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segregation

An Anniversary

June 4, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

Just over one hundred years ago (June 1921), what historians consider one of the worst incidents of White on Black racial violence occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. An entire Black business district and many Black owned residences were destroyed by White vigilantes. Approximately 300 Negro citizens were murdered. The matter was omitted from official historical records until 2001. As a student in Oklahoma public schools from 1950-1961, I never heard of this event. It is now being included in school curricula. I recently was doing research for this column when I referred to a book, The Oklahoma Story, by former Oklahoma University Professor of History Arrell Morgan Gibson (1921-1987). In an informative and interesting book on the history of Oklahoma published in 1978, there is no mention of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre even though Professor Gibson does include Oklahoma’s history of segregation and racial prejudice.

For example, the book points out that the first Legislature of Oklahoma formally adopted legal segregation of public schools, public transportation, public toilets, water fountains and other facilities. While I have never forgotten living in a culture steeped in Jim Crow formal and societal expected segregation, Gibson’s book sharpened my memories and caused me to return to my frequently sublimated curiosity about America’s caste systems. One of my most difficult father/son experiences I had was attempting to explain the apartheid of my youth to my son who could not comprehend the incomprehensible. It is difficult to explain what one does not understand. I approached our numerous conversations about Jim Crow by relating my personal experiences with it. Of course, my experiences remained almost as mysterious to me as they were to my young son.

I had no explanation for why White society used its majority power to keep Blacks, what we called Coloreds, at a distance and a disadvantage. Why was the water from a White’s only public fountain better than that from a Colored fountain when they were both connected to the same source only a couple of feet apart? What difference did it make if Colored waste was separated at a commode when the sewers claimed both? And why was it okay for Coloreds to pay White restaurant owners for food to go but it was illegal for Coloreds to sit at the counter? What was so vile about Colored bodies that they could not ride in the White only seats? Most puzzling of all was what was so sinful about Colored Christianity that it could not be expiated along with White sin on Sunday?

Well, Gentle Reader, if you did not live under apartheid, this probably makes no more sense to you than it did to my son, or frankly, to me. On the other hand, I do wonder if we still have far to go as a society when it comes to race, or religion or gender or…. I also wonder if such public spectacles as the Sean Diddy Combs trial would be the titillating social phenomenon it is if the participants were White. Does America still suffer from a 400-year-old need to keep Black culture in a separate category from White?

Have we progressed or have we found ways to assuage our prejudice with bemusement? Even our President appears to fear that any recognition that America has need to make reparations is somehow morally wrong. As for that conversation with my son who now has children of his own, well, his daughter’s best friend is Black. However, the better news is, I do not think either his daughter or her friend knows there is a distinction.

 

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Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Integration, Prejudice, Segregation Tagged With: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Arrel Morgan Gibson, Gentle Reader, James M. Redwine, Jim Crow, Jim Redwine, racial prejudice, segregation, Tulsa, White on Black racial violence

Sour Grapes

July 1, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

Painting by Shirley (Smith) Redwine

Aesop (620–564 BC.) was a slave in ancient Greece who told morality tales. Aesop’s fables generally used irony and experiences from everyday life to illustrate their lessons. Negro spirituals provided the same type of psychological relief for slaves in America. Each Fourth of July as we celebrate our country’s freedom from Great Britain in 1776 we honor the principles of democracy handed down to us by those brilliant and courageous ancient Greeks. But the Greeks from c. 2500 years ago and our Founders from 245 years ago were seeking a perfect society, not establishing one.

Athena was claimed to have sprung full-grown from the mind of Zeus and the United States is often claimed to have been born free and equal when we adopted our constitution. However, the goddess of justice and justice in America were ideals not reality. We know there is more work to do and we are doing it. Independence Day celebrations are a good time to reflect on the hard work remaining.

Each Fourth of July our family, probably much as your family Gentle Reader, get together to renew and reminisce. This year we are gathering at the Constantine Theater in Pawhuska, Oklahoma on July 16 and 17 during the wonderful Cavalcade Rodeo event. Shirley (Smith) Redwine has graced our family for well over half a century after she competed as a queen contestant and barrel racer in the Cavalcade. You can see her in the painting she created. You go Cowgirl!

Shirley’s husband and our eldest sibling, C.E. Redwine, is a wonderful professional musician and is coordinating a family jam session at the Constantine. We will have saxophone, ukulele and guitar players of various persuasions as well as singers and talkers. We will not pay you to attend nor will you have to pay to come visit with Pawhuska High School graduates from 1954, 1955, 1960 and 1961 on July 17th from 2-4 p.m.

This same group got together at the Constantine in 2011 when we showed the movie we made of my historical novel JUDGE LYNCH!. That horrific tale of injustice and its brand-new sequel Unanimous for Murder involve the legacy of slavery, segregation and integration in Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma. Those sad stories also involve an Aesop-type irony from 2011. It reminds me of the bittersweet years when we had Colored Folks and White People.

 

When Peg and I wrote JUDGE LYNCH! I borrowed, with his prior permission, the name of one of my childhood friends. Travis Finley is a sports legend, minister and former Pawhuska City Councilman. I used his name for a character in JUDGE LYNCH! When we returned to Pawhuska from New Harmony, Indiana in 2011 to show the movie we made we invited Travis and his wife Edna to attend the premier. As I was up on the stage of the Constantine explaining the book and movie, I looked out in the audience to find Travis and Edna; they were not visible. After my introduction I searched the downstairs of the theater then went to the balcony. There, just the two of them, sat Edna and Travis. I went up to them and said, “What are you doing up here?” They reminded me of what America has been and what it was meant to be when they answered, “When we were kids we weren’t allowed to sit downstairs so now we don’t want to. Besides, you can see better from up here.”

