[HPFGU-OTChatter] Tulsa (was: Oppression, Racism and Other Happy Things)

[Sheryll Townsend]

--- Ebony <ebonyink at hotmail.com> wrote:
> What Lisa is referring to is the Tulsa riot in 1921,
> during which 
> just about the entire black business district was
> burned to the 
> ground.  Estimated deaths--300.  Estimated
> injuries--800.
> 
> But the thing is, back in the Golden Age of American
> history Tulsa 
> happened over and over again.  It happened in
> Rosewood, a place about 
> 50 miles away from where my mother's family is from.
>  It happened in 
> a town in Alabama that my grandfather would never
> name, when he was 
> three years old.  It happened time and time again.
> 
> What gets me is that our nation chooses to amplify
> Watts 1965, 
> Detroit 1967, and L.A. 1992.  This is why the word
> "riot" now 
> connotes an out-of-control, angry sea of black
> faces.
> 
> "Riot" used to mean something altogether different. 
> And it looked a 
> whole lot different too.  
> 
> We choose to silence Wilmington 1898, Atlanta 1906,
> St. Louis 1917, 
> Chicago 1919, Tulsa 1921, Rosewood 1922, Detroit
> 1922 and 1943... and 
> I could go on.  I would wager that only a handful of
> Americans know 
> about the Red Summer of 1919, when my
> great-grandfather and thousands 
> of other black men (mostly servicemen returning from
> WWII) were 
> lynched.  Damage claims?  Wrongful death suits? 
> Whatever.
> 
> The problem is that people know next to nothing
> about what was going 
> on in black America after Reconstruction and before
> the Second World 
> War.  Few know about the Exodusters, about the
> number of business and 
> cultural districts when building the nation's
> highway system, about 
> all-black townships whose biggest problem was
> digging a new well.  
> Writer Zora Neale Hurston grew up in one of these
> towns.
> 
> What I liken this to is the practice of obliterating
> records in 
> ancient times.  

<much snippage of second half of Ebony's post>

I'll be the first person to publically admit to
ignorance regarding almost everything you mentioned.
Any possibility you could point me in the direction of
some information that would educate me? The only one
you mentioned that I know anything about is Rosewood,
and my knowledge there comes only from a handful of
articles and the movie.

Sheryll, always willing to delve into a stack of books
or anything else that will provide me with a better
education

****
Currently reading: The Holocaust Chronicle: A History
in Words and Pictures (the book my daughter asked for
and was given for her 18th birthday)
****

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