The Borders of Black History

Black history is often regarded as primarily a matter of race or skin color, whereas Latino and Asian American history are about borders. But I tend to think that borders have played an important role in African American history too: the plethora of borders surrounding Colonial and Ante-Bellum America across which enslaved Americans could escape was a fear in the United States as much as in Jamaica and the other slave territories. Enslaved Americans fleeing across the North-South border marked by the Mason-Dixon line and always free and emancipated African Americans kidnapped and taken south across that border thanks to the Fugitive Slave Act.

That border (or something like it) and another persisted after emancipation and through segregation: the Great Migration north, across the former Mason-Dixon line, and another migration west, to what Ralph Ellison called “the promised land” of “Indian Territory,” some of which is Oklahoma. The response was a series of violent white-on-black “pogroms” that swept through the Mid-West—East St. Louis, Chicago, Omaha, and Greenwood (Tulsa), Oklahoma. I’m most familiar with the last of these, having had the amazing fortune to have met some of the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot—at the time the youngest was 82 and the oldest 101. And what strikes me most about that case (I just presented a talk about it at my daughter’s school today) was the treatment of these thousands of internal migrants, burned out of their houses, 3,000 of whom fled the city, the other 2,000 of whom were forced to camp out the autumn and winter in Red Cross tents; and the misuse of a Grand Jury to indict African American community leaders, while the police and 500 armed and deputized white rioters got off scot free.

The Riot was precipitated by some incident between a teenage African American youth and a white woman in a hotel elevator (he bumped into her; they were secretly lovers and had a quarrel). After police took the man, Dick Rowland, into custody, a crowd of whites appeared downtown and a group of African Americans, aware that there had recently been a spate of lynchings, went, armed, to the jail to offer their help to the Sheriff. There was a melée, and a white man was shot. That night, the police, national guard, and 500 civilians deputized by the police and armed from the local armory, fought with the recently demobilized African Americans protecting Greenwood. By morning, the whites prevailed and a crowd of people burned 35 city blocks and over 1,100 houses.

It’s hard to describe some of the pictures of the Riot, especially those that appear to be taken on the morning of June 1. Rows of neatly parked Model-T Fords stand in line just outside Greenwood, and men and women in straw boater hats and their Sunday best promenade up and down while fire spews out in the background. Postcards with legends such as “Running the Negro Out of Tulsa” were made and sent—a feature of lynchings and violence against African Americans throughout the period. These pictures depict a wasteland reminiscent of a war zone: burned out houses as far as the eye can see, families picking over their belongings for a few meagre scraps. 

The Riot was, I think, in part the result of demagoguery about who America really belongs to, and the necessity of ridding the country of these internal migrants. Oklahoma's push for statehood—for inclusion in the Union by expanding the border to the exclusion of African Americans—was also a factor. That, and the use of grand juries as a tool of oppression, not justice, have an all to familiar feel. The State of Oklahoma, for 80 years, denied the Riot even happened, and neglected all mention of it in its history books. Yet the riot is still the most devastating event in Oklahoma history outside of the Trail of Tears, claiming 300 lives and displacing thousands of people.

For those interested in a compelling history of the Riot, Alfred Brophy’s book, Reconstructing the Dreamland, is indispensable.