The Tulsa tragedy that shamed America

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alvin Hall tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history. In the early 20th Century, Tulsa was a wild west town which became a boom city. But the oil capital of the world was also home to the thriving and prosperous district of Greenwood - nicknamed 'Black Wall Street' by Booker T Washington - because it was a mecca for Black entrepreneurs. On 30 May, a young Black shoe shiner Dick Rowland, was wrongly accused of attacking a white elevator operator Sarah Paige (the girl later recanted her story). This was the trigger, on 31 May and 1 June, for an armed white mob to loot and burn Greenwood, in a violent 16-hour attack. Many estimate up to 300 Black citizens were killed. Over 1200 homes were destroyed, every church, hotel, shop, and business was completely wiped off the map.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Alvin Hall.
0:06.0	As a journalist, documentary maker and a curious person who reads broadly,
0:11.0	I like to think I know about my country's history well. But I have a
0:18.5	confession to make. The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 is an event that I was completely ignorant about for a large part of my life.
0:29.0	And I'm a black man who was born and educated in America.
0:34.0	So here on the BBC World Service, I want to tell the story of
0:40.0	the Tulsa tragedy that shamed America.
0:44.0	It wasn't until I was working on Wall Street in the mid-1980s
0:48.0	when one of my few African-American students
0:51.0	talked to me about Black Wall Street in the Greenwood section of Tulsa,
0:54.8	Oklahoma. I was quite surprised. I had never heard of it. I thought, how could I not know about a place of such legendary black prosperity in the
1:07.1	U.S. I then began doing research to learn more. I can still remember the afternoon I was stunned at the words I
1:17.9	saw on the page in front of me. I slowly carefully read the sentences that recounted how an armed white mob descended on
1:28.4	Tulsa's prosperous district of Greenwood and burnt 35 blocks to the ground, killing probably
1:36.2	hundreds of black residents and leaving thousands homeless and destitute.
1:43.7	The brutality was shocking.
1:49.7	It is considered one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.
1:55.0	There was one dominant question on my mind.
1:58.7	How could this horrific event stay forgotten for decades.
2:04.2	Or was it deliberately buried and ignored?
2:08.2	My name is Kureesh Ali Lonsana.
2:11.6	I'm acting director of the Center for Truth Racial Healing and Transformation at
	...

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