The Tulsa Riot of 1921

Part 2 - The 1921 Riot to today

by Alice Lovelace
Atlanta. Georgia

• Tulsa Riot of 1921 - Africans in Western Territory - Part 1
  
• Tulsa Riot of 1921 - The 1921 Riot to today - Part 2
  

1. (My primary storyteller on my visits to Tulsa was Georgia Williams, Director of Community Programs for the Tulsa Art and Humanities Council and the funder of my 1996 and 1997 residencies. Georgia worked in Tulsa for twelve years until she relocated to Oklahoma City to work with the Oklahoma Arts Council.)

2. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1983, second edition, unabridged reports that the word sooner came into use around 1885-90 and has come to mean " a person who gains an unfair advantage by getting ahead of others" ( pg. 1820)

3. According to the Random House Dictionary, a memorial is " a written statement of facts presented to a sovereign, a legislative body, etc., as the ground of, or expressed in the form of a petition or remonstrance" (idib., p. 1199).

4. Ellsworth (1982) reports the writer of this vicious pseudo history book was Madison Grant. He describes Grant as being "totally ignorance of black history, Grant stated that 'negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within" (p. 20). This book has been called the "central intellectual inspiration of the white racism of the 1920's" (ibid., p 20)

5. According to Ellsworth (1982), this article was the most useful of those in national periodicals. The article "The Eruption of Tulsa" was published in Nation, CXII (June 29, 1921). "White, who at the time served on the national staff of the NAACP, traveled to Tulsa incognito to investigate the devastation" (p. 146).