The inscription is a presentation regarding the Tulsa Race Massacre that occurred a couple of decades ago, in the state of Oklahoma, in the United States of America. It is shockingly shocking that the United States government has been reluctant to acknowledge the import of events at the time as a massacre.

1. THE HISTORY OF THE TULSA RACE
MASSACRE, 1921
ANNOTATED RESEARCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRESENTED BY AMOS ONSARIGO
Imhotep Institute Charter High School

2. Biden, Joseph R,Jr. “Remarks on Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the
Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” Daily Compilation of Presidential
Documents, 2021, 1-9
According to Biden Joseph Jnr., the Tulsa Race Massacre is a story seen in the mirror
dimly. Speaking at the Greenwood Cultural Center, he affirmed that the story which has
been told in silence, cloaked in darkness ought to be known in full view. The president
acknowledged the fact that some injustices meted on humanity are so grievous, horrific
and heinous to an extent that they cannot be buried no matter how hard people try. Only
truth, reconciliation and reparation can trigger the healing and justice as much as they
are not enough.
Mr. President observed that there was enough hate, resentment and vengeance in the
community(White Americans) who believed America does not belong to everyone and
not everyone is created equal. A belief enforced by law, badge, hood and by noose. The
terrible allegation of a Black male teenager attacking a white female teenager provided
a fuse of fury that led to uncontrolled escalation of the Tulsa Race Massacre when a
white mob of 1,000 gathered around the courthouse with intent to lynch the Black teen.

3. Brasher, Jordan P., Derek H. Alderman, and Aswin Subanthore. “Was Tulsa’s
Brady Street Really Renamed? Racial (in)Justice, Memory-Work and the
Neoliberal Politics of Practicality.” Social & Cultural Geography 21, no. 9 (2020):
1223-44
Brasher affirms that the city of Tulsa renamed Brady street and designated the road as a
reconciliation way to disassociate itself with Wyatt Brady, a Ku Klux Klan leader who
was actively involved in the 1921 Tulsa massacre that killed, injured and displaced many
black Tulsans.
By honoring M.B. Brady with the same last name but no ties to Tulsa, was part of a
neoliberal compromise to ensure the name change would have the least disruptive
impact on the financial interests of white business owners on the road.
The Tulsa case demonstrates how convenience and practicality represented as a matter
of neoliberal nonpolitics is nonetheless a political technology used to justify sanitizing
controversial histories and prioritizing capital accumulation over social justice. This faux
renaming juxtaposes how neoliberalism has weakened cities ability to engage in
restorative memory work recovering past racial violence.

4. Brophy, Alfred L. Reconstructing the Dreamland the Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations,
and Reconciliation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002
Brophy’s work is extremely effective in terms of its narrative structure and insights about
race and law. His vivid portrait of pre-riot Greenwood’s prosperity and vitality. Brophy
presented his evidence fully by weighing it judiciously by pointing out inconsistencies
and paradoxes. It is useful particularly in terms of understanding the contentious
debates within the black community regarding the appropriate response to Jim Crow’s
discrimination and his discussion of the ambiguities of the National Guard’s fateful
decision to disarm Greenwood’s black residents and take them into protective interment
facilities. Brophy is presumed, he treats his inscription fairly by making an iron clad that
the whites in Tulsa ought to claim responsibility of the atrocities meted on Black
Americans.
Brophy makes the case for reparations, this brings the story very much into the current
policy debates. This gives us a grim of hope in contextualizing the ever changing but on
going impact of the covenant with color.

5. Chapman, Lee Roy. “Nightmare of Dreamland: Tate Brady and the Battle for Greenwood.”
In A Voice was Sounding: Selections from This Land, volumes 1 & 2, ed. Michael Mason,
pp. 1-16.Tulsa: This Land Press, 2012.
Tate Brady was born in Forest City, Missouri, in 1870, and moved to Nevada, Missouri,
when he was 12,. By the time he was 17, he had taken up work at W.F. Lewis shoe
store.
Accusations of land grabbing tormented Brady so much that he publicly issued a $100
reward to anyone who could prove that he benefitted from the Tulsa race massacre.
Brady was a ringleader of the Ku Klux Klan that meted atrocities on Black Americans
In the early hours of 1925 Brady walked into his kitchen and sat down at the breakfast
table. He propped a pillow the nook of one arm and rested his head upon it. He took a
44 caliber pistol, pointed at his temple, and pulled the trigger.
Brady, who worked to divide Tulsa along racial lines, died a victim of his own curse.

6. Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Ellsworth says on Monday morning, May 30, 1921, a 19-year old Dick Rowland was
accused of making sexual advances to Sarah Page, a white elevator operator in a
Tulsa office building. The front page of Tulsa Tribune magazine apparently carried an
inflammatory account of the incident, within the next 24 hours, Greenwood, the city’s
black business section became the scene of a destructive riot.
White rioters burned the homes and businesses of Black Americans and performed
acts that were unusual even in the period’s racial violence. Blacks were shot at will
and biplanes dropped incendiary explosives causing massive destruction.
It was a shock in disbelief since some black occupiers had settled in Tulsa and
Oklahoma in the preceding generation because race relations were better than any
other border and southern states.

7. Greenwood, Ronni Michelle. “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Reparations: The Use of
Emotions in Talk about the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot.” Journal of Social Issues 71, no.2
(2015): 338-55.
Greenwood’s research aimed at examining the role of collective emotions in the process
of political solidarity within the context of debate about reparations for the June 1 1921
Tulsa Race Riot. The analysis of interview data illustrates the creative and flexible ways
the white Americans delegitimize authority inaction and legitimize majority support for
action through strategic use of social categories and collective emotions in their talk
about the riot and reparations.
The interpretation of the results suggests that the white Americans tried to change the
hearts and minds of the majority focus on messages that appealed to strengthen and
validate valued dimensions of majority social identity.
The findings expands our understanding of the discursive aspects of political solidarity
and the processes that affect social change on social issues that are related to minority
group interests.

8. Halliburton, R. The Tulsa Race War of 1921. San Francisco: R and E Research
Associates, 1975.
Halliburton opines that Tulsa’s Race relations were ceremonial, likening it to a
marriage of inconvenience whereby spouses are living in the same quarters with
different dreams in different rooms in different houses. Each evading one another by
perpetuating a separateness of silence.
This reminds me of a French political historian Alexis d’Tocquiville who once said that
once the majority has irrevocably decided a question, it is no longer discussed
because the majority is a power that does not respond well to constructive criticism.
It is worth noting the aftermath of the massacre could rather be imagined than
experienced. Feeble Black Americans sat on the steps of the few remaining houses,
whose look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication. Judging from their
attitude, it was not of material consequence to them whether they lived or died
because they apparently could to conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men who
deliberately set fire on their friends homes and neighbors.

9. Hill, Karlos K., and Kevin Matthews, The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic
History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.
Dr. Karlos under scored the fact that never again will the people of Oklahoma will be
able to turn away from the gruesome history of the Tulsa Race Massacre and its
aftermath, as much as it went unknown and unrecognized for many decades within the
state. Dr.Karlos also explores how the Massacre photos are extremely disturbing. He
has inked down a quote of one survivor, Rosa Davis who was told by her husband, “I
don’t know what it’s going to be, but it is going to be some kind of destruction”. He
goes further to elucidate that the scuffle was fueled during the summer of 1921,
whereby racially motivated violence hung in the air. It is estimated 26 Black Americans
were lynched.
The altercation between Dick Rowland and a white woman was all the provocation that
that was needed for the tinderbox of hatred to explode into destructive violence. As the
Anniversaries of the Tulsa Race Massacre continue to recede into our memories, we
ought to seek to refresh and renew our horror at the events with frankness and clarity.
Says Christine Pappas.

