Death in a Promised Land (9 page)

The Drexel building.

Courtesy of the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa

Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator

A negro delivery boy who gave his name to the public as “Diamond Dick” but who has been identified as Dick Rowland, was arrested on South [sic] Greenwood avenue this morning by Officers Carmichael and Pack, charged with attempting to assault the 17-year-old white elevator girl in the Drexel building early yesterday.

He will be tried in municipal court this afternoon on a state charge.

The girl said she noticed the negro a few minutes before the attempted assault looking up and down the hallway on the third floor of the Drexel building as if to see if there was anyone in sight but thought nothing of it at the time.

A few minutes later he entered the elevator she claimed, and attacked her, scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes. Her screams brought a clerk from Renberg’s store to her assistance and the negro fled. He was captured and identified this morning both by the girl and the clerk, police say.

Tenants of the Drexel building said the girl is an orphan who works as an elevator operator to pay her way through business college.
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There can be but little doubt, however, that this issue of the
Tribune,
then edited by Richard Lloyd Jones, had more to say about the incident. Dr. P. S. Thompson, president of the Tulsa Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association, stated that the “immediate cause” of the riot “was a report in the Tulsa
Tribune
that threats were being made to lynch a Negro for attempted criminal assault upon a White girl, which was wholly without foundation or cause.” One informant, W. D. Williams, has a vivid memory that the
Tribune
carried an article headlined, “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”
⁶
Another person wrote after the riot that:

The Daily Tribune, a White newspaper that tries to gain its popularity by referring to the Negro settlement as “Little Africa,” came out on the evening of Tuesday, May 31, with an article claiming that a Negro had had some trouble with a White elevator girl at the Drexel Bldg. It also said that a mob of whites were forming in order to lynch the Negro.
⁷

Similarly, Adjutant General Charles Barrett, who led the National Guard into Tulsa to suppress the riot, stated that the riot had its origins in the Drexel building incident, and in “the fantastic write-up of the incident in a sensation-seeking newspaper.”
⁸

This issue of the
Tribune
hit the streets of Tulsa at about 3:15
P.M.
Forty-five minutes later, a man called the police and notified them that there was lynch talk on the streets of the city, and Police and Fire Commissioner J. M. Adkison called Sheriff Willard McCullough and informed him of the same. The talk soon spread to action. Sometime between 6:00 and 7:00
P.M
., a crowd of whites began to form outside of the courthouse, where Rowland was being held. It has been reported that there were some three hundred whites outside the courthouse by 7:30
P.M
., and that this crowd grew to four hundred by nine o’clock.
⁹

Sheriff McCullough later stated that when three white men walked into the courthouse around 8:20
P.M
., he promptly ordered them out, telling them that there was not going to be a lynching. McCullough then went outside and ordered the crowd to disperse. However, he apparently did not attempt to enforce his order. The crowd of whites remained. Although the sheriff later claimed that he expected no serious trouble coming out of the situation, he did take some precautionary measures. He sent the elevator to the top floor of the building, where the jail was, and rendered it inoperable. He sent his guards to the top floor, too, where he had them barricade themselves behind a door at the top of the narrow and easily defendable flight of stairs. He ordered them not to open the door for anyone.
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Some black Tulsans were justly alarmed by these developments. The fate of Roy Belton after a similar crowd of whites had gathered outside of the courthouse less than a year before was a fresh memory. And there were enough recent incidents of blacks being spirited away from Oklahoma jails and lynched to give cause for alarm. With rightful urgency, black Tulsans gathered among themselves on Greenwood Avenue to discuss their options.
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Apparently, there was some confusion as to whether Sheriff McCullough desired and sought black aid for the defense of the court-house. Barney Cleaver and another black policeman had been in touch with McCullough throughout the evening. Cleaver had called the sheriff and told him that there was a rumor circulating in the Greenwood business district that a white mob was forming. Cleaver asked if he could come down to the courthouse, but McCullough asked him to stay where he was and try to calm things down at that end. Later, the sheriff told Cleaver that he could come downtown. Other blacks stated that they had called McCullough to offer their assistance, and that he later requested it.
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Sheriff Willard McCullough.

Courtesy of the Tulsa World
.

At about 9:15
P.M.
, false reports reached the Greenwood area that the white mob was storming the courthouse. Henry Jacobs later stated that he saw J. B. Stratford, a hotel proprietor, getting together an armed group and telling some of his comrades: “Boys, we will send and get the Muskogee crowd and you go on up and lay there ’til they come.” Another man claimed that he saw J. K. Smitherman, black deputy sheriff, go into a “choc” joint and collect some men to “go downtown” with him. Barney Cleaver stated that he tried to stop a group of blacks from going, but that they only laughed and threatened him. Some fifteen minutes later, a group of twenty-five to thirty black Tulsans armed with rifles and shotguns appeared at the courthouse and offered their services to Sheriff McCullough for the defense of the jail. Some police at the scene convinced these people that Rowland was safe, and that the authorities could handle any situation which might arise. Apparently reassured, the blacks left. The white crowd, however, remained.
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Rumors and reports of what was happening at the courthouse spread through the city. Action followed. Major fames A. Bell of Tulsa’s National Guard units was informed at his home at about nine o’clock by two other guardsmen that a white lynch mob was forming outside of the courthouse. Bell then went to the National Guard armory and called Sheriff McCullough and Police Chief John Gustafson about the situation, and reportedly, they both informed him that matters were under control. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, Bell told the Guard officers at the armory to gather together all the arms and ammunition, and to start contacting the other guardsmen in case Governor Robertson called them out.
¹⁴