Happy birthday, America. Let’s keep perfecting!

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Filed Under: America, Democracy, Gavel Gamut, Integration, Posey County, Posey County Lynchings, Segregation, Slavery Tagged With: Aesop, America, Athena, balcony, C.E. Redwine, Cavalcade Rodeo, Constantine Theater, Edna Finley, Fourth of July, Gentle Reader, Great Britain, Greece, guitar, injustice, Integration, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, JUDGE LYNCH!, legacy of slavery, Negro spirituals, Osage County, Pawhuska, Posey County, saxophone, segregation, Shirley Redwine, singers, talkers, Travis Finley, ukulele, Unanimous for Murder, Zeus

The Unpardonable Sin

February 19, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College for over thirty years. Campbell is probably best known as George Lucas’ source for the mythology permeating the Star Wars anthology. Good versus evil, light versus darkness, hope versus despair and, throughout human existence, alertness to being alive versus remaining unaware of our experiences. To Campbell, the unpardonable sin is to be unaware, that is, to not be truly alive as we meander through our lives unaffected by what is happening around us. For me, Black History Month evokes an introspection of my callow youth and its blissful ignorance of the difference between my white world and that of my, as we called them then, Colored friends.

I scarcely knew Blacks and whites lived separate lives during the 1940’s, 50’s and the first half of the 60’s. I was happy and assumed others were too. Things were as they ought to be or at least they were okay with me as they were. It did not seem strange when before 1956 my father would take us across Bird Creek to Colored Town and Booker T. Washington School to watch Colored boys play basketball. Then after 1956 it felt fine to see Blacks and whites mix on the court, but not in the churches and not at our homes or businesses.

Before the Pioneer Woman’s Mercantile brought expanded options for estrogenous pilgrims to my hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma the cultural center for testosterone types were my small town’s three pool halls. Now, we of the male persuasion can drink good coffee as we wait for breakfast, dinner or supper as our wives accumulate treasures. But in days of segregation gone by the white businessmen of Pawhuska frequented the Smoke House on Kihekah Avenue where they played Dominoes, those white men interested in beer with their games usually went to Curry’s on Main Street and we younger males congregated at Palace Billiards that was also on Kihekah. Henry Roberts owned and operated the Palace that we boys always called Henry’s. It had a tile floor, four wooden game tables with slate tops and scattered wooden armchairs where the cowhands would drink Dr. Pepper while chewing tobacco and spitting into the brass cuspidors on the floor or back into their bottles. Henry’s double front doors had plate-glass windows that allowed for the only sunlight to shine into the business. The front of the pool hall faced Kihekah and there was a single solid back door that opened out to the rear access and the latrine. Colored boys were allowed to enter through the rear door to play pool on either of the two pool tables that were right next to the back door. Coloreds did not come up front to the two snooker tables nor to the game tables. The entire pool hall was contained in one narrow, open, window-less rectangular room about fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long.

The favorite table game was 4 Point Pitch played with dominoes, we called them rocks, that had cards on their faces, not domino dots. The players would shuffle the rocks by sliding them around on the table then, depending upon the number of players, up to a maximum of eight, deal out 6 rocks per player. Points were won for the highest card of trump played, the lowest card of the trump suit played, one for the jack-of-trump and one for “game”. The point for “game” was calculated by adding four for any ace, three for any king, two for any queen, one for any jack and ten for any ten. The maximum number of points that anyone could accumulate in any one round of play was four. That was also the maximum allowable bid and the bidder got to name the trump suit. The first person to score a total of eleven won the pot. If more than one person happened to go over eleven at the end of a hand, whoever had won the bid for that hand won the pot, that is, as long as that player made his bid. If you bid and went set you got a “hicky” and it cost you the same as a game, usually one dollar. So, you might win one dollar from up to seven other players and, if any had failed to make a bid, an additional dollar. Frequently games had fewer than eight players, often as few as two and it was quite cutthroat as everyone played to set the bidder.

Colored boys never played Pitch or snooker. The racks for the snooker and pool cues were also separate. Whites could have played pool but none of us did. I do not ever remember wondering about that or why Coloreds came in the back door. Nor do I remember myself or anyone else ever speaking to any of the Blacks who eased quietly in from the back, and placed their coins to pay for pool on the table to be picked up by Henry. Now as I look back, I think we all were committing Campbell’s unpardonable sin and handling our experiences as suggested by psychologist and poet Bonaro Wilkinson Overstreet (1902-1985) when she cited the following poem in her Introduction to Philosophy:

“Young spruces stood bolt upright, every twig.

Stiff with refusal to be bent by snow.

Young hemlocks sloped their boughs beneath the load.

Letting it softly go.

Each solved no doubt, to its own satisfaction.

The problem posed by uninvited weight.

I’d not take sides with either.

I have tried both ways of handling fate.”

Unfortunately, it was not until much later that I tried the “bolt upright” approach to segregation and I do not know if my more “alert” response has been of any more efficacy. Next week we might delve into these issues with folks who probably were more aware than I was because they were living life from another perspective.

 

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Filed Under: Gavel Gamut, Oklahoma, Pawhuska, Segregation Tagged With: 4 Point Pitch, Bird Creek, Black History Month, Bonaro Wilkinson Overstreet Introduction to Philosophy, Booker T. Washington School, Colored Town, George Lucas, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Joseph Campbell, Palace Billiards, Pawhuska Oklahoma, Pioneer Woman’s Mercantile, pool hall, Sarah Lawrence College, segregation, snooker, the unpardonable sin is to be unaware

© 2025 James M. Redwine

 

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