10. Hopkins, Randy. “Birthday of the Klan: The Tulsa Outrage of 1917.” The Chronicles of
Oklahoma 97, no. 4 (winter 2019): 412-49.
Randy Hopkins is a retired trial lawyer residing in Portland, Oregon. Born and raised in
Oklahoma, he is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas
School of Law. His article “Birthday of the Klan: The Tulsa Outrage of 1917 ,” was
published in the Chronicles of Oklahoma.
He made a presentation that reviewed the underappreciation instances of interracial
cooperation and respect for the rule of law. He equally explored the historiography and
failure of Oklahoma historians to preserve the extensive documentation of the State
Council of Defense. He concluded by underpinning the confrontation between the Tulsa
Council and the newsman.
This came amidst growing unrest in Governor Robert Lee’s State Council of Defense
over the publication of “ Whites adopted slavery methods,” and “Let us have
democracy,” articles in the Tulsa Star headline. The intricacies of the articles reported an
instance of peonage in Tulsa and its dramatic resolution.

11. Johnson, Hannibal B. Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic
Greenwood District. Fort Worth: Eakin Press, 2007.
Hannibal explores a talented cadre of African American businesspersons and
entrepreneurs who plied their trades in rigidly segregated Tulsa that caters for a black
community that is largely shut out of the main stream economy. The aforementioned
was as a result of Jim Crow’s parlayed regime that devised a closed market system that
defied the myth of African American mediocrity.
The fear and jealousy that swelled within the white community over the African
American economic success acumen mounted. Since the media fanned the flames of
racial discord, the Ku Klux Klan made its presence known triggering the systemic
racism to cement its place in the society unnoticed.
A chance encounter between two teenagers lit the fuse that ignited the Tulsa tinderbox
and set Black Wall Street District alight, as a result, the alleged assault on a white girl
by an African American boy triggered unprecedented civil unrest that catapulted a
racially hostile climate in general, and mob rule dictated lethal response when the Black
Americans least expected any form of vengeance or retribution.

12. Joseph R. Biden Jr. “Remarks on Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the
Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” Daily Compilation of Presidential
Documents, 2021, 1-9
Biden confessed how literal hell was unleashed in Tulsa, the white mob terrorized
Greenwood, shooting at will, draped over the fence a Black family they had murdered,
private planes dropped incendiary explosives. Indeed the reign of murder, theft and
plunder was the order of the night that left 35 blocks in ash, ember, razed and in rubble.
As a result ten thousand Black Americans were left in destitute and homeless, they
ended up being placed in internment camps.
Mr. President affirmed that Americans should not be selective in knowing what they want
and not what we should know. The Tulsa massacre had never been taught in schools
because there was a clear effort of erasing it from our collective memories. The racial
segregation was idolized to an extent that hate became embedded systematically in the
United States of America’s laws, statutes and culture.
As much as the Black American cannot bury pain and trauma forever, Mr. President said
there shall be a reckoning, an inflection point, like we are currently facing as a nation.

13. Karatzas, Konstantinos D. “Interpreting Violence: The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and Its
Legacy.” European Journal of American Culture 37, no. 2(2018): 127-40
The article analyses aspects of the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot and war. In the
first part, it presents a brief history of Tulsa and the reasons that triggered the clash
that devastated Greenwood, the black of Tulsa.
The next section focuses on the role of the red cross in the relief project for the
support of thousands of homeless African Americans , and deals with the long legal
struggle for justice and the role of the legal system in the failure to punish the guilty for
the devastating lethal atrocities in Greenwood.
The last part of the article presents the controversy generated by the renaming of one
of the main Tulsa’s streets and the direct connection to the city’s violent and racial
past.
The legacy of segregation is deeply rooted in the American past: the use of the Tulsa
riot and war as case study demonstrates the impact of racial conflicts on society and
the necessity to identify and resolve relevant problems.

