Read on Twitter
The 1921 Tulsa race riots were actually a well-organized, pre-planned attack on Tulsa's Greenwood District, the ‘Black Wall Street of America’ in its day. Just as in the George Floyd riots this year, even the incident used to spark the violence was planned. https://twitter.com/apf_nyc/status/1340395720939991041
On the evening of May 30, the date that Memorial Day was honored at that time, 19-y.o. Dick Rowland, 17-y.o. Sarah Page, and a clothing-store clerk were in downtown Tulsa, at their places of employment. Historians do not have a clear explanation *why* they were at work that day.
Page was the elevator operator in the Drexel Building; the unnamed store clerk worked on that building's ground floor. Rowland was a shoeshiner working in a nearby building. The only restroom that Rowland was permitted to use was on the top floor of the Drexel Building.
The clerk allegedly heard a woman's scream, saw a black male run out of the building, and then ran to the elevator and saw that Ms. Page was distraught. He then called the police; they interviewed Page, but did not immediately search for and arrest Rowland.
Rowland and Page must have known each other, just as George Floyd and Derek Chauvin had previously worked together as security guards for a nightclub and must have met and known each other. The store clerk also must have known not only Page, but also Rowland, through their work.
Each of the jobs that these people held -- elevator operator, store clerk, shoeshiner, security guard, police officer -- is or was highly sought out by the Cabal for infiltration of [SURV] operatives, due to their ability to loiter in a location or engage others in conversation.
Both Rowland and Page also have unclear ancestry, and the first name and occupation Rowland chose for himself mirrored the 1867 novel ‘Ragged Dick’. Rowland survived the massacre, and left Tulsa soon after; the remainder of his life is unknown to history.
The Tulsa police department arrested Rowland on Greenwood Avenue the morning after the alleged incident, on May 31. Later that day, the Tulsa Tribune published a front-page article titled “Nab _____ for Attacking Girl In an Elevator”. (Not the six-letter word.)
The Tulsa Tribune also ran an editorial that afternoon. No printed copies are known to have survived, but those who lived through the event recall an article titled “To Lynch _____ Tonight”. (Again, not the six-letter word, but subject to censorship these days anyway.)
Rowland was arrested in the morning; by 3 PM, the Tribune had both a story and a longer editorial printed and distributed to the public. Even in our modern era, when a media outlet is able to respond to an event that quickly, it is a sign that the Cabal planned and caused it.
The destruction of these records is also notable: The newspaper's archives were microfilmed some time after the incident, but both a front-page article and most of the editorial page were torn out before microfilming. Tampering with historical records is a hallmark of the Cabal.
The Tulsa Police Department had been known for corruption, blackmail, witness intimidation, and other involvement with organized crime, including prostitution and fencing stolen vehicles. The Chief of Police was scum, and preyed on people of all races.
Yet the Tulsa PD sent one of its two black officers to participate in arresting Rowland, and at the first sign that he might be a target for lynching, they moved him to the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse, where he could be better protected.
The county sheriff and deputies were not so predatory. O. W. Gurley, the black landowner who had established the Greenwood District as a haven for blacks, had been made a sheriff's deputy, as had other black men respected by the Greenwood community.
The recently elected sheriff was determined to prevent Rowland from being lynched, as the 18-y.o. white Roy Belton had been the previous year. As a white mob began to form outside the courthouse, the sheriff protected Rowland, disabling the elevator and barricading the stairs.
Even though the sheriff's forces were outnumbered, the mob could not have reached Rowland to lynch him without taking heavy casualties. Yet the editor of the local black newspaper, the Tulsa Star, and other black community members, called for black men to ‘go downtown’, armed.
Deputy Gurley tried to prevent his community from entering the fray, as did black Okmulgee County Sheriff's Deputy Barney Cleaver, who used the telephone to monitor the sheriff's status. Despite their efforts, a roughly platoon-sized group of black men drove to the courthouse.
After the riots, Gurley and Cleaver identified the leader of this group of armed blacks as Will Robinson, a ‘dope peddler’, and stated that all of the men in that group were known troublemakers. Drug traffickers cannot operate without the aid of Cabal-owned law enforcement.
According to some accounts, the black men had been told that the sheriff explicitly requested their assistance. When they reached the courthouse, the sheriff denied this, and told them they were not needed. Falsified communications are another hallmark of Cabal activity.
In response to the sighting of an armed group of black men, some members of the white mob began to seek guns. Some went home, but a group of about 300-400 tried to break into the nearby National Guard Armory, more men than the units that armory was meant to equip.
The nearby National Guard Armory was aware that a lynch mob was forming at the courthouse, and had already sent word to the men of its two companies to prepare to respond to the situation. The officers at the armory turned the unarmed attackers away successfully.
At around 10 PM, another group of armed black men visited the courthouse, and offered their assistance to the sheriff; again, the sheriff turned them away. But this time, as the black men left, one of the white men approached and tried to disarm one of them, causing a gunshot.
Just as at the battle of Lexington and Concord, once the first shot had been fired, everyone on all sides opened fire. The black men retreated toward their Greenwood District; the white mob pursued them.
A few hundred white men who had participated in the lynch mob were sworn in as ‘Special Deputies’ of the Tulsa PD, and burglarized local gun stores for firearms and ammunition, under color of law. The store across the street from police headquarters was among those hardest hit.
At this point, the conflict became purely race-on-race; even once armed, the rioters did not make another serious attempt to obtain and lynch Rowland. Unfortunately, the all-white National Guard forces believed that the violence was a race riot started by the black population.
Arson attacks on the black neighborhoods in Tulsa began around 1 AM on June 1. As with the mass arson attacks after the George Floyd incident, armed rioters prevented firefighters from approaching their targets to extinguish or contain the fires.
At around dawn, 5-ish AM, a whistle or siren was sounded, and armed white men all around the area took that as a signal to begin a coordinated attack on the Greenwood District. This type of coordination indicates an organized force; in this context, it is another sign of Cabal.
An unknown number of airplanes -- note that if only a few had been used, the witnesses would have counted them reliably -- were used in support of the attacks on June 1. There were reports that these aircraft deployed ‘liquid fire’, gunfire, and dynamite bombings over Greenwood.
Also at around 5 AM on June 1, the Governor of Oklahoma sent about 100 National Guard troops by train from Oklahoma City toward Tulsa; these ‘State Troops’ arrived at around 9:15 AM, and their commanding General declared martial law at 11:29 AM.
Unlike the local National Guard units and Tulsa PD, who had joined in the massacre of the black population, the State Troops fought to restore order, disarming the white rioters and taking custody of black prisoners. By 8 PM, they had ended the violence.
Unfortunately, during the two-hour delay between the State Troops' arrival and their declaration of martial law, Tulsa PD officers continued to burn houses in the black neighborhoods, under the color of law, completing the destruction of the Greenwood District.
Estimates of the death toll vary. At one site, about 120 graves were dug and filled with black victims over the first two days after the massacre; other burial sites were used.
O. W. Gurley was financially ruined by the attack; his fate is unclear. According to B. C. Franklin, a black lawyer in Tulsa, he and his wife moved to South Los Angeles and ran a small hotel.
After the massacre, from the 1940s through 1971, those who discussed or documented the incident faced organized opposition -- denial that the event had happened, refusal to publish, harassment, and threats of harm. Others may have been killed for their research. Sound familiar?
