The Eruption of Tulsa, Attorney General Civil Case No. 1062

              Reprinted from THE NATION of June 29, 1921.
 The Eruption of Tulsa
 By WALTER F. WHITE
 A HYSTERICAL white girl related that a nineteen-year-old colored boy  attempted to assault her in the public elevator of a public office building  of a thriving town of 100,000 in open daylight. Without pausing to find  whether or not the story was true, without bothering with the slight detail  of investigating the character of the woman who made the outcry (as a matter  of fact, she was of exceedingly doubtful reputation), a mob of 100-per-cent  Americans set forth on a wild rampage that cost the lives of fifty white  men; of between 150 and 200 colored men, women and children; the  destruction by fire of $1,500,000 worth of property; the looting of many  homes; and everlasting damage to the reputation of the city of Tulsa and  the State of Oklahoma.
 This, in brief, is the story of the eruption of Tulsa on the night of May  31 and the morning of June 1. One could travel far and find few cities where  the likelihood of trouble between the races was as little thought of as in  Tulsa. Her reign of terror stands as a grim reminder of the grip mob violence  has on the throat of America, and the ever-present possibility of devastating  race conflicts where least expected.
 Tulsa is a thriving, bustling, enormously wealthy town of between 90,000 and  100,000. In 1910 it was the home of 18,182 souls, a dead and hopeless  outlook ahead. Then oil was discovered. The town grew amazingly. On  December 29, 1920, it had bank deposits totaling $65,449,985.90; almost  $1,000 per capita where compared with the Federal Census figures of 1920,  which gave Tulsa 72,075. The town lies in the center of the oil region and  many are the stories told of the making of fabulous fortunes by men who were  operating on a shoe-string. Some of the stories rival those of the "forty-niners"  in California. The town has a number of modern office buildings, many beautiful  homes, miles of clean, well-paved streets, and aggresive and progressive  business men who well exemplify Tulsa's motto of "The City with a Personality."
 So much for the setting. What are the causes of the race riot that occurred in  such a place?
 First, the Negro in Oklahoma has shared in the sudden prosperity that has  come to many of his white brothers, and there are some colored men there who  are wealthy. This fact has caused a bitter resentment on the part of the  lower order of whites, who feel that these colored men, members of an  "inferior race," are exceedingly presumptuous in achieving greater economic  prosperity than they who are members of a divinely ordered superior race.  There are at least three colored persons in Oklahoma who are worth a million  dollars each; J. W. Thompson of Clearview is worth $500,000; there are a number  of men worth $150,000 each; two worth $100,000; three $50,000; and four who  were assessed at $25,000. In one case where a colored man owned and operated  a printing plant with $25,000 worth of printing machinery in it, the leader of  the mob that set fire to and destroyed the plant was a linotype operator  employed for years by the colored owner at $48 per week. The white man was  killed while attacking the plant. Oklahoma is largely populated by pioneers  from other States. Some of the white pioneers are former residents of Mississippi,  Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and other States more typically southern than  Oklahoma. These have brought with them their anti-Negro prejudices. Lethargic  and unprogressive by nature, it sorely irks them to see Negroes making greater  progress than they themselves are achieving.
 One of the charges made against the colored men in Tulsa is that they were  "radical." Questioning the whites more closely regarding the nature of this  radicalism, I found it means that Negroes were uncompromisingly denouncing  "Jim-Crow" cars, lynching, peonage; in short, were asking that the Federal  constitutional guarantee of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" be  given regardless of color. The Negroes of Tulsa and other Oklahoma cities  are pioneers; men and women who have dared, men and women who have had the  initiative and the courage to pull up stakes in other less-favored States and  face hardship in a newer one for the sake of greater eventual progress. That  type is ever less ready to submit to insult. Those of the whites who seek to  maintain the old white group control naturally do not relish seeing Negroes  emancipating themselves from the old system.
 A third cause was the rotten political conditions in Tulsa. A vice ring was in  control of the city, allowing open operation of houses of ill fame, of  gambling joints, the illegal sale of whiskey, the robbing of banks and stores,  with hardly a slight possibility of the arrest of the criminals, and even less  for their conviction. For fourteen years Tulsa has been in the absolute  control of this element. Most of the better element, and there is a large  percentage of Tulsans who can properly be classed as such, are interested  soley in making money and getting away. They have taken little or no interest  in the election of city or county officials, leaving it to those whose  interest it was to secure officials who would protect them in their vice  operations. About two months ago the State legislature assigned two  additional judges to Tulsa County to aid the present two in clearing the  badly clogged dockets. These judges found more than six thousand cases  awaiting trial. Thus in a county of approximately 100,000 population, six  out of every one hundred citizens were under indictment for some sort of  crime, with little likelihood of trial in any of them.
 Last July a white man by the name of Roy Belton, accused of murdering a taxicab  driver, was taken from the county jail and lynched. According to the statements  of many prominent Tulsans, local police officers directed traffic at the  scene of the lynching, trying to afford every person present an equal chance  to view the event. Insurance companies refuse to give Tulsa merchants  insurance on their stocks; the risk is too great. There have been so many  automobile thefts that a number of companies have canceled all policies on  cars in Tulsa. The net result of these conditions was that practically none  of the citizens of the town, white or colored, had very much respect for  the law.
 So much for the general causes. What was the spark that set off the blaze?  On Monday, May 30, a white girl