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HOW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TEACHES ABOUT TULSA'S GREEN DISTRICT RACE MASSECRE & AMERICAN RED CROSS' HELP! (3075 hits)


For Immediate Release From Library of Congress!


Tulsa’s Greenwood District: Exploring the Impact of the Tulsa Race Massacre

May 27, 2021 by Stephen Wesson

What does it look like when an entire community is attacked?

On the night of May 31, 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a thriving neighborhood of African American residences and businesses, was attacked and burned by an armed mob of white men. By the next morning, Greenwood lay in ruins and untold hundreds of African American Tulsans were dead. The people of Greenwood began rebuilding immediately, but the loss of life and property was felt for decades after. (For more information, see How to Research the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.) By examining primary sources, students can gain a powerful sense of the impact of the Tulsa Race Massacre.


In the years before the massacre, the Greenwood district was mapped, along with the rest of the city, by the Sanborn Map Company. Ask students to examine this section of the map, which shows Greenwood Avenue as it runs north from Archer Street. You might distribute the Library’s Primary Source Analysis Tool and select prompting questions from the Teacher’s Guide to Analyzing Maps to guide their analysis. Ask students:

What might the details on this map tell you about the different types of buildings that were on this section of Greenwood Avenue?

Identify and list the different businesses and other establishments on the street. How many can you find?

What do you think it was like to live on or visit this street, based on your map observations? What types of activities could you do here?

What more would you like to know about life on Greenwood Avenue?

The burning of the Greenwood district and its aftermath were documented in photographs, many of which are available in the online collections of the Library of Congress. Ask students to select a photo that depicts the ruins or the rebuilding process and analyze it, possibly using prompts from the Teacher’s Guide to Analyzing Photograph and Prints. You might begin with this photo, which shows the view north on Greenwood Avenue from Archer Street. Ask students:

What can you see that you recognize from the Sanborn Map Company map of Greenwood Avenue, if anything?

What do you think happened before this photo was taken, or after?

What do you think might have been the motivations of the person or people who created the photograph?

There are a number of other primary sources in the online collections of the Library of Congress that document the Tulsa Race Massacre, including pages from historic newspapers from Tulsa and elsewhere. Many perspectives are missing from these and other primary sources, and many of the events of the massacre are documented sparsely or not at all.

For further investigation, your students might research multiple perspectives on the Tulsa Race Massacre, including those of African American Tulsans, and discuss the reasons why primary sources documenting some perspectives might be missing or difficult to find. They might also explore life in the Greenwood district today, and discover the ways in which the history of this horrific attack is being investigated even now.

Learn more and see Exhibits HERE!: https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2021/05/tul...


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The Tulsa Race Massacre: Relief and the Role of the American Red Cross

May 27, 2021 by Natalie Burclaff

This post was written by Lynn Weinstein a Business Reference Librarian in the Science, Technology, and Business Division.

One hundred years ago on May 31 and June 1, 1921, mobs of white residents attacked Black residents, homes, and businesses, as well as cultural and public institutions in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK, an oil boom city and one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States. Thirty-five blocks were systematically looted and burned, destroying 190 businesses and leaving 10,000 people homeless. The property loss estimated by the Tulsa Real Estate Exchange was the equivalent of $31 million in 2017, likely an underestimation. While a lot of information has come out about those terrible days, I will focus on the relief period and the role of the American Red Cross.

In order to orient yourself to the area of destruction and reconstruction, you may want to examine the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from before and after 1921. Some of these maps are available digitally through the Library of Congress, but many are also available at local public libraries, where they are good sources of genealogical and business history information. This digital map available from May 1911 includes the Greenwood District, which was segregated at the railroad tracks. The Library of Congress has a digitized collection of maps from Tulsa, OK from 1915-1929. No insurance claims were honored for African Americans in the Greenwood District, and according to the Red Cross reporting, by July 1921, there were lawsuits filed by African Americans with claims over $4 million, which would be worth nearly $60 million today.