14. Karlos K. Hill, Community-Engaged History: A reflection on the 100th Anniversary of the
1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, The American Historical Review, Volume 126, Issue 2, June
2021, Pages 670-684, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab193
Three Basic Building Blocks
Dr. Karlos alludes that never again will the people of Oklahoma be able to turn away
from the gruesome history of the Tulsa Race Massacre and its aftermath, as much as it
went unknown and unrecognized for many decades within the state. Dr.Karlos also
explores how the Massacre photos are extremely disturbing. He has inked down a quote
of one survivor, Rosa Davis who was told by her husband, “I don’t know what it’s going
to be, but it is going to be some kind of destruction”. He goes further to elucidate that the
scuffle was fueled during the summer of 1921, whereby racially motivated violence hung
in the air. It is estimated 26 Black Americans were lynched.
The altercation between Dick Rowland and a white woman was all the provocation that
that was needed for the tinderbox of hatred to explode into destructive violence. As the
Anniversaries of the Tulsa Race Massacre continue to recede int our memories, we
ought to seek to refresh and renew our horror at the events with frankness and clarity.
Says Christine Pappas.

15. Krehbiel, Randy, and Karlos K. Hill. Tulsa, 1921: Reporting a Massacre. University of
Oklahoma Press, 2019.
Randy opines that in May 1921, white mobs looted, burned, and razed the prosperous
area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a home to the city’s Black residents. The number of African
American casualties has been estimated to be in the hundreds.
Arson destroyed over 1200 homes; property losses approached 2 million dollars. The
Tulsa race massacre capped a four year period of anti-black collective violence that
began in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1917 and peaked during the Red summer of 1919.
Like the preceding anti-black collective violence, Tulsa’s massacre has long been the
subject of scholarly interest.

16. Kweku Larry Crowe and Thabiti Lewis. “The 1921 Tulsa Massacre: What Happened to
Black Wall Street.” Humanities(Washington) 42, no.1 (2021): 24-55.
Kweku has given a human face to the riot by examining the experiences of a larger
number of Tulsans affected by the riot. By placing the disaster within the context of
post-World war 1 racial violence, he has brought into view a major racial conflict long
ignored by historians, in their writings.
Madigan and the publisher have tried to reach out to two different audiences, the
professional scholar and the general reader. Those readers with little knowledge of the
riot but who wish to understand more about it and its link to the present demand of
Oklahoma blacks for reparation will find this book beneficial.
Scholars and historians will most appreciate Madigan’s discussion of how both
knowledge of the and literature about the Tulsa Race Massacre have developed over
time by considering the prospects of tuning to the standard work on this peculiar
subject, Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land (Baton Rouge, 1982).

17. Madigan, Tim. The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.1st
ed. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Madigan alludes that the last day of May and the first of June in 1921, Tulsa,
Oklahoma, witnessed one of the nation’s worst race riots imaginable. In less than two
days, black American lost dozens of homes, business, and other institutions as white
mobs burned over thirty blocks of their community. The destruction included Black
Wall Street, a section known for its many enterprises and vibrant economic activity.
The Tulsa riot stands as one of those ugly events that can only be imagined than
experienced because they define the terrible state of race relations in post-World
War America.
It is worth noting that before the outbreak of that conflict easily equated to
uncontrolled escalation, there existed within the black community a spirit of defiance
and independence that ruthlessly and aggressively confronted and repelled the
arrogance of racial oppression.
Madigan’s writings might be presumed of limited value because he has synthesized a
considerable body of secondary materials and personal interviews in his work.

18. Messer, Chris M., Thomas E. Shriver, and Allison E. Adams. “The destruction of Black Wall
Street: Tulsa’s 1921 Riot and the Eradication of Accumulated Wealth.” The American
Journal of Economics and Sociology 77, no. 3-4 (2018): 789-819.
Messer alludes that the study of race has been subjected to countless number of
sociological inquiries. The embedded issues within this pursuits are related to racial
conflicts that involves race riots. He further opines that much less has been documented
in regards to how episodes of racial conflict are interpreted by stakeholders and the
public at large. He suggests that in the long run, riots demands restitution and
reconciliation that involves the reframing or the rearticulating the historical happenings.
Messer suggests that the Tulsa Race Massacre can be studied has an historical event
that has long passed but it is worth noting that it is a process that has continued to have
sociopolitical ramifications today. The historical data regarding the riot allows it to be
understood in proper context.
He argues that the causes of the Tulsa riot cannot be captured without grasping its
complexity. He concludes by saying, the Tulsa riot was due to racist and discriminatory
context ranging from politics, race to law enforcement.

