American Experience (1988–…): Season 33, Episode 101 - Goin Back to T-Town - full transcript
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ Oh, I'm going back to T'town ♪
♪ To get my women in line ♪
♪ Yes, I'm going back
to T'town ♪
♪ Just to get my women in line ♪
Greenwood, growing up,
was a very vibrant place,
full of life.
There were 35 or 40 stores
from the top of Greenwood
until Pine,
and they were on each side of
the street.
SINGER:
♪ My eyes are brown ♪
MAXINE CISSEL HORNER:
Businesses were booming,
people were living well,
and, of course,
we supported one another
because we didn't move out of
the community,
so the money turned around
in the community.
SINGER:
♪ My teeth are pearly white... ♪
EDWARD L. GOODWIN:
There were beer taverns,
there were sundry shops,
ice cream parlors,
three or four drug stores.
There were beauty parlors,
barbershops,
hotels, and, um, entertainers.
The whole shooting match
was there,
so anytime you wanted to find
out what was going on
or who was in Tulsa,
all you had to do
was be on Greenwood,
Thursday night
through Saturday night.
SINGER:
♪ Sung these blues... ♪
JAMES GOODWIN:
The spirit was such that on one
corner
there was the Holy Ghost,
and the other was heroin,
not that that is a desired
thing... that's a reality.
SINGER:
♪ And if you come down
to Greenwood tomorrow ♪
♪ I'll sing these blues
some more ♪
BURNS:
Tulsa was highly
segregated then.
If you were...
over on the other side of town,
in downtown Tulsa,
and you did the wrong thing,
a police would stop you
and he would tell you in very
nasty terms where you could eat
and where you could drink
and where you couldn't drink.
And then they had signs up,
you know,
no colored could drink at
drinking fountains
and eat in places.
And we stood up, we didn't
even... couldn't even stand up
and eat in Tulsa for a long
time, the downtown area.
But we didn't worry about that
too much,
because in the Greenwood area,
we had... we were quite complete.
We were unique.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
The story of Greenwood,
the black community
in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
is a story about
a people whose forefathers
settled the state back in the
19th century.
(dogs barking, wagon rumbling)
They arrived as slaves
to the Indians,
as runaway slaves,
and as free people.
(horses neighing,
indistinct chatter)
As early as the Civil War,
there were over 7,000 Black
people in the territory.
My great-great-grandmother was a
slave of the Choctaw Indians.
Her name was Charlotte McCoy.
She was born in Mississippi,
this is her photograph here.
And this is her sister,
Minerva McCoy.
She and her sister
were both slaves
of the Choctaw Indian named
Britt Willis.
When they came to Oklahoma
after emancipation,
after the Civil War
was over with,
both the two women here married
two brothers.
They married the McCoy brothers,
and my great-great-grandfather,
William McCoy, was born in
Indian territory in 1839.
So he was born essentially 50
years before the great land run,
a half a century prior to the
opening of central Oklahoma.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
The great land rush of 1889
brought a wave of black settlers
and an overwhelming number
of whites to the territory.
♪ ♪
Fed up with racism,
Blacks saw Oklahoma as a land
of freedom and opportunity.
(rooster crowing)
Black political leaders
aggressively promoted this
"promised land."
♪ ♪
And by the early 1900s,
there were as many
as 27 all-black towns.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
In search of job opportunities,
many Blacks moved to the larger
cities, like Tulsa.
(train clanging)
ROSA B. SKINNER:
It was in the fall of the year,
and they was talkin' about
Oklahoma, Oklahoma...
you could make a livin' here,
you could do so-and-so.
And Pop and them thought money's
growing on trees, fallin' off,
so he said, "Well, I think I'll
take the kids and we'll go out."
♪ ♪
ROBERT FAIRCHILD:
And in those days,
the oil boom was in existence,
and money was flowing freely.
People would go to bed at night
and wake up the next morning
with a gusher
in his back yard.
♪ ♪
JOHNSON:
What happened was that
the Black community,
who didn't receive any benefits
directly from the oil fields,
began to find employment
in the service areas as porters,
janitors, elevator operators,
and the service-related aspect
of the businesses relating
to oil, so you had employment.
SKINNER:
I had two sisters living here,
working for white people,
living in quarters.
And I come up here and they met
me and housed me with them
and then got me a job working
for white people, like they was.
♪ ♪
(indistinct chatter,
gavel pounding)
NARRATOR:
In 1907, when Oklahoma
became a state,
the all-white legislature
moved quickly
to make it
a white man's country.
They passed one law after
another
to keep Blacks separate
and in their place.
Schools, hospitals, business,
even telephone booths
were to be segregated.
JOHNSON:
Well, basically in Oklahoma,
right after statehood,
you had racial bigotry that was
out in the open,
and I think that this had more
to do
with helping the development
of Black townships,
because Blacks tended
to congregate together
for their own self-protection.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
In the early 1900s,
a group of black businessmen had
purchased a small piece of land
in the northeast section
of Tulsa.
They called it Greenwood.
As segregation practices had
grown in white Tulsa,
so had the Black businesses
in Greenwood.
(cash register rings)
MABEL B. LITTLE:
I started a beauty shop,
dressing hair,
in 1915 in the home.
We had money, but we were not
able to go and purchase things,
so it helped us to go into
business for our own selves.
And then that's when
the Black people began to build.
♪ ♪
(construction sounds)
BURNS:
In front of Ramses Drug Store
was a cab stand called the
Your Cab Company,
and there were several cabs and
they were all owned by Black.
And some of the owners were, uh,
bought four or five new cabs
every year.
♪ ♪
EDWARD L. GOODWIN:
We even had our own
bus transportation,
the city lines...
The city bus lines today
were started by a Black man.
And he sold the thing
to the city,
with the understanding that they
would hire Black drivers.
(engine idling)
HOBART JARRET:
Before there were city buses,
there were jitneys that
Black people owned,
and, um...
The ambulance really intoned
as it went through
Greenwood Street.
♪ ♪
CHARLES BATE:
We had two or three
ambulances, yes,
ambulances which were operated
by funeral homes.
And there were no fees attached
to the ambulance service.
Of course, I suppose...
the undertakers who operated
the ambulances felt that the
patient might die
and they'd get remunerated
through that way.
♪ ♪
JAMES O. GOODWIN:
You'd go into a barbecue place,
and you'd hear the blues or
you'd hear the jazz,
and you'd hear live
performance...
Dinah Washington and Roy Milton,
and the Globetrotters would come
strolling down the street.
Earl Bostick was from here,
we had...
Clarence Love was from here...
a lot of musicians that went all
over the United States.
Clarence Love
had an all-girls band
that traveled all across
the country.
♪ ♪
HORNER:
We had some of the best barbecue
that you could ever want
to taste.
I can remember, though, one
place, though, that I guess,
to get that white business,
he had a side for Black folks
and a side for white folks.
And I can remember thinking
I didn't think his barbecue was
that great,
'cause I hated the idea
that he had to do this.
You know, he had a market that
he didn't have to do that.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
By 1921,
Tulsa's Black population had
grown to almost 11,000,
and the Greenwood community
was booming... 15 grocery stores,
two Black movie houses,
two Black newspapers,
four drugstores,
two Black public schools,
a Black public library,
four barbecue and chili parlors,
and about 13 churches.
♪ ♪
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:
In Tulsa, Oklahoma,
we did have
a little separate enclave
where Blacks had some measure
of financial, social,
political independence,
maybe even some clout.
You had a whole group of Black
entrepreneurs who came together
and formed a kind of union to
help develop Black businesses.
The Black business grew
so in Tulsa until in 1936,
it was announced that we had the
largest Black business
in the whole United States.
But when we went on the white
side of town, now,
you'd have white guys picking
at you all the time,
and you might get involved
in a fight.
And the Ku Klux Klans were
pretty, uh...
pretty rampant.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
It was a dangerous time
to be Black in America.
