Finally Some Common Sense On Reparations

 The Daily Mail reports: "Oklahoma judge REFUSES to authorize reparations for victims of infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that killed '300' black people after agreeing with city officials that claimants 'don't have unlimited rights to compensation'." The article notes that the three plaintiffs--apparently the only three "survivors" of the so-called "massacre"--had sued the City of Tulsa, seeking financial and other reparations "including a 99-year tax holiday for Tulsa residents who are descendants of victims of the massacre in the north Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood."

    First, the judge was absolutely correct in her ruling. The purpose of a lawsuit is to obtain compensation for a victim from the tortfeasor. This lawsuit did not seek compensation for actual injuries suffered but instead sought "reparations" for people that were not actually victimized and which were unrelated to actual injuries suffered. 

    Second, as this USA Today article points out, the commonly given number of 300 or more killed is wrong: only 38 deaths can be confirmed. 

    Third, it was a riot and the use of the term "massacre" has only been adopted now in order to polarize people and try and cast the blame on the white population by giving the impression that unarmed, innocent blacks were simply rounded up and killed.  

    Nothing could be further from the truth. The USA Today article relates:

    It was triggered by the arrest of a 19-year-old Dick Rowland, an African American shoeshiner, who worked in the white downtown business area of Tulsa. He was arrested for allegedly attempting to rape a 17-year-old white elevator operator, Sarah Page, at the nearby Drexel Building.

    Because Black people were not allowed to use restrooms in the area, they were given access to one at the top of an office building, accessible by elevator. The details of the alleged assault were disjointed; they involved the elevator operator crying out and a witness purportedly seeing Rowland running from the elevator.

    The Oklahoma Historical Society says what happened is unclear, but "the most common explanation is that Rowland stepped on Page's foot as he entered the elevator, causing her to scream." He was arrested later that day. [Ed.: He wasn't arrested simply for stepping on her foot. Media reports at the time indicated that he had attacked the girl, scratching her and tearing her clothes; and whether true or not--the charges were later dropped at Page's insistence--it is certainly believable when you consider overall crime statistics for young black men. Also, he wasn't arrested until the following day (see below)].

    The riot broke out after an article on the incident was published in the Tulsa Tribune afternoon newspaper, which also said on its editorial page that a lynching was imminent. [Ed: strangely, no copies of this editorial exist which begs the question of whether it was ever published and certainly casts into doubt what were the contents of the supposed editorial].  Crowds, of both Black and white people, gathered outside the courthouse. Twice, a group of armed African American men, mostly veterans of World War I, arrived on the scene fearing a lynching and offered their assistance to the police to protect Rowland. [Ed: It was two groups, not the same group showing up twice]. As they were leaving the second time, a white man tried to disarm one of the Black veterans and a shot was fired, triggering the riot, with whites pouring into the all-black Greenwood district.

Perhaps a more accurate summary of the events leading to the riot can be found in an article by Gregeoy Hood called "The Tulsa Libel". An excerpt:

    The 2001 official report from “The Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921” said “we may never really know” what happened in the elevator. However, President Biden knows it was “innocent.”

    The commission identifies historian Scott Ellsworth as “first in importance” among those it consulted, so it’s worth examining his account. Mr. Ellsworth writes that what happened in the elevator on May 30 is “anyone’s guess.” Police arrived, but apparently did not take Page’s accusation very seriously.

    Two officers, one white and one black, arrested Rowland the next day, May 31 — the same day the news story about Page and Rowland appeared. The separate editorial supposedly calling for a lynching would also have appeared on May 31, but without a copy, we don’t know if it was a call to lynch Rowland, an editorial about a possible lynching, or something different.

    The night of May 31, Sheriff Willard McCullough sent armed men to protect Rowland. When a small group of angry whites came to the jail and demanded that Rowland be handed over, the Sheriff sent them away. He gave orders to “to shoot any intruders [into the jail] on sight.” Thus, some whites may have wanted to lynch Rowland, but the sheriff thought he had the situation under control.

    Meanwhile, black Tulsans were also discussing the possibility of a lynching (something that had happened to whites in Tulsa before, but never to a black). A black deputy sheriff tried to convince blacks that an armed confrontation with whites was a bad idea, but 25 blacks with guns nonetheless showed up and offered to protect the jail. The sheriff turned them away. However, this visit had an “electrifying effect” on the white mob. Some whites apparently went to a National Guard armory for guns, but an officer kept it locked. A menacing crowd of whites grew outside the jail, but the sheriff thought he could protect the prisoner.

    After that, small bands of blacks decided to drive through the streets with guns “to send a clear message to white Tulsans that these men were determined to prevent, by force of arms if necessary, the lynching of Dick Rowland.” Mr. Ellsworth notes that whites might have thought this was a “Negro uprising.” Then, sometime after 10 p.m., another group of armed blacks — 75 this time — left their cars and marched to the courthouse, again to offer to “defend” it. The police told them to go away.

    At this point, the commission report states that a white man tried to disarm a black man. A “shot rang out” and armed blacks and whites shot and killed each other. According to an account in The Nation from the period, more whites than blacks fell in the initial exchange. A white man may have been the initial aggressor, but it would be reasonable to assume that a black fired first.

In sum, although it is not known who fired that first shot, it most probably was one of the armed blacks in attendance; and, notwithstanding the implications in the article, the violence was not one-sided. 

    It should also be remembered that the riot did not arise in a vacuum, but blacks had rioted in dozens of cities over the prior few years, including what is called the Red Summer of 1919. The difference between then and the riots of the 1960s or the more recent George Floyd riots was that the white population fought back. 

    If the modern accounts are to be believed, the original riot was caused in large part by irresponsible members of the press and their biases. But the bias of the press today is worse because the press don't even pretend to take a neutral stance. Most of the articles on the subject are simply stories that demonize whites and paint all the blacks involved as blameless victims. (See, e.g., this article from NBC and this one from The Insider). Even the few articles that try to be objective still let the biases slip through. For example, The Oklahoman newspaper ran a story in 2021 entitled "Skewed view of Tulsa Race Massacre started on Day 1 with 'The Story That Set Tulsa Ablaze'." It leads with several paragraphs insinuating that the history of the riots were purposefully covered up by whites. Later, the author writes:

    As word of the impending lynching spread in Greenwood, Tulsa's Black commercial district, Black residents grew alarmed and swarmed to the courthouse offering the sheriff help in protecting Rowland.

    Fear of lynching among Black Tulsans was already heightened after a white man named Roy Belton was taken from the Tulsa County jail 10 months earlier and lynched on the outskirts of town. ...

A white man was lynched and the author doesn't relate any more about the incident? If Belton's lynching was somehow key to why blacks feared that Rowland was going to be lynched, shouldn't there have been more about Belton and his death? But the facts would have gone counter to the narrative. As this Wikipedia article on Belton reports: "A. J. Smitherman, editor of the black-owned newspaper, Tulsa Star, realized that, if a mob could lynch a white man, no black man would be safe if he were jailed. Later, he warned that blacks should take matters into their own hands if another black were arrested." And they did.

    The Oklahoman article continues with more commentary on how the biases influenced the reporting of the day, accuses the reports of 1921 of lying about blacks starting the violence, and concludes that the alleged "cover up" was part of a PR effort by the City of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma. Ironically, the article notes that "[w]hether by intention or accident, media can prepare its audience to interpret the news to favor whomever is in power," while doing the same.