Phoenix tribune., 1921-06-18
RACE RIOT in TULSA
RESULTED in DEATH
OF over 200 Whites
(By The Associated Negro Press)

Tulsa, Okla, June 16.-The Tulsa
riot was wilfully planned An excuse
for starting the horror was given by
a foolish Negro lad and a silly, ire
sponsible white girl Result: More
tran 200 whites killed and wounded
while the casualties among the Ne
groes amounted to about go people,
all told. Property losses were con-
fined wholly to Little Africa" and
amount to more than $2,OOOOoO
Completion of an $S5,OOO church
was the straw which broke the cam
els back of prejudice and made ready
for the consumation of a plot that
can be regarded the most diabolically
fiendish in the history of the United
States. To this chapter of horrors
can be added the outspoken declara-
tion to lynch ]. B. Stratford and Jas.
Smitherman, two of the more promin-
ent Negro business men of Tulsa,
should they be so bold as to show
their faces in our midst again. Strad-
ford and Smitherman were among the
few leaders who managed to escape
the clutches of the mob
Even the white clergy were among
those who gave sanction to the hor-
rible program of wholesale destruc-
tion of property and attempted slaugh-
ter Of men whose only crime was a
determined effort to prosper and live
decently. This statement is given
force and color by the facts that the
business section and the better resi-
dental district in Little Africa" we're
the first places to feel the forked
tongue of the torch. Had there been
no effort to lift Little Africa" out
of the Shiny conditions of a slum dis
trict there would have been no riot"
declared an intelligent Negro to the
Associated Negro Press representa-
tive
Bishop Mouzen of the Methodist
church, South, the Rev. c. V. Kerr of
the First Presbyterian church and the
Rev Harry G. Cooke of the Centen-
airy NJ E. church, last Sunday, de-
clared from the pulpits, that the col
Ored people we're wholly responsible
for the horrors of the riot. Bishop
Mouzen went so far as to announce
that William B. Dubois recent visit
and talk to Tulsa Negroes was one Of
the contributing causes of the riot
He averred that the Negro must not
persume to compete with the white
men nor seek to rise out of the eco
nomic and social situation in which
the whites are determined to keep
him. A violation of this edict was
sure to visit on the Negro the repris-
ais of race riots whenever it occurred.
Cooke and Kerr were no less outspo-
ken in their Accommodations of the
Tulsa Negroes aspirations to approach
the social and economic levels of the
Tulsa whites
Smitherman's whereabouts have
not been discovered up to this date.
Stratford, however, was located in In
dependenc Kansas, and an effort to
extradite him was frustrated by his
son ]. F. Stradford, a Chicago lawyer,
who succeeded in getting his father
out of the hands of the Kansas author
tiles through the process of q Habeas
Corpus proceedings. The elder
Stradford has not been located. Should
either of these men be brought to
Tulsa a lynching bee would surely be
added to the awful list of horrors that
have already visited the benighted
place.
In the meantime there is a group of
white citizens who are desirous that
restitution be provided for the Ne
groes by rebuilding and replacing their
personal losses at whatever cost
While this offer appears to be bona
fide it seems to be qualified by pre-
senting a plan which will move the
colored people from the occupancy of
the district that was so wantonly de-
stroyed. The answer of the colored
people to this plan has not yet been
given. 1t is not thought they will be
given much choice in the matter