Between 1917 and 1921,
racial violence was rampant.
In cities across the country,
Blacks were being beaten,
burned, and lynched
in alarming numbers.
In Tulsa,
the Ku Klux Klan included
political leaders
and members of the police.
Even local newspapers
supported mob violence.
JOHNSON:
It was always a hostile
relationship
between the Black and white
community,
and part of it was because the
Ku Klux Klan was located
in an area just west of the
Black community itself,
on Main and Eastern.
This was about four blocks west
of where the primary Black
community was located.
And we had to pass by this to go
to places of employment
and to go to and from school,
if we lived in service areas
of the quarters.
And it was just
a hostile situation.
There was always a potential
for violence there.
Black people were not about
to put up with the attitude
that the white community
was putting before us.
The whites felt that they could
instill fear in the
Black community,
and Blacks wasn't going for it,
and it was
a confrontational type of
attitude that existed.
NARRATOR:
But no one, Black or white,
was prepared for what happened
on the night of May 31, 1921.
LITTLE:
There was a merchandise store
that had one of these
old-fashioned elevators
that you ran by hand, and some
white girl was the operator,
and this young man
got on the elevator.
Well, when he went to get on it,
he stumbled,
and his... in the effort to keep
from falling,
he grabbed whatever he could,
and, of course,
the operator was in the way.
And she assumed that he was
trying to attack her,
and she reported it,
and he was arrested.
My husband asked
to make a speech.
He's the one that predicted
that riot.
Don't let nobody fool you.
I don't know who else says they
predicted it,
but T.R. Davis,
the father of my children,
he stood up and told the people,
he said, "There's going to be
a destruction in Tulsa."
And that afternoon,
the "Tribune" came out
and said what had happened,
and that they had arrested
Dick Roland,
"And it looks like there's going
to be a lynching tonight."
And, of course, when the Negroes
in the community saw this,
they said, "Oh, no.
No, we're not going to have
that."
After we went home from church,
here come one by the house.
"Man, get your guns,
get your guns."
Look like I can hear
them lousy people...
them loud-mouthed people
right now.
And there they were,
hundreds of Negroes
standing around, talking,
using profanity
and what-have-you.
And shooting their gun every now
and then.
And then they felt,
"Well, we better get on down
to the courthouse."
(indistinct chatter)
And they went down
to the courthouse,
and everybody was just standing
around,
nobody saying anything
to one another.
Finally, when a little old white
man came up to Barry and said,
"Nigger, what you doing with
that pistol?"
He say, "I'm going to use it
if I need to."
He said, "Oh, no,
you give it to me,"
and he tried to take it.
And that scuffling
set the riot off.
(train rumbling,
whistle blaring)
(indistinct angry voices)
So the Negro decided they were
going to make a stand
at Cincinnati and
Frisco Railroad tracks,
but by being outnumbered,
they had to leave.
And, of course, as they left,
the white moved in.
And as they moved in,
they looted,
and to hide
their behavior pattern,
they set fire to the building.
♪ ♪
SKINNER:
When T.R. woke me up,
he said, "Rose,
he said, "We got to get up
and leave here."
He said, "They done started."
And I didn't want to go.
I balked on it.
He had to kinda get rough with
me before I would leave,
but I did leave.
And he told me to...
not to bring nothin'.
He said, "Don't bring nothin."
I just had on some barefoot
sandals
and a towel tied on my head,
and that's the way I went,
'cause I was fussin' and
disgusted and scared, too.
♪ ♪
GEORGE D. MONROE:
I remember my mother
putting us... my sisters
and my brother... under the bed.
I remember the people coming in,
white people coming into our
house with torches,
setting the curtains on fire
and setting our house on fire.
And one stepped on my finger
while I was under the bed,
and my sister put her hand over
my mouth
to keep me from screaming.
And they was burnin'
and everything.
They set houses up there,
comin' this way, burnin'.
It reminded me of Sodom
and Gomorrah in the Bible.
And we was going that way.
He said, "Everybody get out
in the opening
where they'll see,
and won't nobody get hurt,"
and he was right.
He was right, long as we was
out where they could see us,
they didn't bother,
but they were shooting from
airplanes and everywhere.
It was a hot time.
My dad had heard, as other Black
men in that park had heard,
that the white marauders
were approaching them.
And my dad was joining other
Black men
to protect the Black people,
the wives and the children
who were there.
♪ ♪
The next thing that I remember
was that
we saw a railroad train with
boxcars attached to it,
and in at least
two of those boxcars,
there were soldiers in uniform,
and they were...
They were white soldiers.
And they was just like this with
them shotguns, just like this.
And, of course,
I just knew everybody
goin' be killed, myself.
♪ ♪
LITTLE:
We were afraid
that they came to kill us,
and they said,
"No, we came to help you."
And they wanted to take the men
and leave the women
and children out there.
I spoke up, I said, "No, we want
to go with our husbands.
If you're going to kill them,
kill us all together."
NARRATOR:
During the riot,
Black men had taken up arms
to protect their families.
Now, they were charged with
incitement,
taken off to jail
or the county fairgrounds
and tagged for identification.
(car engine rumbling)
(footsteps)
And babies were born that night,
two or three...
babies and everything.
My... I had some personal
friends that had a baby born
the night before the riot
started,
and they lost that baby during
that riot,
trying to keep up with them.
They had him in a shoebox...
no, in some kind of a box like a
shoebox.
And... they,
that baby got away from 'em.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
I never had any feeling,
it was such a shock,
until, I don't know, that the
Lord just strengthened me.
But my husband was...
he was so tender,
he just broke down.
He says, "Baby, we've lost
everything we had."
I said,
"But we have each other, honey."
♪ ♪
I never shedded a tear over that
night,
in fact,
I never have been angry.
I felt sorry for the people that
treated our folks like that.
NARRATOR:
The Red Cross reported more than
300 people had been killed.
Newspapers listed almost 100
deaths, but city officials
put the death toll at 36.
More than 35 blocks of Black
Tulsa was burned to the ground.
Over 4,000 people
were left homeless.
Still, most of the people
of Greenwood refused to leave.
JOHNSON:
After they had completely
destroyed the Black community,
Blacks then set about to try
to rebuild.
They could not get building
material to build
back in Tulsa
or the surrounding community.
Most Blacks had to import
the bricks and steel
that they rebuilt Tulsa back
with,
Black Tulsa back with,
from out of Arkansas and Kansas.
FRANKLIN:
My father had advised his
clients and others
to build,
build with orange crates,
build with anything in order
to...
in order to have some shelter,
but even so,
there are pictures of the winter
of 1921, '22,
of hundreds of tents
in which Blacks lived,
because they were not able
to build their buildings.
♪ ♪
LITTLE:
Without any equipment, we moved
and built a little shack,
and we had to cook outdoors.
I remember so well,
the rain would come,
we'd have to carry our food back
in the house,
and then after the rain was
over,
go back and build a fire
outside,
because you didn't have,
didn't have gas
and had nothing to cook on.
So it was a
bitter pill to swallow.
By the time the National Negro
Business League met here
in the summer of '25, just a few
months before we moved to Tulsa,
the people who visited here
described Tulsa, Black Tulsa,
as a town with grit,
a town that was coming back.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Out of the ashes,
the Black people of Tulsa
had rebuilt their community,
but they needed only to glance
across the tracks
to be reminded that the
racial attitudes
of most white Tulsans
had not changed.
♪ ♪
JOHNSON:
We played on the brickyard hill
on the eastern side.
Whites played on the brickyard
hill on the western side.
Well, we would meet periodically
and when we'd meet,
we would have us a fight.
And...
it would usually be about,
"nigger," and, "You haven't got
any business up here,"
and we felt that we had just
as much business as they did.
And when you would ride into
one of these neighborhoods
on your bike and have someone
say, you know,
"What are you niggers doin' in
this neighborhood?"
