The Day Greenwood Burned - a personal account of a 1921 assault on the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma

A RECENTLY DISCOVERED LETTER WRITTEN BY TWO AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN PROVIDES A RARE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF ONE OF THE WORST INCIDENTS OF RACIAL VIOLENCE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA.

In the gruesome history of such occurrences, what happened in the Greenwood area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 80 years ago, was tragically typical of the times. A Black YMCA worker neatly summarized the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in a syndicated story in the Black press:

"An awkward Colored boy steps on the toe of a White elevator girl--she stops him--a retort discourteous on his part--arrested on the charge of assault and battery--newspaper omits `and battery'--public thinks rape--threatening groups of Whites gather about jail--Colored men, fearing the usual happening gather to prevent a lynching--a careless, reckless shot--and the restraints of civilization are thrown aside and men became brutish beasts."

What followed was a nightmare. After the Black defenders retreated to the area that Whites called Little Africa or, less politely, Niggertown, a roughly one-mile-square commercial and residential district north of the railroad tracks, mobs of Whites, many newly "commissioned" by local police, massed around three sides, shooting and setting fires. Some made forays into Tulsa's Black neighborhoods, but after being met by gunfire in Greenwood they seemed to retreat, and for a few hopeful hours that night it appeared that the madness had spent itself. Dawn, however, revealed that it had, in fact, spread. Worse, it had organized.

Reports say hundreds of armed Whites, including local national guardsmen, police and even Boy Scouts, marched first on "Deep Greenwood," the thriving heart of Black Tulsa's commercial area. From there they fanned out east and west into the residential neighborhoods. And they had air cover: At least six planes buzzed overhead, shooting at fleeing Blacks and, eyewitnesses said, dropping liquid explosives on businesses and homes.

Those Blacks who were unaware of the danger were rudely awakened by Whites, many mere boys, barking orders at their African-American seniors, some of them prominent professionals and teachers. Hundreds escaped to outlying areas, while others fled the state entirely, never to return. Those who remained--some 7,000 women, children and men--were rounded up, often at the point of bayonets, and marched or driven to makeshift detention centers. Left unprotected, their homes and businesses were systematically looted, vandalized and set ablaze. The tally is staggering: 35 blocks decimated; 1,256 houses burned; 215 houses and 314 businesses looted; some 10,000 Black residents left homeless; as many as three hundred lives lost; with total damages estimated at $1.5 million, one third of it in the Black business and residential district of Greenwood.

Ten days later, on June 11, 1921, a Black newspaper published a moving account of the tragedy, a letter written by two Black women. The editor concealed the women's identities, no doubt to shield them from retribution; however, the letter's wealth of detail makes it possible to identify them. "E.A.," the main author, was Alverta Duff, 35, an unmarried "cateress" (according to the 1920 census), who lived at home with her mother in Normal, Illinois. Her sister, identified only as "Julia," was Julia Edith Duff, a 30-year-old teacher at Tulsa's segregated Booker T. Washington High School.

It is Julia's experience of the disaster that Alverta relates. Julia, too shaken to write much herself, provided two short emotional postscripts. When the violence erupted, Julia Duff was among the African-American educators who boarded in Greenwood's exclusive enclave of Black professionals and business people. A tight-knit middle- and upper-middle-class community, Greenwood was, in many respects, a distinct society, prompting W. E. B. DuBois, Ph.D., the brilliant Black scholar who had recently visited Tulsa, to describe it as "a Colored town ... within the White town."

Today, the Duff sisters' eyewitness description brings into stark focus those two days of terror and loss. No single account can tell the whole story of Greenwood's destruction, but in the 80 years since the tragedy, perhaps nothing has captured more compellingly the human dimensions of that fateful morning in 1921.

Excerpts from the Duff sisters' letter, dated June 5, 1921:

"Why, oh, why do we have so much trouble? Julia is here--came yesterday morning.... She was driven out ... with Mrs. Smart and another roomer there at the point of four guns. They were told to drop their traveling bags and Julia refused. They told her three times to drop it; the other women did and she told them she would not. One brute told her she'd drop it or he'd shoot her and she told him to shoot then ... she was going to keep it; then he said, "March," and she marched with the others with those dogs [soldiers] at their heels with guns drawn on them....

"I can't see how she stood up.... She was awakened at 4:00 A.M. by loud talking. Mrs. Smart came into her room and told her to dress--there was something wrong, because there were soldiers all around, and she looked out the window and saw them driving men out the houses.... [She] saw Mr. Woods running with both hands in the air, and their 3-month-old baby in one hand up in the air and three brutes behind him with guns.

"She said her legs gave way from under her, and she had to crawl about her room, taking things from her closet and putting them in her trunk....

"All women ... were first driven out and over to the high school and later, after all the men had been rounded up, they were taken in cars up to Convention Hall. And Julia said it was awful in there--so hot--and such a crowd. And one poor woman who was pregnant had tried to walk out of Tulsa and was ten miles out when some of the dogs marched her along all that distance back and up to Convention Hall, and when she got there she had the baby right at the entrance. Just think of it!

"... They went to the home of an old couple and the old man, 80 years old, was paralyzed and sat in a chair, and they told him to march and he told them he was crippled, but he'd go if someone would take him, and ... his wife ... didn't want to leave him, and he told her to go on anyway. As she left, one of the damned dogs shot the old man and then they fired the house....

"Oh, it is horrible! She said Mrs. Julia Jackson is about crazy. [Dr. Jackson, her husband] fired from inside the house ... as long as he had ammunition. Then he had to come out and they shot him three times ... and then made him march to Convention Hall.... A White doctor saw him as he fell on the pavement and ordered an ambulance to take him to the hospital, but he died on the way.

"Julia says Motley's place is gone and everything on Greenwood--not a business place left.... Really, the more I think of it [the more] I feel like screaming and I get deathly sick.... Julia is just worn out and nervous too....

"Yet while the devil made so many of us homeless, see, not three days later God sought vengeance and not only made them to be homeless in many numbers, but even 500 are reported dead from that flood in Colorado, as I guess you read in the papers.... Really, it seems they had the thing all planned, for they worked by streets so systematically and in groups.... They are such cowardly brutes. They knew enough not to go one man, or even two, to a house, but to go six and seven, sometimes eight, all armed too...."

Julia Duff added this poignant postscript:

"I'm here and that's all.... I don't know what would be best for me--to express my feelings, running like someone mad or screaming. All I can say is it is horrible! Not a decent home left in Tulsa, and the men look so forsaken! ... I can't write any more ... although I saw so many horrible things. Love to all."

Filmmaker, historian and freelance writer Paul Lee found the Duff sisters' letter while working on a documentary about Black pioneers of the West. He is

working on a film about the Tulsa race riot, with the Duff sisters' letter as the centerpiece. Lee lives in Highland Park, Michigan.

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group