The main argument for the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia supplied by 
President Bill Clinton, the Pentagon generals and the big-business media 
is the alleged "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in Kosovo. This can only be 
stopped if the United States and NATO intervene, say NBC, CBS and ABC. 

NBC, of course, is owned by one of the biggest Pentagon contractors, 
General Electric. 

But the U.S. government has never cared about the plight of any oppressed 
grouping. Its policy is to pit one oppressed group against the other to 
secure its brutal class rule. 

A specific incident in U.S. history that exposes the hypocritical nature 
of the racist, imperialist U.S. government—and is rarely talked about—took 
place in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921. 

Before the righteous rebellions of the oppressed Black masses in Watts, 
Newark, Detroit and elsewhere in the late 1960s, there was the "Tulsa Race 
Riot of 1921." 

Never heard of it? A lot of people have not. 

Investigations begun in 1997 concluded that this "riot" could more 
appropriately be described as a massacre. Mass graves of at least 300 
Black victims of racist violence have been uncovered, according to the 
Tulsa Race Riot Commission. 

The official report had stated that 36 people died. 

Yet many historians now say that more Black people were killed in Tulsa 
than in any other recorded "riot" in U.S. history. 

Excavations of the grave site will begin this summer. 

Racist & economic roots 

What was the root cause of this terrible massacre? 

Millions of Black people were forced to leave the South at the turn of the 
20th century to escape the savage lynchings, wretched poverty and other 
remnants of slavery. Thousands of Black people migrated to Tulsa. 

Oil had been discovered throughout the Southwest, a region once known as 
"Indian Territory" that had been a part of Mexico. 

Glenn Pool, 14 miles from Tulsa, became known as the "richest small 
oilfield in the world." By 1907, Oklahoma had become the center of the 
country’s oil production, producing 300,000 barrels a day. 

Black Tulsans were trying to take advantage of this economic boom by 
establishing their own businesses in the Greenwood area. 

Tulsa was an extremely segregated city. Black people were forced to live 
on the north side of town. Whites lived in the southern part. Black people 
were prohibited from doing business with whites. 

The educator Booker T. Washington characterized the Greenwood section as 
the "Negro’s Wall Street." Racists referred to Greenwood as "Little 
Africa." 

The people of Greenwood were attempting to carry out their own brand of 
post-Civil War Reconstruction. 

Greenwood included a Black newspaper, two doctors, a Black labor union, 
three grocery stores and barbers. Three-quarters of the Black children 
attended the lone Black school. Tulsa had the second-lowest Black 
illiteracy rate of any county in Oklahoma. 

Many other Black people were forced to work in the white areas as 
domestics or shining shoes. This was a testament to the fact that whites 
still dominated the overall economy. 

The white political establishment attempted to whip up a hysteria against 
the organizing efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World and against 
Jewish people. The predominantly white police force forged a relationship 
with the Ku Klux Klan and other white vigilantes. 

REMINISCENT OF APARTHEID 

On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young Black shoeshine man, was falsely 
accused of accosting a white woman in an elevator shaft. He was arrested 
immediately. 

The next day the Tulsa Tribune ran an editorial entitled "To Lynch a Negro 
Tonight." 

A white mob numbering 2,000 gathered outside the jail in an attempt to 
lynch Rowland. A heroic group of 50 to 75 armed Black men, dressed in 
their World War I Army fatigues, confronted the racists. As a white man 
tried to physically disarm a Black man, a shot was fired. 

The Black men fired back in self-defense. But they were overwhelmed by the 
armed mob of racists. 

For the next several days, gangs of armed whites went into the Greenwood 
section setting fire to homes and businesses and shooting every Black 
person in sight. Dr. A. C. Jackson, one of the top surgeons in the 
country, was murdered after surrendering himself to a group of whites. 

The racists also went into their own white neighborhoods searching for 
Black domestic workers. 

The Chicago Defender reported that Black neighborhoods in Tulsa were 
bombed from the air by a private plane equipped with dynamite. Other 
reports said the police had commandeered private planes to fly over the 
area. This is the first report in history of airplanes being used to drop 
explosives. 

On June 1, some 6,000 Black Tulsans, including children, were rounded up 
and imprisoned by the racists. Reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, 
Black people who were not imprisoned or interned were forced to carry 
green badges saying "Police Protection." 

In the meantime, whites were given a free reign to continue their looting 
and rampage of Greenwood without interference from the police or the 
National Guard. 

Once the internment was over, a thousand Black Tulsans were dislocated and 
forced to spend the winter in tents and board shacks. The city was not 
legally obligated to restore the houses and businesses of Greenwood. 

Not one white person was ever arrested for taking part in this racist 
attack. The young white woman who Rowland supposedly attacked never 
pressed any charges against him. He was eventually released from jail. 

The truth about the Tulsa massacre should be publicly exposed. And the 
U.S. government should be made to pay reparations to the Black people of 
Tulsa and to all the living descendents of slaves. 

And not only should the United States immediately stop its bombing of 
Yugoslavia—but the United States and NATO should be held responsible for 
paying reparations to the Yugoslav people. 

Material for this article taken from "Death in a Promised Land—The Tulsa 
Race Riot of 1921" by Scott Ellsworth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 
University Press, 1982)