In Search of History
The Night Tulsa Burned
Noted Black activist and scholar, W.E.B. DuBois, once said that the problem of the twentieth century would be the color line, and he has been proven right. The twentieth century has been riddled with race riots and racial strife as African Americans and white Americans have tried to learn to live with one another, and with the legacy of slavery. The worst race riot of the century happened in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Rioting left this prosperous African American neighborhood in ruin, with its buildings burned to the ground and some three hundred residents dead. But like the phoenix, it rose from the ashes.
The Night Tulsa Burned would be useful for classes in American History, African American History, American Culture, Geography and Ethics. It is appropriate for middle school and high school.
Students will analyze the role of racial antagonisms in the twentieth century. They will examine the systematic oppression of Jim Crow laws and their demise, as well as the agency of African American survival under segregation.
The Night Tulsa Burned fulfills the following National Standards for history for grades 5-12: Chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation for eras 6 and 7.
Discussion Questions
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African American educator Booker T. Washington called Greenwood, Oklahoma, the
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Greenwood, Oklahoma, like many other areas of the United States, adhered to Jim Crow laws. What were Jim Crow laws? Why were they enacted? When were they abolished?
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Discuss the history of Oklahoma as a haven for African Americans and other minorities.
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Oklahoma had been a haven for African Americans before it became a state. How and why did the climate of tolerance change after the territory achieved statehood?
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Many African American neighborhoods sprang up across the country in the 1910s and the 1920s. What made Greenwood so special?
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What is the Ku Klux Klan? What are its beliefs? What was its role in the Tulsa Race Riot?
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Many reasons lie behind the riot, but a particular incident set it off. What was this incident? How did this incident reveal prevalent myths about African American men?
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What advantages did white citizens have in the riot?
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Discuss the resiliency of the people of Greenwood and the rebirth of the area.
Extended Activities
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Create a poster or chart that illustrates the major race riots of the twentieth century.
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Research newspaper accounts of the story. How do they differ from the accounts made by present-day historians?
Related Videos
Primary Sources
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PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the [Fourteenth A]mendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.
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