Black Birds in the Sky: May 31, 1921–Chapters 4–5

The Tribune had barely been out for an hour before the rumblings about an impending lynching grew so loud that police and fire commissioner J. M. Adkison called Sheriff Willard McCullough to tell him what was going on.

He had only recently become the Tulsa County sheriff, after James Woolley was voted out for his failure to stop Belton’s lynching—and he was adamant that a mob wouldn’t get to the prisoner this time.

Cleaver, the first Black police officer in Tulsa, had been promoted to deputy sheriff by 1921 and was somewhat of a liaison between the Black community and white law enforcement.

However, that bold offer of protection further riled up the white mob, which had grown to more than a thousand people by that point.

This put the mob even more on edge, and as the Black men were leaving the courthouse, there was an altercation between a white man and a Black veteran, who held the gun he’d brought home from World War I.

He also worked in a position appointed by President Grover Cleveland, though the details of what exactly that position entailed have been lost to history.

Though it wasn’t easy for Black people to secure jobs in the oil fields, they knew they’d be able to find work in service jobs for the influx of Tulsa residents, such as housekeeping, groundskeeping, and working in restaurants.

Both Gurley and Stradford owned eponymous boardinghouses on Greenwood Avenue, with Stradford’s property claiming the title of the largest Black-owned hotel in the country at the time.

Eight years later, Stradford relentlessly fought a Tulsa city ordinance that blatantly enforced housing segregation; he led a protest of hundreds at Greenwood’s Dreamland Theatre and petitioned the Tulsa mayor, though the law was upheld even after the Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned the ordinance the next year.

Greenwood Avenue extended north for more than a mile, and it was unique: while other streets in Tulsa ran through both the Black and white neighborhoods, the titular avenue started just north of the Frisco railroad tracks and did not spill into the white areas of town.

William Anderson was the neighborhood jeweler, while Henry Lilly’s shop was there for all your upholstery needs.

Simon Berry, described by historian Eddie Faye Gates as “colorful, flamboyant,” and “a smooth talker,” owned a transportation company that ferried Greenwood residents across town in Ford Model T cars and buses, and eventually chartered airplanes for the wealthy oil executives in the area.

Beauty parlors and barbershops have long been a staple of the Black community, and Greenwood was no exception.

Its showings included a roster of silent films, as well as live musical shows and revues, which were a mix of singing, dancing, monologues, and skits.

The housing conditions of those who did live in Greenwood varied; while plenty of Black Tulsans owned nice homes along Detroit Avenue and other streets in the district—some were said to have accrued more than $100,000 in assets—others were confined to flimsy homes and shacks on the side streets off Greenwood Avenue.

Greenwood was also home to several churches; the district contained more churches than the white community did, on a per capita basis.

The list of more than a dozen Black churches included several denominations, such as Bethel Seventh Day Adventist, Brown’s Chapel, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, First Baptist, and Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church.

With its own hospital in the neighborhood, Greenwood employed fifteen Black doctors. Dr. A. C. Jackson, a venerable physician and surgeon, was undoubtedly the most prominent one.

In fact, he was so revered that white patients entrusted him with their medical care, too, despite Tulsa’s segregated hospitals.

This general ignorance of the lives and personalities of their Black neighbors left substantial room for spreading bigoted rumors and racial stereotypes.

The high crime rate, combined with racial ignorance, vigilante justice, and a growing intolerance for Black Americans around the country, led to a tension that simmered over the city and was poised to boil over by late May 1921.

These initial publications were unequivocally aimed at a white readership. The newspapers not only ran ads to purchase enslaved people as early as their founding, but they didn’t report news or concerns that were useful or of interest to the Black community.

In fact, it was quite the opposite; many of them routinely denigrated African Americans, publishing false stories to further support disenfranchisement of the Black race.

The first issue included a note underscoring the paper’s purpose to give its readership a voice that had been denied to them since the founding of the country: “Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly...”

While Freedom’s Journal primarily covered issues relevant to Black Americans—it argued in support of the Black vote and condemned slavery—it also published articles about African countries, such as Sierra Leone, and those in the diaspora, like Haiti.

But businesspeople didn’t like the reporting of the Indian Republican—they felt the writing style was too sensational. The newspaper engaged in a type of reporting known as “yellow journalism,” which manipulated storytelling—and sometimes the truth—to gain more readers.

The World was initially focused on promoting a Republican party faction that included a former congressional delegate and Oklahoma Territory’s governor.

The Tulsa Democrat didn’t change ownership again for more than a decade, when an oil magnate named Charles Page bought the paper in 1916.

Along with a new owner came yet another change: Jones named his new venture the Tulsa Tribune-Democrat.

The first issue was published on December 6, in which Jones wrote an impassioned editorial that clearly laid out the paper’s objective: “The function of a newspaper is to SERVE THE PEOPLE. The function of a pamphlet is to serve a party or a propaganda. The Tulsa Tribune-Democrat is a newspaper and not a pamphlet.”

The first issue was published on December 6, in which Jones wrote an impassioned editorial that clearly laid out the paper’s objective: “The function of a newspaper is to SERVE THE PEOPLE. The function of a pamphlet is to serve a party or a propaganda. The Tulsa Tribune-Democrat is a newspaper and not a pamphlet.”

The signed editorial went on to say that while the paper hoped to retain its Democratic readers, “we want to make a newspaper so just and fair and truthful that Republicans will likewise choose to read it....We never want to be so blindly partisan, so oblivious to our own party’s deficiencies...so encumbered with prejudice that we fail to tell the truth in our news.”

The signed editorial went on to say that while the paper hoped to retain its Democratic readers, “we want to make a newspaper so just and fair and truthful that Republicans will likewise choose to read it....We never want to be so blindly partisan, so oblivious to our own party’s deficiencies...so encumbered with prejudice that we fail to tell the truth in our news.”

The Tribune reported on everything from voter fraud to business scams; Jones even published stories about purported plans to abduct him.

No sole entity or person is responsible for the Tulsa Race Massacre; blame can be laid in many directions, and it is shared by many people, laws, and customs of the time.

While several people reported seeing this incendiary headline and the editorial beneath it, to this day no complete copy of the May 31 Tulsa Tribune has been found.

Archived versions on microfilm show a missing space where it likely would have run, and historians surmise that this was where the editorial was set.

As such, the Tribune's competitor the Tulsa World blamed the afternoon paper for instigating violence with the article.

And while many underlying issues led to the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Tulsa Tribune's reckless, sensational, and factually dubious reporting on May 31, 1921, had a tragic effect on the city it represented.

And while many underlying issues led to the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Tulsa Tribune's reckless, sensational, and factually dubious reporting on May 31, 1921, had a tragic effect on the city it represented.