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EXCERPTS

 

Tulsa Race Riot & The Angels of Mercy

 

EXCERPTS

The original text, as first published.

Tulsa Tribune Editorial - Saturday, June 4, 1921

The moment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost; and men, left free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each others’ rights, and invade the field of each other’s liberty.

Timothy Titcomb.

IT MUST NOT BE AGAIN

     Such a district as the old "Niggertown" must never be allovved in Tulsa again. It was a cesspool of iniquity and corruption. It was the cesspool which had been pointed out specifically to the Tulsa police and to Police Commissioner Adkison, and they could see nothing in it. Yet anybody could go down there and buy all the booze they wanted. Anybody could go into the most unspeakable dance  halls

Must Not Be Again		 and base joints of prostitution. All this had heen called to the attention of our police department and all the police department could do under the Mayor of this city was to whitewash itself. The Mayor of Tulsa is a perfectly nice, honest man, we do not doubt, hut he is guileless. He could have found out himself any time in one night what just one preacher found out.
     In this old "Niggertown" were a lot of bad niggers and a bad nigger is about the lowest thing that walks on two feet. Give a bad nigger his booze and his dope and a gun and he thinks he can shoot up the world. And all these four things were to be f’ound in "Niggertown" - booze, dope, bad niggers and guns.
     The Tulsa Tribune makes no apology to the Police Commissioner or to the Mayor of this city for having plead with them to clean up the cesspools in this city. Commissioner Adkison has said that he knew ot the growing agitation down in "Niggertown" some time ago and that he and the Chief’of Police went down and told the negroes that if anything started they would be responsible.
     That is first class conversation but rather weak action.
     Well, the bad niggers started it. The public would now like to know: why wasn’t it prevented? Why were these niggers not made to feel the
force of the law and made to respect the law? Why were not the violators of the law in "Niggertown" arrested’? Why were they allowed to go on in many ways defying the law? Why? Mr. Adkison, why?     The columns of The Tribune are open to Mr. Adkison for any explanation he may wish to make.
     These bad niggers must now be held, and, what is more, the dope selling and booze selling and gun collecting must STOP. The police commissioner, who has not the ability or the willingness to find what a preacher can find and who WON'T stop it when told of it, but merely whitewashes himself and talks of "knocking chairwarmers" had better be asked to resign by an outraged city.

Tulsa Tribune, June 4, 1921

Negro Tells How Others Mobilized

     The first inside story of what happened in the negro quarter just prior to the time armed bands of blacks swooped down upon the court house and paraded the streets of the business district was told today by O.W. Gurley, one of the wealthiest negroes in Tulsa, who estimates his property loss from fire on Greenwood avenue at close to $150,000. Gurley declares that the belligerent negroes established headquarters at the plant of the Tulsa Star, published by A.J. Smitherman, early in the evening, assembled ammunition there in large quantities and sent runners hurriedly to all parts of the negro section to round up their forces and bring guns along...