DEATH IN A PROMISED LAND: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

by Scott Ellsworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 1982

A quiet, succinct, unflinching examination of the 1921 Tulsa race riot, last and proportionately worst of the outbreaks during and after World War I--when rising black expectations collided with increasing white repressiveness. To evoke the racial climate, Ellsworth mentions the new ""barbarity"" of lynchings and supplies a newspaper account (""The Negro was unsexed and made to eat a portion of his anatomy""); to convey Oklahoma's lost potential as a promised land, he juxtaposes an 1880s attempt to make it ""an all-black state"" and the 1910 revocation of the franchise. For the most part, however, he focuses--tellingly--on Tulsa itself: the burgeoning of the long-established black community; three local incidents which convinced Tuisa's blacks that law-enforcement officials were no bulwark against mob violence. Also evident is the effect of inflammatory press reportage. Thus: the events of 1921. On May 30, a young black bootblack had an (unwitnessed) altercation with a young white female elevator operator; on May 31, he was arrested and, while under investigation, excoriated in the Tulsa Tribune as an assailant liable to be lynched; on the evening of the 31st, a white crowd formed outside the courthouse, armed blacks appeared to help guard the prisoner, and when one (a WW I vet) refused to give up his gun to a white, fighting broke out--which resulted, within the next 24 hours, in the destruction of the black community and the death of approximately 75 blacks and whites. Blacks did fight back, but half of them, cripplingly, were interned (as against no whites). Blacks also rebuilt their community--Ellsworth stresses--without direct white aid. Blacks were blamed for the riot, too--but ""the lynchings ceased."" ""At a terrible price,"" Ellsworth writes in one of his few editorial statements, ""black Tuisans had shown their white brethren that they were not going to let it happen here."" His unassuming command of the source materials, plus his relaxed way with a narrative, could spur others--even on an advanced high school level--to explore the local past. (There will also, pertinently, be pictures.) A worthy companion to William M. Tuttle's established study of the 1919 Chicago riot.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1982

ISBN: 0807117676

Page Count: -

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982

Categories: NONFICTION