National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I would like to ask this body for just a moment to remember something that there are probably many people who have never heard of for the first time because, for whatever reason, a bit of America's past seemed to just disappear from memory as soon as it occurred. Let me take us back almost 100 years for a moment.
The summer of 1919 was commonly referred to after the fact as the ``Red Summer.'' The Red Summer included race riots all over America, White-on-Black riots specifically. There were White individuals moving into Black neighborhoods and devastating those communities. That happened in Charleston, SC; Long View, TX; Bisbee, AZ; Norfolk, VA; Chicago; Washington, DC; Elaine, AR; Knoxville, TN; Omaha, NE; and many other places. Scattered around the country, one after another, month after month, those race riots moved.
As World War I veterans--at that time, we called it the Great War--as those veterans returned home, many looking for jobs--and the anxiety that rose up from that--as many Black Americans who had bravely fought in World War I pursued jobs and were unable to get them or were hated by Whites because some of these Black individuals came home and took some of the jobs that they were ``entitled to,'' the tensions began to rise across the country. It burst out into riots.
Oklahoma was mostly spared from that in 1919 and in 1920, but on May 30 of 1921, a young man named Dick Rowland who worked downtown, an African-American gentleman, was 19 years old. He was actually shining shoes in downtown Tulsa, which, if you have ever been to Tulsa and if you have missed it--if you have never been there, you need to go. It is an absolutely beautiful town. If you can ever see the pictures of what Tulsa looked like in the 1920s, you would be astounded. It was an oil boom town. Oil was discovered all around Tulsa, and people came from all over the country. Most of those individuals around Tulsa who put in oil wells suddenly became rich, and Tulsa became a wealthy community extremely rapidly. The architecture and history of it is beautiful. But, like every other town in Oklahoma in the 1920s, it was also segregated by law.
The Northern District of Tulsa at that time was called the Greenwood District, just north of downtown. It was an incredibly prosperous community. In fact, African Americans from around the country moved to Tulsa because there were doctors and lawyers and businesses, grocery stores, department stores. It became a very wealthy community because some individuals lived in Greenwood and worked in Tulsa, which was a fast-growing, wealthy city.
Also, there was great freedom within the Greenwood District. Oddly enough, the segregation that was required in Oklahoma at the time also caused Greenwood to grow because many African Americans could not buy groceries or could not go to certain restaurants or go into certain businesses or department stores in Tulsa. So when those businesses opened up in Greenwood and the population continued to grow, it became a fast-growing city as well. In fact, it was nicknamed the Black Wall Street of America. That community was extremely well educated, had many World War I veterans who had come home, many businesses and entrepreneurs. It became known as a place where Blacks could come from around the country and start businesses, grow businesses, and grow into prosperity. I would love to be able to show you all the homes and the places--what that looked like in the 1920s. It was a beautiful district.
I will get back to my story about Dick Rowland. Working downtown in Tulsa--most buildings in downtown Tulsa would not allow a Black man to go to the bathroom there, but the Drexel Building would, so he would go to the Drexel Building to go to the restroom. He would go on the elevator because the restroom he was allowed to use was on an upper floor. That particular day, on May 30, 1921, he got into the elevator, and the elevator operator was a 17-year-old young lady, a White lady named Sarah Page. The elevator doors closed. As they got to the upper floor, they got off. At that point, Sarah Page screamed. To this day, we don't know why. We don't know if there was an altercation. We don't know if Dick Rowland bumped her and she screamed. We don't know if she was just scared, and we don't know why. But a friend heard her scream, came running, saw Dick Rowland stepping out of the elevator, and accusations started immediately. Within 24 hours, the police arrested Dick Rowland and took him to the courthouse and the jail in downtown Tulsa.
By the time the afternoon paper had been released on May 31, 1921, the word was out that a young African-American male had raped a White female in the elevator at the Drexel Building, and a mob began to form outside of the courthouse. That mob gathered around. They say it started out with around 100 and then quickly grew to 200.
The sheriff in Tulsa, understanding the threat there of this mob gathering around the building calling for Dick Rowland to be delivered to the mob, immediately turned off the elevator in the courthouse building and put up armed guards in every staircase around that building to not allow any of the people from the mob to get into the building, to try to get upstairs, and to be able to get Dick Rowland out. But the mob continued to grow outside that building. I understand that by the end of that day, it was now approaching over 1,000.
Not far away from there at all, the men who lived in the Greenwood District heard that the mob was gathering. As I mentioned before, many of them were World War I veterans. They loaded up with their weapons and went to the courthouse to offer their assistance to the sheriff to be an additional armed guard there.
The sheriff denied it, said they had the situation well in hand, and turned the men away. As the mob continued to grow and continued to press the sheriff, the men returned and said: You need our help here. We do not want a lynch mob in our city. We have all heard what had happened in other cities just a year ago. We don't want that happening here.
The sheriff again turned them away and said: You are not needed here; we have the situation at hand.
But as the men left that second time, some White men in the crowd confronted some of the African-American men as they left. There was a struggle as one of the White men tried to take away the guns from the African-American men and a shot was fired.