The most significant humanitarian relief to the disaster came from the Red Cross, which was designated the “official relief agency” by Mayor T.D. Evans. Upon finding out about the situation, the Director of Relief from the St. Louis office, Maurice Willows, contacted the organization’s Washington, D.C. headquarters to request an expansion of the mission of the organization from responding to natural disasters to aiding the survivors of this man-made disaster, which left 10,000 homeless African Americans in internment camps. The Red Cross provided critical medical aid by setting up a hospital to care for individuals with a variety of needs from injuries to dysentery, and by vaccinating victims to prevent the further outbreak of infectious disease. There were many individuals and groups who volunteered, particularly women, including the Chicago company of Marvin Garvey’s Black Cross Nurses. Funds were collected across the country to aid the displaced, with the Omaha Monitor reporting on a collection it started, noting the contribution of waiters from the Blackstone Hotel.

The Red Cross provided temporary tent housing with sides and floors of lumber, and Mr. Willows, an advocate for rebuilding Greenwood, developed a more permanent housing plan and secured funding. The Red Cross promoted the need for a proper sanitary sewage system to be in place before reconstruction. Rebuilding the district was determined to be the responsibility of the city, and the Red Cross refused to be part of the process, as the relief and reconstruction efforts became politicized. The mission of the organization was to provide “temporary” relief by ensuring that: all homeless families were provided with shelter, laundry, and cooking facilities; families were reunited; destitute women and children were cared for; and the able-bodied were placed on a “self-supporting basis.” This tragedy resulted in massive job loss in the community.

The Red Cross documented the violence in reports, which are available through the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. The Association surveyed 1,765 families and found that 1,115 homes were burned and 314 homes were looted but not burned. Victims were scattered from Chicago to Houston, with approximately 300, mostly women and children, leaving to stay with relatives. In the preface of the 1921 report, Mr. Willows wrote:

“The story of the tragedy enacted on the night of May 31st, 1921, and the morning of June 1st, 1921 has been told and retold, with all sorts of variations in the press of the country. Whatever people choose to call it “race riot,” “massacre”, “negro uprising” or whatnot, the word has not yet been coined which can correctly describe the affair. This report attempts to picture the situation as representatives of the Red Cross found it, and to record the activities of the organization to bringing order out of chaos and administering relief to the innocents.”

Learn more:

Visit The American National Red Cross Collection of approximately fifty thousand photographs and their negatives, acquired by the Library of Congress from the American National Red Cross (A.N.R.C.- also known as the American Red Cross, or A.R.C., which later became its official name).
The photos date from the beginning of the twentieth century to 1933, offering pictorial documentation of human endurance in war and in times of national disaster and a visual record of the accomplishments of the American Red Cross in giving relief to people all over the world.

Search the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and the Library of Congress Catalog using the subject headings “Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Okla., 1921,””Disaster relief–Oklahoma–Tulsa–1920-1930” and “Hate Crimes–Oklahoma–Tulsa–1920-1930.”

Explore the Library of Congress guide Racial Massacres and the Red Summer of 1919: A Resource Guide for more information about this period of racial unrest.
Read the Library of Congress blog post “How to Research the 1921 Race Massacre.”

Contrast facts and narratives regarding the Tulsa Race Riot as reported in African American and other newspapers of the time. Search Chronicling America, an openly available digital newspaper directory sponsored by the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities, for stories using the keyword “Tulsa” and by narrowing the results to “1921” or later. You can add additional descriptors in the “Advanced Search” to further limit your results. The blog post “Tulsa Race Massacre: Newspaper Complicity and Coverage” provides examples of articles you can find in Chronicling America.

Learn more and see Exhibits HERE!: https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2021/05...


VISIT Library of Congress at: loc.gov
Posted By: agnes levine
Friday, May 28th 2021 at 3:39PM
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