which racial violence, particularly lynching, was in every day phenomenon. And the way in which lynching corroded American democracy, American rule of law. And so as you suggest that this was not just about Tulsa, this was a larger cultural problem. This was a systemic problem for how white Americans treated Black people in the society, how law enforcement treated Black people in the society. And so when we look at the race massacre, we need to understand it in the context of lynching culture. Because certainly when we look at the photographs from the race massacre, when we look at the ways in which whites picture themselves in those photographs, similar to the way in which whites pictured themselves alongside lynching

victims, we know that a big part of why we have photographs of the massacre is due to lynching culture. We know I know at least, you know, a big part of why law enforcement deputized whites is related to lynching culture. The ways in which whites rationalized what occurred that this was a Negro rebellion or insurrection that whites, white Tulsons had to put down that's lynching culture. All these things are reflective of a deeper American culture. We have to remember that between 1880 and 1960, more than 5,000 Black Americans were lynched. 80 Black people were lynched in Oklahoma between 1880 and 1950. And so lynching culture is, I think, a big reason for, you know,

or helps us to explain at least why the massacre occurred and just the kind of viciousness with which the community was destroyed. I think all that relates back to lynching culture in America. Much more to come here in just a moment with Dr. Carlos Cahill, author of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre of Photographic History, which I have here in front of me now. We'll be back in just a moment is the KGOU Readers Club.