19. Parrish, Mary E. Jones, John Hope Franklin, Scott Ellsworth, Anneliese M. Bruner, and
Ajamu Kojo. The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2021.
Mary Parrish was reading in her home when the Tulsa race massacre began on the
evening of May 31, 1921. Parrish’s daughter, Florence Mary, called the young
journalist and teacher to the window, “Mother,” she said, “I see men with guns.” The
two eventually fled and unwittingly became eyewitnesses to the death of hundreds of
Black Oklahomans and the destruction of the Greenwood district, a prosperous,
primarily Black area known nationally as Black Wall Street. The Nation Must Awake is
Parrish’s first-person account, compiled along with the recollection of nearly two
dozens others, of what is now recognized as the single worst incident of racial
violence in The United States of America.
Perhaps Ajamu Kojo is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, and a graduate of Howard
University. He splits his time developing independent film projects, working as a
scenic artist on television and film productions, including Law & Order.

20. Simon, Daniel. “Photographing the Tulsa Massacre: A Conversation with Karlos K. Hill.”
World Literature Today 95, no. 2 (2021): 64-66
Daniel Simon, an assistant director and editor-in-chief of Oklahoma University’s
renowned journal World Literature Today together with Karlos Hill helped the faculty,
staff and students in creating a wide range of educational opportunities throughout the
year.
The most notable one is the Oklahoma University Law panel of national experts whose
objective towards achieving a common goal was to discuss financial reparations to
descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors.
That notwithstanding, a meaningful presentation was brought forth by the Oklahoma
Archeological Survey team whose efforts never went unnoticed since the team had
uncovered a mass grave that was presumed to be containing the remains of at least 12
massacre victims in Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery.

21. Smith, Greta Katherine. “The Battling Ground’: Memory, Violence, and Resistance in
Greenwood, North Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1907-1980,” Portland State University MA thesis,
2018.
Katherine opines that Black Wall Street had evolved into a vibrant community
challenged by waves of violence and segregation at statehood in 1907, the Tulsa Race
Riot of 1921. She notes that this violent was fueled by Oklahoma lawmakers, local
Tulsa government officials, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and private white citizens
tirelessly worked to expand the city’s color line by controlling the placement and
visibility of black Americans in Tulsa and eventually gain ownership of Greenwood
since it was located on desirable land.
It is worth noting that the Black Americans met the waves of violence with acts of
resistance and defiance by organizing and lobbying against segregation at statehood,
they repelled during the Tulsa Race Riot, and galvanized to rebuild almost immediately
thereafter.
They achieved the aforementioned by maintaining a culture of interdependence that
immensely contributed to impregnable strength in community and economy.

22. Smith, Lindsey Claire. “How We Write about Tulsa.” World Literature Today 95, no. 2
(2021): 72-76.
Lindsey opines that a horrific attack on African American Tulsans that was meant to
invoke terror and enforce white authority, many in Tulsa are reflecting on our city’s
legacy of violence, ever mindful that the coming of this years anniversary shines a
light on our community and its failures, even as we point toward evidence of triumph.
She further affirms that the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre and the eventual
rebirth of the Greenwood District will be told and retold. And yet, even as our city has
ben shaped by this violence into the present, many Tulsans will stubbornly insist that
the past should stay in its place. Still others will express surprise and sadness at
learning about the ordeal for the very first time, confessing that “no one told them”
about this profoundly traumatic event for our city and nation. Though it is the subject
of a now-comprehensive body of scholarship, literature, and journalism developed
over decades.
Following numerous egregious acts of police brutality against African Americans , an
insurrection attempt at the US Capitol echoed acts of mob violence that continue to
haunt Tulsa.