Major Bell then returned to his home to put on his uniform, but when he got there two runners informed him that a mob of whites was trying to break into the armory. Bell grabbed his pistol and returned to the armory, where he first spotted a group of white men trying to force a window on the side of the building. He ordered them away, and followed them to the front of the armory, where some three to four hundred whites had gathered. The crowd demanded rifles and ammunition. Bell refused. He later stated that they “continued to press forward in a threatening manner,” and that only by maintaining a firm stand with pistols drawn were he and a few others able to keep the crowd from entering the building. Bell told the crowd that the guardsmen inside would shoot any unauthorized visitors. The mob was finally dispersed, and Bell threw guards around the building.
¹⁵

Undoubtedly spurred on by more reports and by the growth of the white crowd in front of the courthouse—now consisting of 1,500 to 2,000 people—armed blacks visited the courthouse for a second time. It was approximately 10:30
P.M
. They numbered, this time, between fifty and seventy-five men. Again they offered their services to the police, who were dwarfed by the white crowd, and again they were refused and asked to leave. By this time, Barney Cleaver had arrived and was trying to convince his fellow black Tulsans to go back home. Sheriff McCullough later stated that he disarmed one black man by himself, but did not order his deputies to conduct a general disarmament because he feared that this would start a riot. He stated that he wanted to get the blacks in a frame of mind to leave. Apparently, however, neither the sheriff nor Chief Gustafson had seriously attempted to disperse the crowd of whites or get them to leave, and there is evidence to suggest that Gustafson had not even called the entire police force to the scene. In any event, not all of Tulsa’s police were there.
¹⁶

Barney Cleaver, Tulsa’s first black police officer.

Courtesy of the Tulsa County Historical Society

Purportedly, the blacks were in the process of leaving when a white man approached one of their number. According to the version heard by Robert Fairchild, the white approached a tall black veteran who was carrying an Army issue 45-caliber and said, “Nigger, what are you doing with that pistol?”

“I’m going to use it if I need to,” came the reply.

“No, you give it to me.”

“Like hell I will.”

The white man then attempted to disarm the veteran and a shot was fired. Sheriff McCullough stated that from that moment “the race war was on and I was powerless to stop it.” Black and white Tulsans exchanged gunfire, and Walter White of the NAACP reported that a dozen people fell in this initial gunplay. Numerically overwhelmed by the whites, the blacks began to retreat toward Greenwood. After the battle had swung out of the range of the courthouse, white doctors and ambulance crews tried to assist a wounded black man who was lying on the sidewalk. But white crowd members would not allow them to aid him, and “he lay writhing on the sidewalk, under a billboard from which smiled winsomely the face of Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart.”
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II

Reports of what was happening in Tulsa began to filter in to the state authorities in Oklahoma City as the evening wore on. Major Byron Kirkpatrick of the Tulsa National Guard units called Adjutant General Charles F. Barrett, who commanded Oklahoma’s National Guard, and told him that the situation was looking grim even before violence broke out at the courthouse. Governor James B. A. Robertson was informed by Tulsa Police Chief John Gustafson at 10:30 that the authorities in Tulsa could manage the situation. Chief Gustafson’s message to the governor was somewhat odd, because a half an hour earlier he had asked Major Bell if the Tulsa guardsmen could be used to assist the local authorities, but was informed by Bell that he would need an official order for this.
¹⁸
The city broke out into open warfare within minutes after this call.

After talking with Gustafson, Bell, and Robertson, Adjutant General Barrett ordered the mobilization of the Tulsa National Guard units. They were ordered to give the civil authorities in Tulsa any assistance necessary. Governor Robertson, however, felt that more action was needed, and since the Tulsa authorities were apparently content with matters as they stood, he took the initiative. Shortly after midnight, he ordered Major Kirkpatrick in Tulsa to draw up a telegram—addressed to the governor—requesting that the National Guard be sent into the city. He then ordered Kirkpatrick to get Gustafson, McCullough, and any district judge he could find to sign it, since at that time Oklahoma law required that a request for the National Guard to be sent into any area needed the signatures of the local police chief, the county sheriff, and a local judge. Kirkpatrick secured the signatures of Gustafson and Judge Valjean Biddison apparently with little difficulty, but had some trouble getting that of McCullough, as the sheriff was barricaded with some of his men— and Dick Rowland—inside the courthouse. Eventually, however, he completed his task, and by 3:00
A.M
., June 1, the orders for the mobilization of National Guard troops in Oklahoma City to be sent to Tulsa had been announced.
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