This is when you really got
upset,
really got angry, and...
you had to deal with it.
And if you'd go back,
you wanted to discuss it,
but if you discussed it,
you knew you were off grounds
and you knew that your parents
were going to tear into you
because they'd already told you
not to go.
LITTLE:
You'd go into a store
and buy a hat.
The first thing, the clerk would
try it on her head
and ask you what you think
about it.
I mean, my husband was with me,
and I wanted to buy a hat,
and she says,
"But you can't try it on.
Do you want it?"
I says, "No.
If I can't try the hat on,
I don't want it."
I decided I was going to beat
them at their own game,
so I started to puttin' tissue
in the hat,
asking them if I could have some
tissue to put in the hat
so I could try it on,
'cause I didn't have that much
grease on my hair,
but I thought
they would get the point.
I can remember the time
when I would go downtown.
I was lucky enough to have
monies in my pocket.
I would go in stores as to where
I couldn't try on a hat.
They'd let you know,
if you were there,
you the last one
to be waited on.
They'd let you know that they
didn't want your business.
PEACHES LITTLEJOHN WYNN:
We couldn't eat when we were
downtown,
so my mother would always say,
"Let's eat before we go,"
if shopping was going to be
an all-day trip.
I can remember that you could go
down to Kress's
and if you went down
in the basement,
you could stand up at a counter
and get something to eat.
When I went over to the counter,
I was told that I had to go to
the end of the counter,
and that's... you know, and you
see all these places open,
and no one there, and you could
only be served,
and you could not...
You could not sit in the seat.
You had to stand.
This segregation,
when they got where they didn't
want to wait on me,
I didn't pay 'em no attention.
I just left em',
and brought my kids away.
I think sometimes of how nice
it would be
if that cloak of segregation
hadn't been around me...
all my life, I might say,
to keep me from doin' some of
the things that I wanted to do.
(marching band music playing)
EDWARD GOODWIN:
Before we had football games,
we'd have a parade down
Greenwood Street,
and there was a lot of pride
in people.
And they'd just come out on the
streets out of those businesses
and there would just be throngs
of people.
♪ ♪
MABLE RICE:
It was high spirits
in the community.
Many, many droves of people came
down to see the parade.
Kids looked forward to it.
We started at old Booker
T. Washington High School
and marched to Carver...
Down Greenwood to Carver...
and that's where the football
games were played,
at Carver Stadium.
(official whistles)
I remember, during the war,
Booker T. had a...
we made a big bomber on the
field with the band members,
and we, as small majorettes,
we twirled and we were
the propellers of this bomber.
And we started out...
they turned all the lights out,
and we had lights in our hands.
And we started out on the
ground, stooped on the ground,
and as we marched, we took off,
and it looked like the bomber
was taking off on the field.
(distant voices, parade music)
WYNN:
I always wanted to be a
majorette, you know,
and be in that parade, but I do
remember when I got to Carver,
I did have a friend that... her
sister had been a majorette
and she was a majorette
and so we got together
and we like begged
the band director to let us
be part of the parade,
and so we were majorette.
(laughs)
I got to march in one parade.
♪ ♪
EDWARD GOODWIN:
My experience at Booker T.
Was one that I wouldn't trade
for anything in the world.
We had dedicated teachers.
We had teachers
that were legends.
We had this rich heritage at
Washington,
and these teachers,
they didn't change.
You'd hear about 'em, you know,
from the second grade.
You'd hear about
Seymour Williams,
and then he taught you,
you know, 12 years later,
and that was a long time
to a kid,
and it was an ongoing tradition.
♪ ♪
BURNS:
I remember Horace Hughes, one of
the finest English teachers
that you could have anywhere.
He was Black.
I've seen him come into that
classroom
and walk down to the back
of the room
and then just start pointing
out guys
and asking them to quote from
Shakespeare.
We were all given 150 lines of
poetry to learn.
We were all given about 25 or 30
quotations from Shakespeare
and Byron and all,
Keats and all the...
Shelley and the rest of 'em.
And if he asked you the line,
he'd just quote the first line
and you'd have to come up
and give him the next line
and finish the quotation.
And I can quote 'em now.
That's how good they were.
Like, "The fault, dear Brutus,
"lies not in the stars,
but in ourselves,
that we are underlings,"
Shakespeare.
That's the way Horace wanted
you to do it, you know.
♪ ♪
HORNER:
I don't remember anyone coming
out of high school
that could not read,
and I remember
many high school graduates took
that high school graduate
certificate
from Booker T. Washington
High School and ran with it.
They could compete and do
anything, and they did well.
When I was in school
at old Booker T.,
we did not have Negro history
textbooks.
Um...
Two of our instructors,
A.J. Lee and Bess Roberts,
had to come up with a textbook
for us to use
so that we could find out about
ourselves.
As long as I was at Booker T.
Washington High School,
and as long as people were
telling us
that we were doing all right
and that everything was fine,
beautiful, and wonderful,
then I felt that it was.
But on one occasion,
when we needed a pipe organ,
I believe, to use in some
musical rendition
that we were offering,
we planned to have a program,
the program at
Central High School,
and we were given permission
to do it.
Central High School
was an imposing structure,
a city block long,
a city block wide.
It covers an entire city block.
And I said, "So this is what
they have,
compared to what I have,"
and I realized then
that they were keeping me out of
an opportunity
that was really,
from my point of view,
not only mean-spirited,
but bigoted.
♪ ♪
RICE:
The first thing I can remember,
the evening that the war
broke out,
or the news came over the radio,
I remember my mother saying,
"We are at war."
And I said,
"What does that mean?"
And she said, "Well, America
is involved in a war."
And in my mind,
I thought it meant that the war
would be on Greenwood
the next day.
I was seven years old,
and I thought it would be there.
And I can remember packing my
doll's suitcase,
made peanut butter sandwiches
and packed a suitcase,
because all I knew about war
was that people starved.
SINGER:
♪ Sail on ♪
♪ Sail on, little girl,
sail on ♪
BURNS:
During World War II,
after we got in Australia,
we landed there,
it took us 21 days
to get over there,
and every two or three days,
we'd have one of the
white officers...
this was when they had
the Black and white army.
All of the enlisted men
and non-coms were Black,
and the white...
the officers were all white.
It's what we called
the two armies.
(clears throat)
And they would have these
sessions and tell us,
"Now, we're going into an
all-white country."
Australia was known
as all-white country.
"If they want you to go
to the back door to be served,
"now don't get excited about it,
just go on to the back door.
"We came down here as their
friends.
We don't want to come down here
and tell them how to operate."
So we just listened.
(distant gunshots, explosions)
(blues song continues)
SINGER:
♪ Well I've got somebody there ♪
♪ That will make you leave me
alone ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'll give you all my lovin' ♪
♪ What more can a good man do? ♪
Oh, the white officers went out
and made these speeches
and whatever they said to them,
these white Australians came
back and told us
that the white officers had told
them that we had tails,
that we were inclined to be
violent,
and we carried knives and guns
and would hurt some of their
kids.
(laughs):
Anything to keep them
afraid of us.
But it didn't work.
(ship horn blares)
(distant voices)
♪ ♪
When I come back to Tulsa
after spending 32 months
in the Pacific
with the, uh...
General MacArthur, I had gone
from a staff sergeant
to a first lieutenant.
But when I got down
to Fort Smith, Arkansas,
they wanted me to be segregated
from the other white officers
and white enlisted men
in the group.
So we went along with it,
'cause I was on my way back
to Tulsa to meet my wife,
and I didn't have time
to fight segregation.
But once I got back to Tulsa,
I made up my mind that I was
going to take it on
wherever I found it,
and I was going to whip it
wherever I found it,
and that's what I did.
It was after that time that
I began to question it,
because I knew that these men
had been over fighting
for freedom, supposedly.
