Tulsa

The Tulsa riot got back in the news lately with the pilot (and unauthorised) episode of The Watchmen. Fortunately - E;R was there to give a nuanced view, based on the facts as he had them.

I should disclose that I respect revisionists, as a rule. E;R, in his trolly way, has enlisted himself in our ranks. So let us discuss the conventional wisdom such as claims It was the worst spasm of racial violence in the history of the United States. And it has been largely ignored in history. Such are the words of Rick Moran. That means Moran is a revisionist too. He's just told us.

On hearing out Rick Moran, I have rated him dishonest. Oh, Moran is not "lying" - not exactly. But Moran is exaggerating for effect, at the very least.

First of all, if the Tulsa riot has been ignored, Moran has mooted no names of such historians in our age as are deliberately ignoring it. I can read Loewen just like Moran can. I've been hearing about Tulsa and about Colfax and about Rosewood all through the 1990s and beyond. The Left and the Black Israelists have an interest to keep these old sores open and bleeding. Moran is not the brave revisionist he claims to be.

Much has been made of Tulsa's white population having access to Air Support. I suppose the other side considers that unsporting; riots should be conducted on the ground. Even besides that this opinion is ludicrous; as E;R has pointed out, the Tulsa Air Force made little effect on the festivities. It's not as if 1920s-era crop dusters had smart-bombs; if they were bombing rioters it's even money they killed men on their own side, and buildings belonging to neutrals. I consider the best analogy to be whatever effect the Iraqi air-force had on ISIS. (Not taking sides on whether in 2011 Iraq's Shi'ite bigots were any better or worse than ISIS's Sunni bigots.)

If we are talking "worst", that is not a measurable claim. For body-count the riot in Wilmington, North Carolina 1898 deserves some space; as does Colfax. Certainly as far as long-term effect, these meant much more at their times than Tulsa meant in the 1920s.

And you'll note I've just discussed the "white" side so far. With Tulsa, Moran's sources have come from the black oral history. So it's fair that we hear out the white oral history.

flatland_onlooker

When we came to Oklahoma in 1971 there were still people alive who could tell their stories. I heard some of the tales [mainly that the black neighborhood was surrounded by armed whites, the neighborhood set on fire, and anyone who tried to escape was shot], but not from Tulsans. Investigations were initiated in 1996 under Governor Frank Keating, a Republican; Democrats held the state houses for 100 years, and the governorship for most of that.

If there were orders to deputies/patrolmen to open fire, then the government has liability - but good luck finding any historical record, signed orders, or witnesses.

Tex Taylor

I've lived in this town since 1966, one of the best kept secrets of good living in the U.S., and I've heard these stories for years, including my now deceased grandfather-in-law who actually witnessed the events while he was 24 years old. He worked in downtown Tulsa and was told to go home and get his gun.

Have you noticed each passing year, the story gets more and more egregious? It's only the last five years I've heard of these "rumors" of planes strafing the neighborhoods and the like. Now somebody wants to tell me that kind of information was just buried for 60 or 70 years?

I knew my GiL well, one of the most likable and honest good men I ever met. I find it hard to believe that planes strafing neighborhoods wouldn't have been remembered by Poppa - and he didn't pull any punches about what went down.

I think this was a race riot with both sides culpable, and then one side got their asses handed to them which quickly got out of control when people started dying on both sides. Each year, the tales grow a little more unbelievable, the demands a whole lot more expensive.

Now it's grown into little more than a shakedown of an entire city from a time in America that no longer exists. What it is beginning to do, predictably, is arouse suspicion and hatred on both sides once again.

It's led by a City Council with a grudge, a dying far left newspaper trying to stay relevant, and a pathetic, lily white city mayor who happens to be Republican with an incredibly lefty minded bent.

jsarver

i have also lived in Tulsa since 1966. There are all sorts of wild tales that have gone around for years, none of which have any evidence supporting them. There were multiple witnesses saying that a plane was somehow involved but their stories do not agree. I'm not sure how that morphed into strafing of fleeing women and children.

There was a race riot that required the National Guard to suppress. That is bad enough. Now it has been declared a "race massacre". There is no new evidence. Next thing you know it will be a genocide and the U.N. will get involved.

Tulsa had the lopsided bodycount it had because... one side won, and the other didn't. That isn't "massacre". That is defeat. Even if 200 men rioted and were killed in the process of this crime, then that's 200 men we're few of us going to miss - white or black or chartreuse. And if there are MASS GRAVES - again, we're talking about criminals. (The article is claiming 25' x 30' and maybe twenty men in this MASS GRAVE, by the way. And also: men. Not the women and children expected from an Ethnic Cleansing.)

This story is of interest to historians, yes. But it offers nothing of interest to modern politics or the Reparations Debate. Unless you're a self-aggrandising sneak with no loyalty to your own purported side - and (more unforgivably) with no interest in history. Unless you're Rick Moran. Unless you're Stephen Green.

Unless you're PJMedia. Good luck with getting any honest readers to spring past that paywall. But hey. Maybe Pierre Omidyar has some cash lying around.

RESTORED 12/18 6:30 PM MST - first version was rambly, and ranty, and not up to the Bagastan standard. Also I found some ahâdith I could use. But I was too tired at that point, so I stored it away. This version is, I think, better arranged and sourced.