A Lynched Black Wall Street

A Womanist Perspective on Terrorism, Religion, and Black Resilience in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Jerrolyn S. Eulinberg

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725296039, 9781725296022
• eBook ISBN: 9781725296046
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book remembers one hundred years since Black Wall Street and it reflects on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Black Wall Street was the most successful Black business district in the United States; yet, it was isolated from the blooming white oil town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, because of racism. During the early twentieth century African-Americans lived in the constant threat of extreme violence by white supremacy, lynching, and Jim and Jane Crow laws. The text explores, through a Womanist lens, the moral dilemma of Black ontology and the existential crisis of living in America as equal human beings to white Americans.This prosperous Black business district and residential community was lynched by white terror, hate, jealousy, and hegemonic power, using unjust laws and a legally sanctioned white mob. Terrorism operated historically based on the lies of Black inferiority with the support of law and white supremacy. Today this same precedence continues to terrorize the life experiences of African-Americans. The research examines Native Americans and African-Americans, the Black migration west, the role of religion, Black women's contributions, lynching, and the continued resilience of Black Americans.

CHAPTER 1

The Making of a Promised Land

Native Americans, African-Americans, and the Black Migration

The colonized, underdeveloped man (sic) is a political creature in the most global sense of the term.

—Frantz Fanon

The Wretched of the Earth

Oklahoma Territory

Oklahoma came into existence through the massive influx of many different Native American tribes as they were expelled over the years from their various homelands across the nation. Arthur Tolson investigates tribes that were moved from upper Louisiana across the Mississippi River from as early as the 1790s through the 1830s.16 Yet many other Indian tribes came from the southeastern sector of the United States. Some of the first tribes in Oklahoma were Kickapoos, Delawares, Shawnees, Osages, and Cherokees. As time passed, another sixty-two Native American tribes would come. The forcible and painful removal of Indians from their tribal and ancestral land is known as the Trail of Tears.17

The Trail of Tears was initiated by the Indian Removal Act in 1830 to uproot the Native Americans. The Indian tribes included Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles.18 The federal government decided in 1825 to move the Indians from their land in order to make room for the gold rush and white settlement. It was President Andrew Jackson who was determined to implement the Act. “The prospect of forcing Indians to the West horrified many Americans, and petitions opposing removal poured into Congress in opposition to removal, but in the end, they could not stop the ethnic cleansing that took place.”19 This moment in history is reflective of Homi K. Bhabha’s foreword to Fanon’s Wretched of Earth, in which he highlights one of “Fanon’s most quoted (and quarreled over) passages”:20

The singularity of the colonial context lies in the fact that economic reality, inequality, and enormous disparities in lifestyles never manage to mask the human reality. Looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. In the colonies the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure.21

Fanon’s quote represents not only one of America’s ethical and historical challenges, but also the political, social constructs and hegemonic power being exercised domestically and globally today. The Trail of Tears unfolded from this type of conflict.

The Indians’ native lands occupied Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Florida.22 President Andrew Jackson was excited about the Removal Act because of the wealth and population growth. As the gold rush grew so did the hostility in the state of Georgia. In 1831, the Cherokee Nation had major conflict with the State of Georgia and they took their suit to the United States Supreme Court. The question was whether “the Court had original jurisdiction to hear a case filed by a tribe against a state.”23 In other words, was the Cherokee Nation a domestic dependent nation, sovereign state, or foreign nation? Hannibal Johnson outlines the legal aspect. The Court heard the cases under Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia. The Court ruled in favor of Georgia’s state law, saying the Cherokees were not a state or foreign nation.

The case Worcester v. Georgia was the follow-up to Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. “Under an 1830 law, Georgia required all white residents in Cherokee country to secure a license from the governor and to take an oath of allegiance to the state.”24 When two missionaries who supported the Indians refused to get those licenses, they were convicted by the state. They appealed their case to the Supreme Court. The Court reversed their decision in the Cherokee Nation v. George by making the following rulings: “1) Indian nations are capable of making treaties, 2...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Making of a Promised Land
• Chapter 2: Agents of Resistance
• Chapter 3: Black Wall Street and the Greenwood District
• Chapter 4: A Living Faith
• Chapter 5: The Hidden Secrets
• Chapter 6: White Parties of Terror
• Chapter 7: White Parties of Terror Continue
• Chapter 8: A Lynched Black Wall Street
• Chapter 9: Following the Massacre
• Appendix
• Bibliography