It began to open my eyes
to paying attention to things
like riding
in the back of the bus.
I began to wonder why.
Why couldn't we eat in Kress's?
Why did we have to go down on
one end of the counter
and not sit?
JOHNSON:
I only started questioning
after I heard a lecture at
Howard University.
The question come up,
"Well, I pay the same thing to
ride the train,
"I pay the same thing to ride
the bus.
"Why is it that I have to ride
in the back of the bus?
"Why is it that I have to find
a restroom,
"if there's no restroom in a
small bus station?
"Why do I have to find the
bushes
or try to find a place where
colored can use the restroom?"
It wasn't until at that juncture
that I start to question,
"Why does this exist?"
♪ ♪
(car horns honk,
footsteps shuffle)
NARRATOR:
After the war, in Tulsa
and across the country,
white Americans were being
challenged to end segregation.
Ever so slowly,
doors were being forced open
in education
and in business.
BURNS:
I was pretty happy
about becoming
the first Black clerk in the
Tulsa Post Office.
When I walked in,
an old boy named...
white boy named Steve Metheny,
he came over to me, he says,
(stammering):
"What's your purpose?"
I said, "I came down here
to be...
go to work for the Post Office
as a clerk."
He said,
"We don't hire Black clerks.
We only hire Black carriers."
I said, "Well, I'm coming in
as a clerk.
"I'll just wait until the
postmaster comes down,
and he'll tell you."
So I sat over there,
and a few minutes later,
the postmaster came in.
He came right over to me
and shook my hand
and says,
"Hello, Joe, glad to see you."
And he walked me over to
Steve Metheny and said,
"This is Joe Burns
and he's going to be
our first Black clerk, so put
him on and make him a regular."
Prior to 1955, there was never
a Black street cleaning crew
that worked in an area outside
of the Black community,
but around this particular
period of time,
an all-Black crew was assigned
to work in an area east of
Lewis, which was all white.
And I was a part of that crew,
and while we had some
good moments,
there were lots of hostile
moments that existed
during this particular period
of time,
where we were accused
of everything
from molesting white women
to making obscene gestures,
of which none of these were ever
proven to have any validity.
When I made the decision to go
to Central,
we did not want to tell anyone
that I was going,
and the reason being was we did
not want to cause any confusion,
commotion, or any problems
with me going there,
like news media being involved.
I had a chemistry teacher that,
every time I went in class
during that first week and the
first few weeks of school,
he would make reference to,
"Oh, you're from Little Rock,
aren't you?"
And I would say, "No, I'm not
from Little Rock."
And it was sort of like...
I felt I had been accepted,
and he was making a point of,
"Here's a Black person in this
classroom,"
and by saying Little Rock,
here's a...
Little Rock had trouble with
integration.
And just referring to that
was bringing up something
that was negative.
HORNER:
I can remember a funny story
about my son
when we marched here in Tulsa.
And we were...
you were boycotting different
restaurants,
and at that time,
there was a Borden's up in...
out on 36th Street North.
It was located at that time,
it was the first shopping
center.
It was called
Northland Shopping Center.
And the, uh...
my son told me... he was small...
and we used to stand outside
Borden's and, you know,
going to do the boycott,
and we finally got a chance
to eat in there.
And we went through this line,
and we got to the table and all,
and he said,
"Is this what we were marching
and boycotting for?"
And I said, "Well, the right to
be able to go
anywhere you want to
and eat where you..."
He said,
"These potatoes are awful.
I don't even know why you want
to come here."
(laughs)
When I was teaching
at a state school,
state college in North Carolina,
one of the distinguished
professors at Duke asked me
if it was true that I was
opposed to segregation.
I said, "Yes"; he said,
"But I don't understand
"how you would be opposed,
because
"if you're successful in
opposing segregation,
"that means that your school
will close
and you won't have a job."
That always enters into the
minds of people
who have this view that
there's nothing good in the
Black community
and everything is good in the
white community.
And as long as you have that
kind of evil,
disjointed,
distorted view of life,
where all the good
is on one side
and all the evil is on another,
then you can't have
a healthy integration.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Ironically, Greenwood,
which had been built in the face
of racial hatred,
which had survived total
destruction,
would not survive integration.
♪ ♪
With the onset of integration,
many of the kids of the owners
or the business people left
Tulsa, going to Chicago,
California, New York, Denver,
in search of their own new life,
a new life altogether.
I think we began to drive around
the Greenwood area,
and go straight into South Tulsa
for...
so I can remember there were
long periods of times
that I didn't go into Greenwood
area at all,
because I can remember how
surprised I was
at how much it had deteriorated
when I began working again in
the Greenwood area.
HORNER:
And you'd see the
businesses deteriorating
because we were not supporting
the businesses,
and then the older folks were
giving it up, you know,
and... or they were shifting
to other parts of the city.
Integration helped to kill
Greenwood, and, of course,
when they began to redesign
the expressways,
like they do most of the time
in these cities
throughout the United States,
they always engineered
in such a way that
the expressways come across
the main section of
the Black community.
The same thing happened to
Tulsa, the Tulsa Black community
that happened to the Nashville,
Tennessee, Black community,
that happened to the
Raleigh-Durham,
North Carolina, Black community,
that happened
to the New Orleans,
Louisiana, Black community.
Here come the interstates
roaring right through
the Black community and playing,
wreaking havoc with them,
destroying the streets,
destroying the business
establishments,
and they never fully recovered.
They never fully recovered.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ Well I'm going back
to T'Town ♪
Greenwood was one was place
that I have lived on
which gave me a sense of
communal relationship
with the uppers and the lowers
and the middles,
and it all just blended
in together.
All up and down the street,
there people that knew
who we were
and they knew what we were
supposed to be doing
and what we were not supposed
to be doing.
We had good role models,
good people who were training
and teaching us in our
community.
I wish some of these children
could experience
what we experienced,
this thing of living together
and depending on each other,
and the brotherhood that we had.
They'd always tell us that
the opportunity's going
to come down the road.
Don't worry about 'em,
because they would show up.
There was a sense of
self-respect and self-esteem
and the feeling that our color
didn't have anything to do
with our not being as good
as anyone else.
Segregation made Black folk take
care of themselves,
be independent, have their own
business, train their children,
build their colleges,
build their schools,
build their homes.
Integration...
separated.
I don't think racial segregation
is a good thing from the
American experience,
so in that sense, no,
we're not better off.
But the quality of our lives,
in many respects,
was better in the days of
segregation,
and the challenge today is
to make it as good or better.
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ If you come on down
to Greenwood tomorrow ♪
♪ Well, I'll sing these blues
some more ♪
♪ ♪
BATE:
I like to tell the story of
someone coming to my office,
paying $2.00,
and my going down to the
Busy Bee cafe
and eating and paying 90 cents,
and then the girl at the
Busy Bee going over to McGarry's
and buying some hose,
McGarry's going to Bowser's
Prescription Pharmacy
and buying some aspirin,
Bowser going down to McKay's
and getting his pants pressed,
the man from there going over
to the Black dentist,
all within one-and-a-half
block area.
A dollar perhaps turned over
12 or 13 times in that area.
But now, through integration,
everything is gone
from the Black area.
We have nothing there.
You can't get a spool of thread
there anymore.
So we got integration
and suffocation...
and degradation
and all the other "gations"
you would like to add.
♪ ♪
ANNOUNCER:
Next time...
(Marian Anderson singing)
ALISHA LOLA JONES:
Marian Anderson challenged
people's ideas of what the souls
of Black folk
looked and sounded like.
KIRA THURMAN:
She is willing to show up
because she is not going to
accept racial oppression.
ANGELA BROWN:
She became the face
of a movement.
That was something she could
never step back from.
ANNOUNCER:
"Voice of Freedom,"
next time
on "American Experience."
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
"American Experience:
Goin' Back to T-Town"
is available with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ Oh, I'm going back to T'town ♪
♪ To get my women in line ♪
♪ Yes, I'm going back
to T'town ♪
♪ Just to get my women in line ♪
Greenwood, growing up,
was a very vibrant place,
full of life.
There were 35 or 40 stores
from the top of Greenwood
until Pine,
and they were on each side of
the street.
SINGER:
♪ My eyes are brown ♪
MAXINE CISSEL HORNER:
Businesses were booming,
people were living well,
and, of course,
we supported one another
because we didn't move out of
the community,
so the money turned around
in the community.
SINGER:
♪ My teeth are pearly white... ♪
EDWARD L. GOODWIN:
There were beer taverns,
there were sundry shops,
ice cream parlors,
three or four drug stores.
There were beauty parlors,
barbershops,
hotels, and, um, entertainers.
The whole shooting match
was there,
so anytime you wanted to find
out what was going on
or who was in Tulsa,
all you had to do
was be on Greenwood,
Thursday night
through Saturday night.
SINGER:
♪ Sung these blues... ♪
JAMES GOODWIN:
The spirit was such that on one
corner
there was the Holy Ghost,
and the other was heroin,
not that that is a desired
thing... that's a reality.
SINGER:
♪ And if you come down
to Greenwood tomorrow ♪
♪ I'll sing these blues
some more ♪
BURNS:
Tulsa was highly
segregated then.
If you were...
over on the other side of town,
in downtown Tulsa,
and you did the wrong thing,
a police would stop you
and he would tell you in very
nasty terms where you could eat
and where you could drink
and where you couldn't drink.
And then they had signs up,
you know,
no colored could drink at
drinking fountains
and eat in places.
And we stood up, we didn't
even... couldn't even stand up
and eat in Tulsa for a long
time, the downtown area.
But we didn't worry about that
too much,
because in the Greenwood area,
we had... we were quite complete.
We were unique.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
The story of Greenwood,
the black community
in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
is a story about
a people whose forefathers
settled the state back in the
19th century.
(dogs barking, wagon rumbling)
They arrived as slaves
to the Indians,
as runaway slaves,
and as free people.
(horses neighing,
indistinct chatter)
As early as the Civil War,
there were over 7,000 Black
people in the territory.
My great-great-grandmother was a
slave of the Choctaw Indians.
Her name was Charlotte McCoy.
She was born in Mississippi,
this is her photograph here.
And this is her sister,
Minerva McCoy.
She and her sister
were both slaves
of the Choctaw Indian named
Britt Willis.
When they came to Oklahoma
after emancipation,
after the Civil War
was over with,
both the two women here married
two brothers.
They married the McCoy brothers,
and my great-great-grandfather,
William McCoy, was born in
Indian territory in 1839.
So he was born essentially 50
years before the great land run,
a half a century prior to the
opening of central Oklahoma.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
The great land rush of 1889
brought a wave of black settlers
and an overwhelming number
of whites to the territory.
♪ ♪
Fed up with racism,
Blacks saw Oklahoma as a land
of freedom and opportunity.
(rooster crowing)
Black political leaders
aggressively promoted this
"promised land."
♪ ♪
And by the early 1900s,
there were as many
as 27 all-black towns.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
In search of job opportunities,
many Blacks moved to the larger
cities, like Tulsa.
(train clanging)
ROSA B. SKINNER:
It was in the fall of the year,
and they was talkin' about
Oklahoma, Oklahoma...
you could make a livin' here,
you could do so-and-so.
And Pop and them thought money's
growing on trees, fallin' off,
so he said, "Well, I think I'll
take the kids and we'll go out."
♪ ♪
ROBERT FAIRCHILD:
And in those days,
the oil boom was in existence,
and money was flowing freely.
People would go to bed at night
and wake up the next morning
with a gusher
in his back yard.
♪ ♪
JOHNSON:
What happened was that
the Black community,
who didn't receive any benefits
directly from the oil fields,
began to find employment
in the service areas as porters,
janitors, elevator operators,
and the service-related aspect
of the businesses relating
to oil, so you had employment.
SKINNER:
I had two sisters living here,
working for white people,
living in quarters.
And I come up here and they met
me and housed me with them
and then got me a job working
for white people, like they was.
♪ ♪
(indistinct chatter,
gavel pounding)
NARRATOR:
In 1907, when Oklahoma
became a state,
the all-white legislature
moved quickly
to make it
a white man's country.
They passed one law after
another
to keep Blacks separate
and in their place.
Schools, hospitals, business,
even telephone booths
were to be segregated.
JOHNSON:
Well, basically in Oklahoma,
right after statehood,
you had racial bigotry that was
out in the open,
and I think that this had more
to do
with helping the development
of Black townships,
because Blacks tended
to congregate together
for their own self-protection.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
In the early 1900s,
a group of black businessmen had
purchased a small piece of land
in the northeast section
of Tulsa.
They called it Greenwood.
As segregation practices had
grown in white Tulsa,
so had the Black businesses
in Greenwood.
(cash register rings)
MABEL B. LITTLE:
I started a beauty shop,
dressing hair,
in 1915 in the home.
We had money, but we were not
able to go and purchase things,
so it helped us to go into
business for our own selves.
And then that's when
the Black people began to build.
♪ ♪
(construction sounds)
BURNS:
In front of Ramses Drug Store
was a cab stand called the
Your Cab Company,
and there were several cabs and
they were all owned by Black.
And some of the owners were, uh,
bought four or five new cabs
every year.
♪ ♪
EDWARD L. GOODWIN:
We even had our own
bus transportation,
the city lines...
The city bus lines today
were started by a Black man.
And he sold the thing
to the city,
with the understanding that they
would hire Black drivers.
(engine idling)
HOBART JARRET:
Before there were city buses,
there were jitneys that
Black people owned,
and, um...
The ambulance really intoned
as it went through
Greenwood Street.
♪ ♪
CHARLES BATE:
We had two or three
ambulances, yes,
ambulances which were operated
by funeral homes.
And there were no fees attached
to the ambulance service.
Of course, I suppose...
the undertakers who operated
the ambulances felt that the
patient might die
and they'd get remunerated
through that way.
♪ ♪
JAMES O. GOODWIN:
You'd go into a barbecue place,
and you'd hear the blues or
you'd hear the jazz,
and you'd hear live
performance...
Dinah Washington and Roy Milton,
and the Globetrotters would come
strolling down the street.
Earl Bostick was from here,
we had...
Clarence Love was from here...
a lot of musicians that went all
over the United States.
Clarence Love
had an all-girls band
that traveled all across
the country.
♪ ♪
HORNER:
We had some of the best barbecue
that you could ever want
to taste.
I can remember, though, one
place, though, that I guess,
to get that white business,
he had a side for Black folks
and a side for white folks.
And I can remember thinking
I didn't think his barbecue was
that great,
'cause I hated the idea
that he had to do this.
You know, he had a market that
he didn't have to do that.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
By 1921,
Tulsa's Black population had
grown to almost 11,000,
and the Greenwood community
was booming... 15 grocery stores,
two Black movie houses,
two Black newspapers,
four drugstores,
two Black public schools,
a Black public library,
four barbecue and chili parlors,
and about 13 churches.
♪ ♪
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN:
In Tulsa, Oklahoma,
we did have
a little separate enclave
where Blacks had some measure
of financial, social,
political independence,
maybe even some clout.
You had a whole group of Black
entrepreneurs who came together
and formed a kind of union to
help develop Black businesses.
The Black business grew
so in Tulsa until in 1936,
it was announced that we had the
largest Black business
in the whole United States.
But when we went on the white
side of town, now,
you'd have white guys picking
at you all the time,
and you might get involved
in a fight.
And the Ku Klux Klans were
pretty, uh...
pretty rampant.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
It was a dangerous time
to be Black in America.
Between 1917 and 1921,
racial violence was rampant.
In cities across the country,
Blacks were being beaten,
burned, and lynched
in alarming numbers.
In Tulsa,
the Ku Klux Klan included
political leaders
and members of the police.
Even local newspapers
supported mob violence.
JOHNSON:
It was always a hostile
relationship
between the Black and white
community,
and part of it was because the
Ku Klux Klan was located
in an area just west of the
Black community itself,
on Main and Eastern.
This was about four blocks west
of where the primary Black
community was located.
And we had to pass by this to go
to places of employment
and to go to and from school,
if we lived in service areas
of the quarters.
And it was just
a hostile situation.
There was always a potential
for violence there.
Black people were not about
to put up with the attitude
that the white community
was putting before us.
The whites felt that they could
instill fear in the
Black community,
and Blacks wasn't going for it,
and it was
a confrontational type of
attitude that existed.
NARRATOR:
But no one, Black or white,
was prepared for what happened
on the night of May 31, 1921.
LITTLE:
There was a merchandise store
that had one of these
old-fashioned elevators
that you ran by hand, and some
white girl was the operator,
and this young man
got on the elevator.
Well, when he went to get on it,
he stumbled,
and his... in the effort to keep
from falling,
he grabbed whatever he could,
and, of course,
the operator was in the way.
And she assumed that he was
trying to attack her,
and she reported it,
and he was arrested.
My husband asked
to make a speech.
He's the one that predicted
that riot.
Don't let nobody fool you.
I don't know who else says they
predicted it,
but T.R. Davis,
the father of my children,
he stood up and told the people,
he said, "There's going to be
a destruction in Tulsa."
And that afternoon,
the "Tribune" came out
and said what had happened,
and that they had arrested
Dick Roland,
"And it looks like there's going
to be a lynching tonight."
And, of course, when the Negroes
in the community saw this,
they said, "Oh, no.
No, we're not going to have
that."
After we went home from church,
here come one by the house.
"Man, get your guns,
get your guns."
Look like I can hear
them lousy people...
them loud-mouthed people
right now.
And there they were,
hundreds of Negroes
standing around, talking,
using profanity
and what-have-you.
And shooting their gun every now
and then.
And then they felt,
"Well, we better get on down
to the courthouse."
(indistinct chatter)
And they went down
to the courthouse,
and everybody was just standing
around,
nobody saying anything
to one another.
Finally, when a little old white
man came up to Barry and said,
"Nigger, what you doing with
that pistol?"
He say, "I'm going to use it
if I need to."
He said, "Oh, no,
you give it to me,"
and he tried to take it.
And that scuffling
set the riot off.
(train rumbling,
whistle blaring)
(indistinct angry voices)
So the Negro decided they were
going to make a stand
at Cincinnati and
Frisco Railroad tracks,
but by being outnumbered,
they had to leave.
And, of course, as they left,
the white moved in.
And as they moved in,
they looted,
and to hide
their behavior pattern,
they set fire to the building.
♪ ♪
SKINNER:
When T.R. woke me up,
he said, "Rose,
he said, "We got to get up
and leave here."
He said, "They done started."
And I didn't want to go.
I balked on it.
He had to kinda get rough with
me before I would leave,
but I did leave.
And he told me to...
not to bring nothin'.
He said, "Don't bring nothin."
I just had on some barefoot
sandals
and a towel tied on my head,
and that's the way I went,
'cause I was fussin' and
disgusted and scared, too.
♪ ♪
GEORGE D. MONROE:
I remember my mother
putting us... my sisters
and my brother... under the bed.
I remember the people coming in,
white people coming into our
house with torches,
setting the curtains on fire
and setting our house on fire.
And one stepped on my finger
while I was under the bed,
and my sister put her hand over
my mouth
to keep me from screaming.
And they was burnin'
and everything.
They set houses up there,
comin' this way, burnin'.
It reminded me of Sodom
and Gomorrah in the Bible.
And we was going that way.
He said, "Everybody get out
in the opening
where they'll see,
and won't nobody get hurt,"
and he was right.
He was right, long as we was
out where they could see us,
they didn't bother,
but they were shooting from
airplanes and everywhere.
It was a hot time.
My dad had heard, as other Black
men in that park had heard,
that the white marauders
were approaching them.
And my dad was joining other
Black men
to protect the Black people,
the wives and the children
who were there.
♪ ♪
The next thing that I remember
was that
we saw a railroad train with
boxcars attached to it,
and in at least
two of those boxcars,
there were soldiers in uniform,
and they were...
They were white soldiers.
And they was just like this with
them shotguns, just like this.
And, of course,
I just knew everybody
goin' be killed, myself.
♪ ♪
LITTLE:
We were afraid
that they came to kill us,
and they said,
"No, we came to help you."
And they wanted to take the men
and leave the women
and children out there.
I spoke up, I said, "No, we want
to go with our husbands.
If you're going to kill them,
kill us all together."
NARRATOR:
During the riot,
Black men had taken up arms
to protect their families.
Now, they were charged with
incitement,
taken off to jail
or the county fairgrounds
and tagged for identification.
(car engine rumbling)
(footsteps)
And babies were born that night,
two or three...
babies and everything.
My... I had some personal
friends that had a baby born
the night before the riot
started,
and they lost that baby during
that riot,
trying to keep up with them.
They had him in a shoebox...
no, in some kind of a box like a
shoebox.
And... they,
that baby got away from 'em.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
I never had any feeling,
it was such a shock,
until, I don't know, that the
Lord just strengthened me.
But my husband was...
he was so tender,
he just broke down.
He says, "Baby, we've lost
everything we had."
I said,
"But we have each other, honey."
♪ ♪
I never shedded a tear over that
night,
in fact,
I never have been angry.
I felt sorry for the people that
treated our folks like that.
NARRATOR:
The Red Cross reported more than
300 people had been killed.
Newspapers listed almost 100
deaths, but city officials
put the death toll at 36.
More than 35 blocks of Black
Tulsa was burned to the ground.
Over 4,000 people
were left homeless.
Still, most of the people
of Greenwood refused to leave.
JOHNSON:
After they had completely
destroyed the Black community,
Blacks then set about to try
to rebuild.
They could not get building
material to build
back in Tulsa
or the surrounding community.
Most Blacks had to import
the bricks and steel
that they rebuilt Tulsa back
with,
Black Tulsa back with,
from out of Arkansas and Kansas.
FRANKLIN:
My father had advised his
clients and others
to build,
build with orange crates,
build with anything in order
to...
in order to have some shelter,
but even so,
there are pictures of the winter
of 1921, '22,
of hundreds of tents
in which Blacks lived,
because they were not able
to build their buildings.
♪ ♪
LITTLE:
Without any equipment, we moved
and built a little shack,
and we had to cook outdoors.
I remember so well,
the rain would come,
we'd have to carry our food back
in the house,
and then after the rain was
over,
go back and build a fire
outside,
because you didn't have,
didn't have gas
and had nothing to cook on.
So it was a
bitter pill to swallow.
By the time the National Negro
Business League met here
in the summer of '25, just a few
months before we moved to Tulsa,
the people who visited here
described Tulsa, Black Tulsa,
as a town with grit,
a town that was coming back.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Out of the ashes,
the Black people of Tulsa
had rebuilt their community,
but they needed only to glance
across the tracks
to be reminded that the
racial attitudes
of most white Tulsans
had not changed.
♪ ♪
JOHNSON:
We played on the brickyard hill
on the eastern side.
Whites played on the brickyard
hill on the western side.
Well, we would meet periodically
and when we'd meet,
we would have us a fight.
And...
it would usually be about,
"nigger," and, "You haven't got
any business up here,"
and we felt that we had just
as much business as they did.
And when you would ride into
one of these neighborhoods
on your bike and have someone
say, you know,
"What are you niggers doin' in
this neighborhood?"
This is when you really got
upset,
really got angry, and...
you had to deal with it.
And if you'd go back,
you wanted to discuss it,
but if you discussed it,
you knew you were off grounds
and you knew that your parents
were going to tear into you
because they'd already told you
not to go.
LITTLE:
You'd go into a store
and buy a hat.
The first thing, the clerk would
try it on her head
and ask you what you think
about it.
I mean, my husband was with me,
and I wanted to buy a hat,
and she says,
"But you can't try it on.
Do you want it?"
I says, "No.
If I can't try the hat on,
I don't want it."
I decided I was going to beat
them at their own game,
so I started to puttin' tissue
in the hat,
asking them if I could have some
tissue to put in the hat
so I could try it on,
'cause I didn't have that much
grease on my hair,
but I thought
they would get the point.
I can remember the time
when I would go downtown.
I was lucky enough to have
monies in my pocket.
I would go in stores as to where
I couldn't try on a hat.
They'd let you know,
if you were there,
you the last one
to be waited on.
They'd let you know that they
didn't want your business.
PEACHES LITTLEJOHN WYNN:
We couldn't eat when we were
downtown,
so my mother would always say,
"Let's eat before we go,"
if shopping was going to be
an all-day trip.
I can remember that you could go
down to Kress's
and if you went down
in the basement,
you could stand up at a counter
and get something to eat.
When I went over to the counter,
I was told that I had to go to
the end of the counter,
and that's... you know, and you
see all these places open,
and no one there, and you could
only be served,
and you could not...
You could not sit in the seat.
You had to stand.
This segregation,
when they got where they didn't
want to wait on me,
I didn't pay 'em no attention.
I just left em',
and brought my kids away.
I think sometimes of how nice
it would be
if that cloak of segregation
hadn't been around me...
all my life, I might say,
to keep me from doin' some of
the things that I wanted to do.
(marching band music playing)
EDWARD GOODWIN:
Before we had football games,
we'd have a parade down
Greenwood Street,
and there was a lot of pride
in people.
And they'd just come out on the
streets out of those businesses
and there would just be throngs
of people.
♪ ♪
MABLE RICE:
It was high spirits
in the community.
Many, many droves of people came
down to see the parade.
Kids looked forward to it.
We started at old Booker
T. Washington High School
and marched to Carver...
Down Greenwood to Carver...
and that's where the football
games were played,
at Carver Stadium.
(official whistles)
I remember, during the war,
Booker T. had a...
we made a big bomber on the
field with the band members,
and we, as small majorettes,
we twirled and we were
the propellers of this bomber.
And we started out...
they turned all the lights out,
and we had lights in our hands.
And we started out on the
ground, stooped on the ground,
and as we marched, we took off,
and it looked like the bomber
was taking off on the field.
(distant voices, parade music)
WYNN:
I always wanted to be a
majorette, you know,
and be in that parade, but I do
remember when I got to Carver,
I did have a friend that... her
sister had been a majorette
and she was a majorette
and so we got together
and we like begged
the band director to let us
be part of the parade,
and so we were majorette.
(laughs)
I got to march in one parade.
♪ ♪
EDWARD GOODWIN:
My experience at Booker T.
Was one that I wouldn't trade
for anything in the world.
We had dedicated teachers.
We had teachers
that were legends.
We had this rich heritage at
Washington,
and these teachers,
they didn't change.
You'd hear about 'em, you know,
from the second grade.
You'd hear about
Seymour Williams,
and then he taught you,
you know, 12 years later,
and that was a long time
to a kid,
and it was an ongoing tradition.
♪ ♪
BURNS:
I remember Horace Hughes, one of
the finest English teachers
that you could have anywhere.
He was Black.
I've seen him come into that
classroom
and walk down to the back
of the room
and then just start pointing
out guys
and asking them to quote from
Shakespeare.
We were all given 150 lines of
poetry to learn.
We were all given about 25 or 30
quotations from Shakespeare
and Byron and all,
Keats and all the...
Shelley and the rest of 'em.
And if he asked you the line,
he'd just quote the first line
and you'd have to come up
and give him the next line
and finish the quotation.
And I can quote 'em now.
That's how good they were.
Like, "The fault, dear Brutus,
"lies not in the stars,
but in ourselves,
that we are underlings,"
Shakespeare.
That's the way Horace wanted
you to do it, you know.
♪ ♪
HORNER:
I don't remember anyone coming
out of high school
that could not read,
and I remember
many high school graduates took
that high school graduate
certificate
from Booker T. Washington
High School and ran with it.
They could compete and do
anything, and they did well.
When I was in school
at old Booker T.,
we did not have Negro history
textbooks.
Um...
Two of our instructors,
A.J. Lee and Bess Roberts,
had to come up with a textbook
for us to use
so that we could find out about
ourselves.
As long as I was at Booker T.
Washington High School,
and as long as people were
telling us
that we were doing all right
and that everything was fine,
beautiful, and wonderful,
then I felt that it was.
But on one occasion,
when we needed a pipe organ,
I believe, to use in some
musical rendition
that we were offering,
we planned to have a program,
the program at
Central High School,
and we were given permission
to do it.
Central High School
was an imposing structure,
a city block long,
a city block wide.
It covers an entire city block.
And I said, "So this is what
they have,
compared to what I have,"
and I realized then
that they were keeping me out of
an opportunity
that was really,
from my point of view,
not only mean-spirited,
but bigoted.
♪ ♪
RICE:
The first thing I can remember,
the evening that the war
broke out,
or the news came over the radio,
I remember my mother saying,
"We are at war."
And I said,
"What does that mean?"
And she said, "Well, America
is involved in a war."
And in my mind,
I thought it meant that the war
would be on Greenwood
the next day.
I was seven years old,
and I thought it would be there.
And I can remember packing my
doll's suitcase,
made peanut butter sandwiches
and packed a suitcase,
because all I knew about war
was that people starved.
SINGER:
♪ Sail on ♪
♪ Sail on, little girl,
sail on ♪
BURNS:
During World War II,
after we got in Australia,
we landed there,
it took us 21 days
to get over there,
and every two or three days,
we'd have one of the
white officers...
this was when they had
the Black and white army.
All of the enlisted men
and non-coms were Black,
and the white...
the officers were all white.
It's what we called
the two armies.
(clears throat)
And they would have these
sessions and tell us,
"Now, we're going into an
all-white country."
Australia was known
as all-white country.
"If they want you to go
to the back door to be served,
"now don't get excited about it,
just go on to the back door.
"We came down here as their
friends.
We don't want to come down here
and tell them how to operate."
So we just listened.
(distant gunshots, explosions)
(blues song continues)
SINGER:
♪ Well I've got somebody there ♪
♪ That will make you leave me
alone ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'll give you all my lovin' ♪
♪ What more can a good man do? ♪
Oh, the white officers went out
and made these speeches
and whatever they said to them,
these white Australians came
back and told us
that the white officers had told
them that we had tails,
that we were inclined to be
violent,
and we carried knives and guns
and would hurt some of their
kids.
(laughs):
Anything to keep them
afraid of us.
But it didn't work.
(ship horn blares)
(distant voices)
♪ ♪
When I come back to Tulsa
after spending 32 months
in the Pacific
with the, uh...
General MacArthur, I had gone
from a staff sergeant
to a first lieutenant.
But when I got down
to Fort Smith, Arkansas,
they wanted me to be segregated
from the other white officers
and white enlisted men
in the group.
So we went along with it,
'cause I was on my way back
to Tulsa to meet my wife,
and I didn't have time
to fight segregation.
But once I got back to Tulsa,
I made up my mind that I was
going to take it on
wherever I found it,
and I was going to whip it
wherever I found it,
and that's what I did.
It was after that time that
I began to question it,
because I knew that these men
had been over fighting
for freedom, supposedly.
It began to open my eyes
to paying attention to things
like riding
in the back of the bus.
