WASHINGTON LETTER
Will the drama buried in the land of Tulsa (Oklahoma) almost 100 years ago reveal its secrets and find the place it deserves in the history of the United States?
A team of archaeologists is about to uncover what they suspect are two mass graves sheltering the bodies of the victims of the largest lynching ever conducted on American soil. Long concealed by the city authorities, barely mentioned in the history books of American schools until the early 2000s, the massacre carried out for two days in May 1921 nevertheless constituted the paroxysm of racial tensions in segregated America from the beginning of the XXe century.
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Incendiary bombs
As often in these cases, the story begins with a sexual rumor between a black man and a white woman. One morning in early spring, a young city shoe shiner entered the building housing the only toilets in the neighborhood authorized for blacks. Entering the elevator, he accidentally crushed the foot of the operator, Blanche, who was operating that day, according to an Oklahoma Historical Society investigation.
The young woman’s screams, the quick accusation of a sexual assault, all flowed very quickly. Dick Rowland was quickly arrested and taken to court, where a crowd of angry whites soon gathered. African Americans, "Including veterans of the First World War", specify the archives, also go there to protect the young man. Shots are fired. The local newspaper titles its editorial: "Lynching of a negro tonight."
Then begins an outburst of violence against the black district of the city. Populated by a rather prosperous middle class, the place is known as Black Wall Street, in reference to the business district of New York.
After two days of attacks, looting, speedy killings and devastation – planes used for agricultural spreading have even been turned into weapons of war, dropping incendiary bombs on houses -, three hundred victims are counted . According to witnesses, bodies are loaded onto trains and thrown into the Arkansas River from the top of the bridges.
Institutionalized racism
But most of the dead are hastily buried in mass graves, which history will try to forget. In total, more than 1,000 homes and businesses will be destroyed, putting on the street some 8,000 of the 11,000 blacks then living in Tulsa.
None of the white officials is prosecuted, several blacks accused of causing the violence are themselves condemned, most of the survivors have to move: the era, marked by institutionalized racism, is hardly conducive to the rights of Afro -Américains. Despite the scale of the drama, silence and denial raged across the city for decades.
The excavations, which could lead to exhumations in the spring, aim to pay tribute to the dead and to give their descendants keys to better understand the fate of this decimated black community. The young white mayor of Tulsa, G. T. Bynum, elected in 2016, wishes to inscribe this killing in the memory heritage of the city and, more broadly, in the violent history of race relations in the country.
For some 20 years, attempts to commemorate this event and to recognize the victims or their descendants have fizzled out. In 1999, a white resident of the city, 10 years old at the time of the events, indicates a place where, according to his memories of child, the victims would be buried. The research is short.
"A hundred bodies"
In 2001, a report from the Oklahoma commission responsible for studying the events of May 1921 provides an accurate description of the losses suffered by residents and recommends that reparations be made in the form of checks, scholarships or subsidies to the black community. The creation of a memorial is also encouraged. But the report is buried and the descendants turn to justice for damages. In vain.
In 2018, the mayor ordered the resumption of excavations to identify the sites of the mass graves. " We owe it to the victims and their families », He estimated then. On December 18, archaeologists announced the discovery in the ground of cavities that could shelter "A hundred bodies". Today, the district bruised a hundred years ago is undergoing gentrification and only a dozen red brick buildings reconstructed just after the massacre remain from this period.
In October, during a cult series, American viewers were able to (re) immerse themselves in these dramatic events. The first episode of the fantasy series Watchmen (The Guardians), taken from the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and broadcast on HBO, opened on the reconstruction of the real violence of May 1921 in Tulsa.