23. Temporal Domain Filters
“The Plot to Kill ‘Diamond Dick’ Rowland and the Tulsa Race Massacre.” The Chronicles of
Oklahoma 99, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 4-49
This journal dating back in few days before the lethal occurrence of the Tulsa Race
Massacre juxtaposes how the editor’s deceit married hatred that consequently bred into
hysteria. More than one hundred years later, the outcome is called the Tulsa Race
Massacre.
It further pinpoints the fact that the monstrous consequences of the election which was
a bipartisan affair a year earlier were revealed in June 1921 when the Black Wall Street
lay in ruins.
The selection of Gustfson as Tulsa’s police chief was horrifically catastrophic, since he
boasted of skills in the art of violent ambush, claiming to have masterminded the bloody
Deep Fork Valley ambush of January 1917. Additionally, in his all life, he had been
connected with detectives agencies and with the underworld, and knew nothing about
working with anybody but snitches and crooks. That he would have no other kind of
men on his force, and such a police force would be a menace to the city of Tulsa.

24. “The Racing to the Precipice: Tulsa’s Last Lynching.” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 98, no.
3 (fall 2020): 286-327.
The editor expounds how Roy Belton was unceremoniously deported to the purgatory
by outraged mob.
James Woolley who had delivered Belton to his killers said, “I am unreservedly against
any mob law; the courts were made to convict and sentence the criminal, but I believe
that Belton’s lynching will prove more beneficial than a death sentence pronounced by
the courts. It shows to the criminal that Tulsa men mean business. ”
Nine months later they would bear central responsibility for the disaster, the Tulsa Race
Massacre by commissioning at least four hundred special police deputies and set them
loose upon the city. The special deputies helped in inciting the outbreak of the riot, shot
at will and formed the most dangerous part of the mob.
This synthesis of the lynching is based on the work product and investigative documents
preserved in State of Oklahoma vs James Woolley in the District Court of Tulsa County.
Attorney General Civil Case No. 1017, box 23, record group 1-2, Oklahoma State
Archives, Oklahoma Department of Libraries, Oklahoma City.

25. United States Commission on Civil Rights Oklahoma Advisory Committee. School
Desegregation in Tulsa, Oklahoma: A Report. Washington, D.C.: United states Government
Printing Office, 1977.
The findings and recommendations contained in this report are those of the Oklahoma
Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and, as such, are
not attributed to the Commission. But it will be considered to help in formulating its
recommendations to the President and the Congress.
The Oklahoma Advisory Committee conducted a special study on school desegregation
in Tulsa with an intent to gain a perspective on how the desegregation process in Tulsa
was and is being implemented. The role of the community leadership was examined,
response of the community to school desegregation, the role of the school
administration in carrying out desegregation and the plan itself.
The Advisory Committee recommended that the school board should immediately
establish a citizens’ task force that comprises schools officials, and private citizens
representing all segments of the population in Tulsa to prepare a comprehensive plan
that will be used to implement school desegregation in the entire Black Wall Street
District.

26. Wilder, Craig Steven. A covenant with color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Tables, Bibliography, index. Pp. Xii, 325. US
$35.00(cloth)
Wilder demonstrates that racism is not simply the product of the unfortunate prejudices
inevitable in human nature, nor is it ultimately responsible for social inequality as it is
often claimed or believed. He rather alludes that racism is an ideology of power that is
deeply embedded in society’s material relationships. Used to create or perpetuate
inequality.
Wilder further insists on the need to not only examine the impact of the legacy of
slavery, but also focus on the perpetuation of the covenant with color to the present.
This very possibility lies at the center of Alfred Brophy’s Reconstructing the Dreamland,
whereby Brophy places the contrasting black and white visions of the American legal
system at the heart of his examination of what happened and why at the infamous Tulsa
Massacre of 1st June 1921.The vocal and militant Black American minority veterans of
WW1 regarded the law was about justice and ideals of democratic citizenship and
equality that were solely lacking for black people in Jim Crow’s Oklahoma. Interestingly,
the whites presumed it as an instrument of power intended to maintain racial order.