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Tulsa

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

Pugh Or Phew?

February 14, 2020 by Peg 2 Comments

JPeg Osage Ranch

Peg and I recently moved from Posey County in southwestern Indiana to Osage County in northeastern Oklahoma. The acculturalization for me was fairly seamless as I was born in Pawhuska, which is the county seat of The Osage. As for Peg, she was born in Schenectady, New York and has lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River her whole life. She is what we of the Oklahoma persuasion would generally classify as a “Yankee”. For Peg, the move from the land of corn, soybeans and concrete has been, well, let’s just say more interesting. And our log cabin out on the prairie thirty miles from the nearest Walmart occasionally poses new challenges for her. Oh, we do have a Dollar General about five miles away, but there’s one of those everywhere so that does not assuage Peg’s concerns.

As Peg becomes accustomed to being called “Ma’am” and getting to frequently use her high beam headlights on the uncrowded highways she is often confronted with the ambiance of a life lived among creatures she used to assume lived in zoos or within the confines of the Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve or the 3,700 acres of the marvelous Woolaroc Museum with bison and other animals only 7 miles from our cabin. Imagine her reactions when she began to encounter hawks, eagles, deer, wild turkeys, cattle, armadillos, scorpions, coyotes, opossums and raccoons right outside our door. Actually she has habituated quite well to most of Mother Nature’s creatures even when they pushed their way into our personal space. Unfortunately, our most recent visitors have been a family of skunks. That’s right. What the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) classified as Mephitidae, which means stink.

When Pepé Le Pew was cavorting on the cartoon movie screen in search of love while spouting off in a French accent, the skunk came across as cute and lovable. However, when our own skunk family took up residence under our cabin and spent their nights defending their territory by spraying copious volumes of malodorous ink at the opossums challenging for the same space, Peg called for Terminix. The nearest office was in Tulsa fifty miles away.

Now we have live traps baited with some kind of cat food and cement poured into every cranny around the base of our cabin. Each night the skunks find a new way to burrow, chew or claw their way back under our home.  Gentle Reader, please imagine city girl Peg’s reaction to the wafting of odiferous waves of stench up through the floor and into her rugs and clothing. That’s right. It ain’t pleasant.

On the positive side we probably do not need to worry about any visitors wanting to stay even the traditional 3-day limit. As for Peg, she now understands why I bought a shotgun when we decided to move west.

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Filed Under: Females/Pick on Peg, Gavel Gamut, Indiana, JPeg Osage Ranch, Oklahoma, Osage County, Personal Fun, Posey County Tagged With: armadillos, cattle, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, coyotes, deer, Dollar General Dollar, eagles, Gentle Reader, hawks, Indiana, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Mason-Dixon Line, Ma’am, Mephitidae, Mississippi River, Mother Nature, odiferous waves of stench, Oklahoma, opossums, Osage County, Peg, Pepe Le Pew, Posey County, raccoons, scorpions, shotgun, skunks, stink, Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve, Terminix, Tulsa, Walmart, wild turkeys, Woolaroc Museum, Yankee

© 2025 James M. Redwine

 

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