Funny how Pam doesn’t mention the date is more than just close to Juneteenth it is also the date a bunch of white [Democrats, by and large] in Tulsa rioted when their lynch mob, seeking to deny an accused teenager his due process, confronted Tulsa police, and when a number of armed black men including a number of WW1 veterans showed up to assist in defending the court house, the white mob rioted for some 18 hrs, destroying the mostly black neighborhood of Greenwood. By some estimates the white mob massacred up to 300 blacks and at least 10 whites, leaving a huge number of people with burned out homes. At the time the victims would have been mostly Republican.
***lynch mob, seeking to deny an accused teenager his due process,***
A few months before this, a Tulsa lynch mob hanged a WHITE TEEN AGE BOY accused of murder.
There were crazy people on both sides, and WW1 vets on both sides and, to be honest. 300 blacks dead is not substantiated. More like 26 vs 13, with 10 white and 2 black killed at the courthouse where over 2,000 people had gathered. Over the years there have been several ground-penetrating radar surveys and no ‘mass graves’ have ever been found. The nat’l guard was onsite by 9am, while the town was still burning, so there was no opportunity for any such gravedigging to have occurred.
A black contingent showed up to the city jail first, demanding that the boy be better protected, but were talked into leaving after the sheriff moved and barracaded the teen inside the top floor of the courthouse. White folk heard about the black group, and a white contingent showed up. Seeing armed blacks, they went home and got their arms, too, but when they came back, the black contingent was already gone. The sheriff had about talked them into going home by 9:30pm when the black contingent returned. A white man insisted a black man give up his weapon, there was a struggle, the weapon went off and killed the white man, and it was on. Besides a gunbattle at the courthouse, where most of the casualties occurred, blacks were driving around the Tulsa neighborhood firing at random, killing G.W. Daggs about 10pm. Which brought out the KKK.
A group of militant blacks led by drug dealer and ne’r do well, Will Robertson, met at the Gurley Hotel and started stockpiling weapons. About 1am, a fire started on Archer Street. Both sides shot up fire trucks, stockpiled ammo started exploding, and, with 95% of the housing being poorly-constructed wood frames, blocks burned quickly, helped along by looters, eventually burning 35 blocks. The sheriff concentrated on evacuating some 6,000 people from Greenwood. Blacks who were employed by Tulsa residents fled to those homes for protection. An arriving train was shot up by both sides, thinking it carried reinforcements for the other. A white man was shot at the Travis station around 5am. A group of 4 whites drove down Travis shooting up storefronts in response but were shot dead before reaching the end of the block. Whites responded by setting fire to more homes. As fires raged, cropdusters took to the sky although it is argueable whether some actually threw ‘turpentine balls’ or ‘dynamite’ or were just sight-seeing. A year later, $100K raised by Tulsans helped rebuild 85 of the 175 businesses and 2 years later 200 black businesses flourishing.
The town failed for two reasons: wealth brought wanderlust for greener pastures, and desegregation laws allowed whites for the first time to open businesses in Greenwood, which blacks resented and boycotted, spending over 90% of black income outside of Greenwood.
sourcing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre