Category: USA

Pumpjack

Barnsdall OK

This is a pumpjack. It pumps oil. These pumpjacks are all over Oklahoma, still pumping. This pumpjack is in the middle of Main Street in Barnsdall OK, claiming to be the only Main Street Pumpjack in the world. It was completed 1914, and is 1,771 feet deep.

Greenwood District

Tulsa OK

The worst race massacre in American history occurred here in Tulsa, May 31-June 1, 1921.

In the early 1900s, Tulsa’s African-American community, the “Greenwood District”, was nationally known for its prosperity. “Black Wall Street” was populated with entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, dentists, beauty parlors, barbershops, dance halls, pool halls, movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores, and much more. Greenwood Avenue was favorably compared with Beale Street in Memphis and State Street in Chicago.

On May 31, 1921 Dick Rowland, a 19 year old African-American was accused of assaulting a white woman. He was jailed, but the charges were later dropped.

The local Tulsa Tribune published an inflammatory story that mobilized a white mob to lynch Rowland.

African-Americans stationed themselves outside the courthouse to protect Rowland.

The white mob pursued the retreating African-Americans into the Greenwood District, terrorizing the entire community, shooting African-Americans, burning homes and businesses to the ground.

When the Oklahoma National Guard was called in, they ignored the rampaging mob and instead arrested hundreds of African-American survivors.

Public officials failed to keep records of people who were wounded or killed. The estimated number of deaths is at least 36, but witness accounts put the number at more than 300 African-Americans killed. The massacre lasted two days.

Murals depicting Black Wall Street.
Vernon AME Church on Greenwood Avenue, the only surviving foundation from the 1921 Massacre.

John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park

Tulsa OK

Tulsa was the site of the most deadly race massacre in US history, in 1921. Race relations were raw for decades. John Hope Franklin was an historian from Oklahoma whose most famous work was a book titled “From Slavery to Freedom”. His father was a lawyer who defended African-American survivors of the race massacre.

A man fully armed for assault
A man with his hands raised in surrender
Maurice Willows, Director of the Red Cross holding a baby born June 1921.
The Reconciliation Tower. At the center of the Park, the 26 foot tall memorial tower depicts the history of the African American struggle from Africa to America – from the migration of enslaved men, women and children with Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, the slave labor experience in the Territories, the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry that won the Battle of Honey Springs – to statehood, the immigration of free African Americans into Oklahoma, and the All-Black towns and Greenwood. It honors Buck Colbert Franklin (prominent attorney and Dr. Franklin’s father) and other early Tulsa African American prominence.