The Tragedy of the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre

Floor Speech

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York from illustrating, elaborating on, detailing, and bringing to the 21st century the horrors of the Tulsa race riots, calling it what it is and not being fearful of acknowledging the riotist and violent impact of the Tulsa race riots.

Madam Speaker, it is my honor to now continue the discussion on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus and my cochair of the Special Order hour, the Honorable Congressman Torres of New York.

Let me, first of all, thank our chair, Chairwoman Beatty, for matching her members with this process of ensuring that the history, the unbiased history of a people in all of our variations is told truthfully.

We, too, are Americans. The Tulsan residents of that time were Americans as well.

I am reminded of the early stages of my education. When Congressman Torres' history was the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, I could almost repeat that in my sleep, the three ships that came with Christopher Columbus. He was the founder of America--over and over again.

I'm not sure during the period of our early childhood and those of recent vintage learned anything of Native American history, Korean- American history, Japanese-American, Chinese-American, African- American, slavery. I don't know if our children in periods of the 20th century and now in the 21st century knew there was more history.

I do know that the past President wanted the Smithsonian, the African-American culture, to stop teaching about African history. I know that there was a challenge to the U.S. Department of Education by Minority Leader McConnell, to stop teaching the 1619 Project. It baffles me because I believe that, if a country or a people know its history, we will not be doomed to repeat the past.

When I say ``a people,'' America is represented by many people. If we knew each other's history, if we understood each other's history, could we not--even if not those who are already past understanding, but could our children grow up with empathy and understanding?

That is why we are here on the floor of the House. We are not here to castigate and to throw untruthful hits. We are here to tell the truth.

Madam Speaker, tears come to my eyes as a series--and I only get to look at television late in the night, after all the day's work is done, and there is a series called ``The Underground Railroad.'' You cannot look at that without shaking in your boots, shaking in the chair you are sitting in, tears coming to your eyes.

That is the empathy that America can understand for all the journeys that so many of us have taken. We have taken it, and we are here in this place. The greatest experiment that the world watches.

Can they make it?

They were watching it from Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, and then General Granger in 1865.

They watched us through the 1800s. We failed. Reconstruction did not work. Even with all the Governors and Congress people that had been elected are freed slaves. That ugly head of racism, white supremacy, lynching, the tearing asunder of Black communities, the still tearing apart of families, the lynching of men and women who went off to the grocery store--when I say that, the local store, whatever it was down the road--and never came back.

In 1921--boy, I am just so proud of this picture--this is bustling Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is the example of the excitement. I am reading where it says the McGowan Variety Store. There are some McGowans in Houston. They might be related. These are the prancing people with their cowboy hats on. It looks as if students, just like we would see in our neighborhoods today or in our high schools today, dancers, they had a full holistic community. There is some cars on the street.

Can you imagine 1921?

Oh, I wish I could just take a trip back, just stand on the sidewalk, and just look with pride of history I did not know. I never imagined there were cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, as I was growing up as a child. I never imagined we had anything, we were worth anything, except for what my mother and father and grandparents poured into me.

My big mother, which was my great-grandmother, owned property obviously destroyed by the highways and freeways that came in and took it away in St. Petersburg, Florida. I just thought that was our way of life. Just like I thought riding in the back of a train going south to visit her, sitting by my lonely with a bag of fried chicken--that is right, I am not embarrassed--to carry me through to visit my grandmother in St. Petersburg, Florida. Thank God, I got there safely. I was just about 8 or 9 or 10, and I was sitting in the colored car, and I wasn't supposed to move except for necessary purposes.

I didn't know--I didn't know I could come here and see this. And our children don't know it. That is why we are on the floor today. We are on the floor today because we have to begin to embrace each other's story.

So I am very delighted that I am leading on H. Res. 398, embraced by the Congressional Black Caucus. This will be on the floor of the House this coming Wednesday. And my counterpart in the United States Senate is a very dear friend, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who believes in this resolution, that is the recognizing of the forthcoming centennial, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. And it doesn't say ``riot.'' It says ``massacre.'' It was a massacre.

I Thank the House leadership. I thank them for their understanding the value and importance of this as we lead into June and begin to move on H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals. It is nothing harmful. There is nothing that will undermine anyone. It is to accept what happened.

So I am so grateful we have almost 100 cosponsors, and maybe more to come into the next 24 hours, for a story that was never told.

Oh, yes, as a little Black girl, I could tell you about Columbus, tell you about Abraham Lincoln, tell you about George Washington. And most of them today in the 21st century, they are not hearing about the wide diversity of our history, Madam Speaker--yours and mine and the many people that are on this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle.

So let me just recount very briefly again. A century ago, White rioters, local law enforcement, and self-appointed vigilantes claim to be acting reasonably and in self-defense against what they feared was an upcoming Black uprising.

Same as January 6, where there are people who had the audacity to say it looked like tourists on any normal day, when we were laying flat on the floor in this building while banging and screams and guns drawn on this side of that door. We didn't know whether we would live. And a lifesaving shot for that person who did not know what was happening, attempting to save lives. Sadly, someone lost their life.

Members in near panic--rightly so--leaving these Chambers and walking down and seeing AK-47s in the hands of individuals laying flat on the ground, that our brave officers had under their watch.

Yes, rioters. But in Greenwood, I want this picture to be embedded in your DNA, because you will see economic prosperity, self-sufficiency. Yes, it was known as the Black Wall Street. They viewed, however, black males as fearsome, physical threats to their personal safety, and the rivals of White women. I don't know what happened in an elevator, allegedly. The story, you know, it is always a mystery, but some claim of some insult that occurred.

And all of a sudden the word went out enraging leaders of the White community, fine citizens, probably in some church over the weekend. When I say in their church in that time, because they were always using the Bible wrongly and incorrectly. And I will say that because I believe in a merciful redemptive Jesus, as a Christian. There are many other faiths, Torah and Koran and others.

But I know in the redemptive faith of Christianity, we believe in redemption. We don't go out because we know that we have had one to sacrifice for us on the cross so that we might be redeemed. We sing that song in our community, ``Let the Redeemed Say So.'' But apparently they didn't have that memory.

100,000 Black people lived in that area, sold luxury items. Twenty- one restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, savings and loan, a post office, three hotels, jewelry and clothing, two movie theaters, a library, pool halls, bus and cab service, a nationally recognized school system. A nationally recognized school system, when all of us are fighting for our children to be educated.

Today, I left Houston. And guess what? We have a new resident of Texas: Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent.

We were standing together because he was producing with Mayor Turner and Al Kashani and the School Superintendent Grenita Lathan, and all elected officials to announce an entrepreneurial program.

Can you imagine, to be able to build up our children?

They had two Black newspapers, six private planes. And I want to say it again, a recognized school system.

On May 31 of that year, 35 city blocks went up in flames and 300 persons were murdered and, to my knowledge, buried in an unmarked grave; 800 were injured and 9,000 were left homeless.

Yes, one cannot ignore this history, but it has been ignored, it has been snuffed out, it has been put under.

I never knew about it until people like Dr. Crutcher, from this great city, and various leaders that have brought to our attention even more. But over the years, obviously, in my study of reparations, I have seen the insults that have happened when no one bothered to respond.

Brutality that we are now trying to correct by acknowledging in H. Res. 398, and I hope my colleagues will come to the floor of the House to be able to address it.

Let me show you what that massacre generated, and you will understand.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source