This horrific incident has been well documented, everywhere: from YouTube videos of survivor interviews to PBS Lesson Plans for school teachers. Please do your Google diligence:
From May 30 to June 1, 1921, white citizens of Tulsa bombed burned and shot up the “Little Africa” section of Tulsa FOR 18 HOURS STRAIGHT
Why would they do that? That same old lame excuse, a Black man supposedly did something to a white woman. But the real reason was ECONOMIC JEALOUSY. Whites may have called it Little Africa derisively, but there is a reason that Black Tulsa is known as Black Wall Street
In addition to the 300 Blacks killed, and over 1,000 residential homes burned to the ground, also destroyed were:
The Mt. Zion Baptist Church and five other churches; the Gurley Hotel, Red Wing Hotel, and Midway Hotel; the Tulsa Star and Oklahoma Sun newspaper offices; Dunbar Elementary School; Osborne Monroe’s Roller-Skating Rink; the East End Feed Store; the Y.M.C.A. Cleaners; the Dreamland Theater; a drug store, barbershop, banquet hall, several grocery stores, dentists, lawyers, doctors, and realtors offices; a U.S. Post Office Substation, as well the all-black Frissell Memorial Hospital. All told, marauding gangs of savage whites destroyed 40-square-blocks of Black economic and entrepreneurial prosperity!
64 years after the first bombing of an American city was committed against the Black residents of Tulsa… the second bombing of an American city took place in Philadelphia when the city bombed the black members of the MOVE organization. (see the blackourstory archive for details).
Isn’t it a shame that 76 after the bombing of Tulsa, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, most historically illiterate Americans - including American “journalists” - responded as if it were the first time such a horror had been visited on Oklahoma. If only we knew.
While there are many lessons to be drawn from this, a few questions that stick out to me are these:
If the answer to Black second-class treatment from whites in America is supposedly to become the ultimate American capitalists…the ‘model minorities’… how do you explain Tulsa 1921?
For those Black folk who think that the sole answer to Black people’s problems is simply more Blacks becoming business owners and more Blacks spending money with other Blacks… how did that work out for our people in Tulsa in ‘21?
Considering not only Tulsa, but Rosewood, Florida, and many other thriving all-Black towns that you may know of that all met the same fate at the hands of murderous, envious, lazy crackers… WHEN ARE WE GOING TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND TAKE SERIOUSLY THE IDEA THAT BLACK WEALTH (ESPECIALLY ALL-BLACK WEALTH) WILL NEED TO BE PROTECTED WITH PHYSICAL FORCE?
There is a reason that Marcus Garvey AND Elijah Muhammad had armies of trained Black men as a huge part of their organizations. Many of us Black folk took those great men as jokes, yet NO BLACK LEADERS SINCE THOSE TWO have reached the same heights of economic and ideological success and unity of Black people.
Not only do we need to LEARN THIS HISTORY, we need to start taking these events men and movements MORE SERIOUSLY, and doing some CRITICAL HISTORICAL ANALYSIS if we are ever to stop being on the bottom rung of every metric in American life. Not just some casual or accidental reading of history; some CRITICAL. HISTORICAL. ANALYSIS.
We’ve had many examples before us, but were often too undisciplined or brainwashed or lazy to follow them. Shame on us. If even one-fourth of the people who claimed to love Brother Malcolm in his day had at least one-tenth of Malcolm’s discipline, he might not have needed to hire an FBI Agent named Gene Roberts whom he didn’t have time to scrutinize properly beforehand, because all the Black folks who gassed him up to leave the Nation of Islam and who joined Brother Malcolm’s MMI were too damned undisciplined and untrained IN ANYTHING USEFUL TO PROTECTING BLACK PEOPLE to even serve as proper security for him. Read it again, in context of this entire post, and let it marinate.
AMERICA NEEDS TO PAY US WHAT THEY OWE FOR ALL OF THIS TORTURE ROBBERY AND MURDER that they’ve visited on us since they brought our people here as captives and bred us for profit.
TULSA 1921 was real. PHILLY 1985 was real. Will it happen again?
If you haven’t already done it…. Go hit that reblog button. Do what you have to, just do that too.
Like seriously. Just find one and reblog it real quick. I post a couple yesterday and put into the universe that I actually wanted it
Only been at work for a couple and I get this at as a tip! (tips ain’t normal at ALL in here)
Come on now!!
Let it work for y’all too
YALL!! THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASE!! (I don’t know how your bank account is set up, but $55 dollars in tips counts as a blessing over here!)
*sending out money blessing vibes to y’all*
Counting my blessing and they total up to $60 today. (Got another $5 tip not too long ago)
Today was good. Im trying to maintain this same energy all this week to see what will come of it
I don’t care, I ain’t playin. Imma need one of these damn thangs to work, now.
I might as well not reblogging aint gone put money in my pocket
Let the universe know what you want
Cash app $drinabee if you tryna bless me
That works too I guess 😂😂 #BeTheBlessing
I mean if someone would like to bless a struggling college student, mine $neshao and I have Venmo 👀
Same if somebody wanna help me out $camjam21 😌
cash app me my birthday next year january $EzekielCrawford
gone be thirty and im scared help every dollar helps
Somebody sent $20 for my graduation 🎓 Saturday, cash app $drinabee if you want to donate too
Yo I reblogged that goat one and I ended up getting 27 dollars in my back account cause I got a refund on a sex toy that didnt work the day after i reblogged that shit
😂💀 blessings come in every shape and form
Exactly mine was just unconventional 😂
always taking donations $ChanteEunan
Tryna start burlesque dancing and i need cute shit $noeyyyy