I began to wonder why.
Why couldn't we eat in Kress's?
Why did we have to go down on
one end of the counter
and not sit?
JOHNSON:
I only started questioning
after I heard a lecture at
Howard University.
The question come up,
"Well, I pay the same thing to
ride the train,
"I pay the same thing to ride
the bus.
"Why is it that I have to ride
in the back of the bus?
"Why is it that I have to find
a restroom,
"if there's no restroom in a
small bus station?
"Why do I have to find the
bushes
or try to find a place where
colored can use the restroom?"
It wasn't until at that juncture
that I start to question,
"Why does this exist?"
♪ ♪
(car horns honk,
footsteps shuffle)
NARRATOR:
After the war, in Tulsa
and across the country,
white Americans were being
challenged to end segregation.
Ever so slowly,
doors were being forced open
in education
and in business.
BURNS:
I was pretty happy
about becoming
the first Black clerk in the
Tulsa Post Office.
When I walked in,
an old boy named...
white boy named Steve Metheny,
he came over to me, he says,
(stammering):
"What's your purpose?"
I said, "I came down here
to be...
go to work for the Post Office
as a clerk."
He said,
"We don't hire Black clerks.
We only hire Black carriers."
I said, "Well, I'm coming in
as a clerk.
"I'll just wait until the
postmaster comes down,
and he'll tell you."
So I sat over there,
and a few minutes later,
the postmaster came in.
He came right over to me
and shook my hand
and says,
"Hello, Joe, glad to see you."
And he walked me over to
Steve Metheny and said,
"This is Joe Burns
and he's going to be
our first Black clerk, so put
him on and make him a regular."
Prior to 1955, there was never
a Black street cleaning crew
that worked in an area outside
of the Black community,
but around this particular
period of time,
an all-Black crew was assigned
to work in an area east of
Lewis, which was all white.
And I was a part of that crew,
and while we had some
good moments,
there were lots of hostile
moments that existed
during this particular period
of time,
where we were accused
of everything
from molesting white women
to making obscene gestures,
of which none of these were ever
proven to have any validity.
When I made the decision to go
to Central,
we did not want to tell anyone
that I was going,
and the reason being was we did
not want to cause any confusion,
commotion, or any problems
with me going there,
like news media being involved.
I had a chemistry teacher that,
every time I went in class
during that first week and the
first few weeks of school,
he would make reference to,
"Oh, you're from Little Rock,
aren't you?"
And I would say, "No, I'm not
from Little Rock."
And it was sort of like...
I felt I had been accepted,
and he was making a point of,
"Here's a Black person in this
classroom,"
and by saying Little Rock,
here's a...
Little Rock had trouble with
integration.
And just referring to that
was bringing up something
that was negative.
HORNER:
I can remember a funny story
about my son
when we marched here in Tulsa.
And we were...
you were boycotting different
restaurants,
and at that time,
there was a Borden's up in...
out on 36th Street North.
It was located at that time,
it was the first shopping
center.
It was called
Northland Shopping Center.
And the, uh...
my son told me... he was small...
and we used to stand outside
Borden's and, you know,
going to do the boycott,
and we finally got a chance
to eat in there.
And we went through this line,
and we got to the table and all,
and he said,
"Is this what we were marching
and boycotting for?"
And I said, "Well, the right to
be able to go
anywhere you want to
and eat where you..."
He said,
"These potatoes are awful.
I don't even know why you want
to come here."
(laughs)
When I was teaching
at a state school,
state college in North Carolina,
one of the distinguished
professors at Duke asked me
if it was true that I was
opposed to segregation.
I said, "Yes"; he said,
"But I don't understand
"how you would be opposed,
because
"if you're successful in
opposing segregation,
"that means that your school
will close
and you won't have a job."
That always enters into the
minds of people
who have this view that
there's nothing good in the
Black community
and everything is good in the
white community.
And as long as you have that
kind of evil,
disjointed,
distorted view of life,
where all the good
is on one side
and all the evil is on another,
then you can't have
a healthy integration.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Ironically, Greenwood,
which had been built in the face
of racial hatred,
which had survived total
destruction,
would not survive integration.
♪ ♪
With the onset of integration,
many of the kids of the owners
or the business people left
Tulsa, going to Chicago,
California, New York, Denver,
in search of their own new life,
a new life altogether.
I think we began to drive around
the Greenwood area,
and go straight into South Tulsa
for...
so I can remember there were
long periods of times
that I didn't go into Greenwood
area at all,
because I can remember how
surprised I was
at how much it had deteriorated
when I began working again in
the Greenwood area.
HORNER:
And you'd see the
businesses deteriorating
because we were not supporting
the businesses,
and then the older folks were
giving it up, you know,
and... or they were shifting
to other parts of the city.
Integration helped to kill
Greenwood, and, of course,
when they began to redesign
the expressways,
like they do most of the time
in these cities
throughout the United States,
they always engineered
in such a way that
the expressways come across
the main section of
the Black community.
The same thing happened to
Tulsa, the Tulsa Black community
that happened to the Nashville,
Tennessee, Black community,
that happened to the
Raleigh-Durham,
North Carolina, Black community,
that happened
to the New Orleans,
Louisiana, Black community.
Here come the interstates
roaring right through
the Black community and playing,
wreaking havoc with them,
destroying the streets,
destroying the business
establishments,
and they never fully recovered.
They never fully recovered.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ Well I'm going back
to T'Town ♪
Greenwood was one was place
that I have lived on
which gave me a sense of
communal relationship
with the uppers and the lowers
and the middles,
and it all just blended
in together.
All up and down the street,
there people that knew
who we were
and they knew what we were
supposed to be doing
and what we were not supposed
to be doing.
We had good role models,
good people who were training
and teaching us in our
community.
I wish some of these children
could experience
what we experienced,
this thing of living together
and depending on each other,
and the brotherhood that we had.
They'd always tell us that
the opportunity's going
to come down the road.
Don't worry about 'em,
because they would show up.
There was a sense of
self-respect and self-esteem
and the feeling that our color
didn't have anything to do
with our not being as good
as anyone else.
Segregation made Black folk take
care of themselves,
be independent, have their own
business, train their children,
build their colleges,
build their schools,
build their homes.
Integration...
separated.
I don't think racial segregation
is a good thing from the
American experience,
so in that sense, no,
we're not better off.
But the quality of our lives,
in many respects,
was better in the days of
segregation,
and the challenge today is
to make it as good or better.
♪ ♪
SINGER:
♪ If you come on down
to Greenwood tomorrow ♪
♪ Well, I'll sing these blues
some more ♪
♪ ♪
BATE:
I like to tell the story of
someone coming to my office,
paying $2.00,
and my going down to the
Busy Bee cafe
and eating and paying 90 cents,
and then the girl at the
Busy Bee going over to McGarry's
and buying some hose,
McGarry's going to Bowser's
Prescription Pharmacy
and buying some aspirin,
Bowser going down to McKay's
and getting his pants pressed,
the man from there going over
to the Black dentist,
all within one-and-a-half
block area.
A dollar perhaps turned over
12 or 13 times in that area.
But now, through integration,
everything is gone
from the Black area.
We have nothing there.
You can't get a spool of thread
there anymore.
So we got integration
and suffocation...
and degradation
and all the other "gations"
you would like to add.
♪ ♪
ANNOUNCER:
Next time...
(Marian Anderson singing)
ALISHA LOLA JONES:
Marian Anderson challenged
people's ideas of what the souls
of Black folk
looked and sounded like.
KIRA THURMAN:
She is willing to show up
because she is not going to
accept racial oppression.
ANGELA BROWN:
She became the face
of a movement.
That was something she could
never step back from.
ANNOUNCER:
"Voice of Freedom,"
next time
on "American Experience."
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
"American Experience:
Goin' Back to T-Town"
is available with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video.
♪ ♪