Riots
There's one thing that has always interested, and incensed, me. A little Web digging tonight reminded me why.
Riots are a big part of the history of this wonderful nation, and I'm sure I'm not alone in my feelings about them. Perhaps I should be a little more specific and mention that race riots piss me off.
In an article on CNN.com last night I read about the requests by lawyers on behalf of victims of the 1921 Tulsa (Greenwood), Okla., to extend the statute of limitations seeking reparations. Of course the city and state want the case to be dismissed. None of this is surprising. What I decided to do was look into the actual riot to spark my memory of the details that I got only from a documentary a few years ago.
It's been known that 36 blacks were killed.The number is believed to actually be 300. The story is the same. Rather than paraphrase, here is an excerpt from the Tulsa Historical Foundation that I got from the Forgotten History Foundation Web site:
"On the morning of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main. The white elevator operator, Sarah Page, claimed that Rowland grabbed her arm, causing her to flee in panic. Accounts of the incident circulated among the city's white community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling. "Tulsa police arrested Rowland the following day and began an investigation. An inflammatory report in the May 31 edition of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a confrontation between black and white armed mobs around the courthouse where the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor to protect Rowland. Shots were fired and the outnumbered blacks began retreating to the Greenwood Avenue business district. "In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Black Tulsa was looted and burned by white rioters. Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. "Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, took imprisoned blacks out of the hands of vigilantes and imprisoned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days." (Tulsa Historical Society)
I found a site with pictures of charred bodies and leveled homes. I thought about the riot depicted in Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. And I thought about the essay I wrote about black militancy.
About how Walzer didn't understand why blacks couldn't just bend over (he didn't say it in so many words) and let this fine nation of ours help them. About how he thought the Panthers' tactics to be silly and merely theatrical. I'm confident I handled my frustration in my paper well (it's on the left...it'll never be published so I can at least plug it here).
The countless years of being treated as animals, being beaten, burned, lynched, spat upon, buried, cut up, starved, worked, raped, farmed. Rage. Tapped into once and there is no going back. Better days or death.
From the CNN article: Blacks were silenced by fear and too oppressed by lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan and a corrupt judicial system to seek court action in the riot's aftermath, witnesses told the judge. "There was a sense it's better off to be silent, mind your ways, stay in your place," testified a psychiatrist who interviewed six riot survivors.
