February 5, 2000
Panel Recommends Reparations in Long-Ignored Tulsa Race Riots
By JIM YARDLEY
ULSA, Okla., Feb. 4 -- Nearly 80 years after this city erupted in what many historians regard as the nation's bloodiest race riot, a state commission today recommended reparations be made to the aged black survivors who watched as people were shot, burned alive or tied to cars and dragged to death.
The preliminary findings of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission are expected to provoke a contentious debate in the Oklahoma Legislature, which convenes on Monday. The Legislature created the commission more than two years ago to investigate a massacre long obscured in history. But the issue of reparations is controversial. Many lawmakers oppose any payments, and recent polls suggest that a majority of residents share that opinion.
A final decision on reparations may be many months away, at best, and the commission did not estimate their cost. The Legislature must first decide whether to extend the life of the commission, whose term expires on Monday even though it has not completed a final report. But the commission's 7-to-4 vote in favor of reparations was a firm statement that advocates hope will lend moral weight to helping the riot's survivors.
"The Legislature may not do what we think is the right thing," said Dr. Vivian N. Clark, a commission member. "But the world is looking at them, so whatever they do will reflect on the state of Oklahoma."
The riot occurred in 1921, and while 40 deaths have been documented, the commission's historian, Scott Ellsworth, has said that interviews and records indicate that the actual death toll could be as high as 300 people. In justifying reparations, the commission noted that the attack far surpassed the 1923 massacre in Rosewood, Fla., in which whites destroyed the small town and killed at least six black residents. In 1994, the Florida Legislature provided up to $2 million to compensate survivors. The commission also noted that Congress authorized $1 billion to revitalize south-central Los Angeles after the 1992 riots.
The workings of the Race Riot Commission have sparked a remarkable and often uncomfortable period of introspection in Oklahoma. For decades, the riots were never publicly discussed in Tulsa, nor mentioned in classrooms or textbooks. Many younger residents had no idea that thousands of whites burned the city's once prosperous black community to the ground.
But the commission has collected thousands of documents, many found in attics or dusty file rooms. More than 1,000 elderly people have called with information, and investigators have found 80 survivors, many of them elderly and infirm. The commission's plans to excavate a section of a city cemetery in search of a mass grave of riot victims was postponed by Tulsa city officials last week because of bad weather and information that suggested they might be looking in the wrong place.
Two commission members, State Senator Robert V. Milacek and State Representative Abe Deutschendorf, voted against the reparations resolution because they did not think the wording should suggest that the state, unlike the city of Tulsa, bears any culpability for the massacre. Mr. Milacek said many lawmakers are likely to oppose reparations for fear that allowing them could establish a precedent for other communities to seek redress for past injustices.
"Where does it end?" said Mr. Milacek, a Republican who said he had agonized over the issue and considered the riot a blight on the state's history.
Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican, has endorsed direct reparations to survivors but expressed skepticism about broader payments. In today's meeting, the commission recommended, among other things, direct payments to survivors and descendants of those killed, scholarships for students in the Greenwood district where the riot occurred, the creation of an economic empowerment zone and a monument memorializing the event.
Last November, a subcommittee of the Race Riot Commission recommended that $33 million be paid in reparations, an amount that stunned the public. But today, the commission intentionally did not recommend a dollar amount, deferring that responsibility to lawmakers. However, the preliminary report that will be presented next week does mention a figure of $12 million.
State Representative Don Ross, a Democrat who represents the Greenwood neighborhood where the riot occurred, said he did not want the Legislature to consider voting on reparations until a final report was drafted. Mr. Ross plans to introduce a bill next week to reauthorize the commission, and he said a final report will better establish the historical record and more firmly determine culpability.
"I can't help but believe that if a compelling document is delivered that the attitude of the Legislature will change," Mr. Ross said. He added, "There is no statute of limitations on a moral obligation."
Alfred L. Brophy, an Oklahoma City University law professor who researched the issue for the commission, said there was compelling legal and moral justification for reparations, even though the historical record was incomplete. He said preliminary research indicated that city officials not only failed to protect the lives of black residents but also contributed to the riot by deputizing many members of the white mob that attacked Greenwood. He also noted that promises to rebuild Greenwood were never fulfilled.
The commission was created in 1997 by a law written by Mr. Ross, for whom the attack has been a defining crusade. The commission is led by Bob L. Blackburn, the chairman of the state historical society and includes state lawmakers, historians, at least one survivor of the riots and others with ties to the area. One survivor who has served as an adviser to the commission is the historian John Hope Franklin, who was a child at the time of the riot.
Mr. Ross learned about the riot when a teacher mentioned it to him as a young boy. He was infuriated and incredulous at the story. In segregated Tulsa, the Greenwood community once had been a thriving black business and residential district. It was nicknamed the "Negro Wall Street" and was home to 15,000 people and 191 businesses. On the morning of May 30, 1921, a black shoe-shiner named Dick Rowland and a white elevator operator named Sarah Page had an encounter inside an elevator at the Drexel Building on Main Street. Exactly what happened is not known, though the commission suggested that Mr. Rowland may have accidentally brushed against Ms. Page. But a scream was heard, and Mr. Rowland was eventually arrested on a rape charge. He was released when Ms. Page refused to press charges.
But the fuse for the riot had been lit. A white-owned newspaper, The Tulsa Tribune, published an article with the headline, "To Lynch Negro Tonight." On May 31, an armed white mob arrived at the courthouse to carry out the lynching. They were met by blacks who had arrived to protect Mr. Rowland, and an ensuing gunfight claimed several lives.
The fight moved across the railroad tracks into Greenwood after Tulsa police deputized a large number of whites, many of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The commission's final report is expected to detail what happened but this much is known: whites set fire to buildings and homes, ultimately looting and burning more than 1,200 structures. Klansmen reportedly raged through the streets shooting people. Survivors told of corpses stacked onto wagons and trucks.
In the years that followed, the promised rebuilding of Greenwood never happened. Instead, insurance companies refused to pay fire policies, citing special riot exemptions. Whites ultimately took over much of the land. Today, Greenwood is the site of the Oklahoma State University-Tulsa campus, where the commission held its meeting.
In the audience, made up mostly of reporters, a few survivors had come for the vote.
Annie Beaird, 86, recalled the sounds of bullets and the sight of black men rushing to defend their neighborhood. Ms. Beaird, who breathed through an oxygen tube and was in a wheelchair, said reparations are appropriate since her family's four-room house was destroyed.
"I think they should give us something," she said. "We lost everything we had."