The rest of it was chaos. Many of the African-American men headed back to the Greenwood District as quickly as they could as that mob turned into a riot. They pursued them back to the Greenwood District of Tulsa. It was not far away, literally just on the other side of the tracks from downtown Tulsa. They pursued them back into the Greenwood District and started a massive riot the evening of May 31.
The police, trying to quell this massive riot that broke out, immediately deputized many White men who were gathered around downtown Tulsa, gave them weapons, and told them to go arrest as many Black people as they could to stop the riot.
They ran into the Greenwood District and shootings began all over the Greenwood area. Many African-American men--the numbers are up over the thousands--were arrested, dragged into Tulsa, and were put in temporary detention facilities there and held, which left the Greenwood District completely unprotected.
Looters and rioters moved through that part of Tulsa all throughout the night and into the next morning, literally looting every home, looting every business, doctor's office, grocery store, and department store--looting each one of them and burning them to the ground. By the time the National Guard arrived the next day to try to stop the riot, almost every building, home, and business--everything in a 1-mile square that was the Greenwood District before--was completely destroyed.
It makes you wonder what happened then. It is estimated that over 300 people died that night in Tulsa. No one was ever charged with a crime.
Dick Rowland, whom I mentioned before, was released from jail because no charges were ever pressed against him. Sarah Page never pressed charges against him.
Insurance companies refused to pay the African-American businesses that were burned to the ground. They walked away.
What happened next is even more surprising to me. I am not surprised that many African-American individuals who lived in the Greenwood District left. I don't blame them, but most everyone stayed. They literally rebuilt their homes by living in tents for a year.
The American Red Cross moved in and helped build wood platforms where there used to be homes so that tents could be built in that spot and people could live there while they rebuilt their own home and rebuilt their own businesses. One by one they rebuilt.
Mount Zion Baptist Church had just been finished a few months before that and had a $50,000 mortgage on it. No one walked away from that church. They rebuilt that church, and they repaid the $50,000 mortgage that was owed from before. Block by block, individuals started rebuilding Greenwood.
By the 1940s, and given all the struggles that had happened, it never fully recovered to what it was before. What is also fascinating about it is that the State of Oklahoma quietly ignored what happened that day. Most folks growing up in Oklahoma have never even heard of the Tulsa race riot. In many ways, the Tulsa race riot is kind of like that uncle you know in your family who ended up in jail and at Christmas no one talks about. Everyone kind of knows they are out there, but you never discuss them. That was the Tulsa race riot for Oklahomans for a very long time, until just a couple of decades ago, when the conversation quietly started again about a very difficult part of our history.
So 95 years ago this week, the worst race riot in American history broke out in Tulsa, OK. In 5 years the entire country will pause and look at Oklahoma and will ask a very good question: What has changed in 100 years? What have we learned in 100 years?
I would say a few things. I would say we can remember. There is great honor to be able to say to people: We have not forgotten about what happened. We have not ignored it. We have not swept it under the rug and pretended it never happened. We remember.
I think there is great honor in that. We can recognize there is more to be done and that we can't just say: You know what; that was then, and this is now. There is more to be done.
Our own racial challenges and what has happened in the country just over the past few years remind us again that we don't have legal segregation any more, but we still have our own challenges as a nation. We still need to have a place in the Nation where every person of every background has every opportunity. It is right for us. We can respect the men and women who lived, worked, died, and rebuilt. We can pour respect on those individuals who are still working to rebuild.
These are people such as Donna Jackson, who is leading a group that she calls the North Tulsa 100 who say that by the time we get to the 100th anniversary just 5 years from now, there will be 100 new businesses in the Greenwood area. The jewel of Black Wall Street was the number of businesses, entrepreneurs, and family businesses that were there. Donna Jackson and the group that is around her--business leaders, church leaders, individuals from the area, family members, and some of them even connected to the survivors of the riot itself--are all committed to what they can do to reestablish the business community again in Greenwood and North Tulsa and not looking just for Black businesses, but businesses--period. They wish to reengage a community that is still scarred years later and to be able to have some respect for those folks who run the cultural center at John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park and the individuals who are willing to talk about it in a way that is open, honest, and not accusatory. But my fourth ``r,'' after remember, recognize and respect, is reconciliation. What are we going to do as a nation to make sure that we are reconciled?
This simple speech on this floor is not going to reconcile our Nation. We have for years said this is something we need to talk about. Quite frankly, we do need to talk about it, but we also need to do something about it. What can we do to make sure that our children do not grow up in a nation that forgets its past but also to make sure it is not repeated again and to make sure that all individuals are recognized and respected and that every person has the same opportunity. There is no simple answer, but I bring to this body a story that I think is important for us to talk about--the worst race riot in American history, in my State, and in all of our States.
I bring to us a question. Five years from now, we as a nation will talk about this even more when it is the 100-year anniversary. Who are we as a nation? How far have we come, and what do we have left to do to make sure that we really are one Nation under God, indivisible?
With that, I yield back the remainder of my time.
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