Death in a Promised Land by Scott Ellsworth (Review)
Like many people my age, I did not learn about the Tulsa massacre when I was growing up. I tucked Dr. Scott Ellsworth’s book, Death in a Promised Land on my reading list and it seemed like a fitting choice during Black History Month. Dr. Ellsworth is a history professor at the University of Michigan, but he approaches the subject of Tulsa’s Greenwood District like a journalist, unpacking layer after layer to unfold the story. The result is a quick yet informative pace, and I recommend Death in a Promised Land for anyone who is looking to learn more about Tulsa’s 1921 tragedy.
Here are some of the points I learned and found interesting from Dr. Ellsworth’s book:
Ellsworth gave a helpful blend of personal stories accompanied with a historian’s description of the Greenwood District in Tulsa. 1,000 homes were destroyed in the 1921 riot, including the entire Greenwood District. Further, Ellsworth noted that Tulsa was not a unique occurrence, and similar attacks happened from coast to coast with a heavy concentration in 1919 (known as Red Summer). The two year stretch from 1917 to 1919 brought some of the largest and most widespread race riots in U.S. history. Lynchings, burning at the stake, and other barbarisms occurred against black Americans. Tulsa was a culminating event.
Tulsa experienced incredible growth in conjunction with the oil boom. The city’s 1909 business directory listed 126 oil companies in the city. The combination of oil and agriculture prompted the city to became one of the largest in the southwest in a staggeringly short amount of time. When statehood arrived in 1910, the black population was 10% and the city included black Tulsans worked in fields throughout the entire city. Despite the growth and elements of integration, the strength of segregation led to a concentrated area known “Black Tulsa.”
In addition to describing race-based attacks across the United States, Ellsworth described three events that set the stage for the 1921 race riots. They were:
The 1917 bombing of the home of J. Edgar Pew, a wealthy oilman, which was pinned on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW was a labor union with anarchist branches within its ranks. The Tulsa World claimed the bombing was part of an IWW plot, and the paper responded by encouraging vigilantism to flush out the culprits. This helped normalize violence by the citizenry.
The March 17, 1919 shooting of iron worker O.W. Leonard led to his death but also a dying statement that two black men had shot him. Three black men were arrested, and after the funeral, rumors circulated of a mob converging to lynch the defendants. A group of armed black men went to the jail to confirm their safety and tensions briefly faded. Yet soon after, a white armed group was threatening black Tulsans. No violence erupted, but Ellsworth points to this event as an indicator on how tense race relations were.
Event #3 occurred on August 1, 1920 when a white cabbie, Homer Nida, was hired and clubbed on his head, then shot and robbed. Before dying, Nida identified Roy Belton, a white man, as his murderer. The police then stood by and oversaw a lynching of Belton as a large crowd of hundreds watched the event. The events combined to normalize mob law.
Dick Rowland was a 19-year-old shoeshiner, whose arrest prompted the race riot. Rowland was riding up an elevator that was operated by a 17-year-old girl, Sarah Page. The record of what happened is conflicting. A clerk said he observed Rowland assaulting Page. Rowland claimed he tripped and fell into Page. Page declined to prosecute, but Rowland’s arrest began a chain of events that culminated with the destruction of the Greenwood District.
Rowland was arrested the next day, and a white crowd gathered at the jail where he was being held. This mob prompted a rumor that they had lynched Rowland, which led to a black mob gathering. Shots were fired, and everything spiraled with a group of rioters invading the Greenwood District. The results were total devastation.
Death estimates range from 27 to 75 to 175+. Here is the evidence for higher numbers. Funeral we’re banned in the city after the riot because churches were being used for homeless shelters. Further, gravediggers hired in the subsequent days billed for 120 graves for buried victims and further records of people incinerated during the numerous fires in Greenwood. The property estimates include figures from the Tulsa Real Estate Exchange, which tallied $1.5 million, with a large percentage in the Greenwood business district. They also estimated $750k in personal-property losses. Irrespective of the estimates, even the most conservative estimates should shock the conscience. As David French once wrote, we should undoubtedly remember the greatness in American history—the courage and virtue of our heroes. Yet “if it is right to celebrate, it is also right to mourn…Unless we remember our worst moments, we simply can’t truly understand our own nation, nor can we relate to all its people.” History let us connects us to the past and helps us understand today, but it also helps us shape the future. The Tulsa Massacre is a history we should not forget.
One of the most frustrating elements of the Tulsa Race Riot is how skeletal the story is. There is a clear record of devastating evil, by any estimate. Yet the details are surprisingly murky. Alva J. Niles, President of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, made the following statement after the riot: “Tulsa feels intensely humiliated, and standing in the shadow of this great tragedy, pledges it’s every effort to wiping out the stain at the earliest possible moment and punishing those guilty of bringing the disgrace of disaster to this city.” Niles also promised to make proper restitution and order to the city, yet the nature of the history and its decades of the story remaining a veritable secret of American history suggests the focus was more on alleviated the humiliation and stain rather than healing the wound. There are records of relief offers pouring in from across the country, and the city instead set a policy that “Tulsa was responsible for the disaster and Tulsa would bear the burden.” Thus outsiders largely stayed outside during the riot aftermath. This meant no outside oversight as the city moved forward. One can’t help but suspect that moving forward in such a manner left Tulsa’s victims in a far lesser place.
Death in a Promised Land is an excellent primer by Dr. Ellsworth, and I recommend the book as a quick and informative read. Too often when I read about the early 20th century, the focus is on WWI, but the beauty of history is that there is always more to explore, and this subject is one that deserves grappling. To continue David French’s theme, remembering both the greatness and the evils of history “gives us the motivation and the inspiration necessary to repair our land.”
