I don’t remember where I read this quote. I think it was a comment to a news article on Twitter.
It was said in a matter of fact way, so I’m not completely sure whether the person making the comment was already aware of the racial history of the country, or just learning about how horrible it can be.
I am grateful for all the news coverage of the Tulsa Massacre. At the same time there is a part of me that wants to shout from the rooftops that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The coordinated bombing from the sky makes Tulsa stand out, since it was the first time aerial bombing was used against civilians on American soil. (Whether it was the only time depends on how you feel about the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia in 1985.)
So many brutal acts of white supremacist terror have taken place in so many cities. It would be common knowledge in a different country with a different kind of school system. I’m trying to post before midnight, so I’m not providing links. Some of you recognize all or some of these names. Everyone else can look them up:
New York City Draft Riots (1863)
Memphis, Tennessee (1866)
Camilla, Georgia (1868)
Opalousas, Louisiana (1868)
Colfax, Louisiana*** (1873)
Carrollton, Mississippi (1886)
Thibodaux, Louisiana (1887)
Wilmington, North Carolina*** (1898)
Atlanta, Georgia (1906)
Springfield, Illinois (1908)
Slocum, Texas (1910)
East St. Louis (1917)
Red Summer of 1919:
Elaine, Arkansas***
Jenkins County, Georgia
Milan, Georgia
Millen, Georgia
Putnam County, Georgia
Chicago, Illinois
Corbin, Kentucky
Macon, Mississippi
Knoxville, Tennessee
Washington, D.C.***
and many many more
Ocoee, Florida (1920)***
Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921)
Rosewood, Florida (1923)
And these are just some of the bigger events that happened in cities and larger towns. No one will ever know the countless acts of neighborhood-destroying violence that took place in smaller towns and rural areas, where a tiny enclave of people would suddenly find their homes destroyed to punish them for voting, or prevent them from registering to vote, or stop them from competing with white folks for scarce jobs, or just to keep the black population scared on general principle, because whites were enraged to see black folks happy, or prosperous, or owning property, or living independently.
These incidents have many elements in common: Death tolls minimized. Police reports falsified. Few willing to call a massacre a massacre. Torture used to elicit confessions that “proved” whites didn’t start the melee. Newspapers forbidden to run factual stories. Unmarked mass graves. Men and women threatened with torture and death if they ever told “outsiders” what happened. Libraries purged of periodicals that dared to tell the truth. Laws passed prohibiting teachers from mentioning these events in public schools.
And yet… the oral history of the people prevailed.
Those few who survived, who escaped to tell the tale, fled to other states carrying living history within them. Relatives of those who died or disappeared would eagerly ask travelers for news, and take care to remember any scrap of information that could be passed along. “You have kin in Louisiana? Have you any news about a man named Xxx Xxxxxx? We’ve heard nothing of him since the most recent troubles down there.”
The constant ache of being neglected and dismissed and disbelieved by the majority culture for decades and generations created unquenchable anger in some, a determination to rise above in others and many many people managed to hold both those feelings in tension. I don’t condone violence, but I understand.
If you are someone for whom the news of Tulsa is fairly new, and you are still getting your mind around how horrible it was, know that there are pockets of black folk who carried these anniversary dates in their hearts like millstones. Even those of us who only heard about the horrors second- or third-hand, because grandpa heard it as a little boy from his grandma when she was old and grey, have a respect for the elders who endured and survived these days that cannot be measured.
And those are just the tales of the massacres and the Klan and the white backlash AFTER the oral history of stories about slavery. Some of those stories are too horrible to be retold, except in whispers: “We don’t know much except the name of the place she worked on. Great-grandma got quiet whenever we asked. She never wanted to talk to anybody about that.”
I am not well-versed enough to even begin to say anything about the many massacres of Native American men, women and children. Some were done by and for the federal government, and others were done by settlers who just decided they wanted to steal some mineral rights or water rights or other natural resources of the land. That is a diary someone else will have to write.
But what I ask is a certain amount of respect for everyone who has been preserving the oral history, passing it down from father to son and mother to daughter. They carry it in their broken bones, in their feverish nightmares, in their enlarged hearts, in their hypervigilance and profound distrust that they have earned the hard way.
Some of us even manage to still love this country, still manage to hold on to hope in spite of it all. Some of us even take strength from the horrors people survived before us. Knowing our ancestors came through even harder times means we do not have the right to give up in advance or go down without a fight. Not everyone is successful in coping with the stress in healthy ways, but survival is survival and a worthy goal regardless of the cost. Some have turned their anger into music and other forms of art, some into marching and militance, some into quiet perseverance. Survival is survival is survival.
On days like these we acknowledge the pain, we mourn the dead, and honor the survivors.
They do know the real history of this country. By some miracle, it has not broken them.
_________
***This Washington Post article includes thumbnail descriptions of events in
Colfax, LA 1873; Wilmington, NC 1898; Washington, D.C. 1919;
Elaine, AK 1919; Ocoee, LA 1920; and Tulsa, OK 1921.
The Great Debaters (2007)
*
Kimberly Jones (2020)
*
Viola Fletcher testifies before Congress (2021)
*
a segment from Blood on Black Wall Street (2021)
*
Extensive eyewitness accounts can be found at this link:
full text of the 1921 book “Events of the Tulsa Disaster” by Mrs. Mary E. Jones Parrish
