Once upon a time, this Blogger had an acquaintanceship with someone this Blogger suspected of being a KGB agent. He was very erudite, and astute. He was working on a book about the brutality of nationalities; he never finished the book. He died in a car wreck.
He thought German brutality was a manifestation of their psychotic inner life; he cited their brutal treatment of Belgians during World War I to buttress his argument. His rhetorical question would be: WHAT SANE PERSON IS BRUTAL TO BELGIANS?
He deeply admired American brutality; for he deemed it a byproduct of American pragmatism.
One hundred years ago, in June, 1921, there occurred, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an act of pragmatic brutality so vile, so egregious, so vicious, that it drove the entire nation onto and into the sea of forgetfulness; a place where nation’s sins are sent very far away from Blood Memory, so that they can no longer affect the nation’s self image of piety.
In a frenzy of kill crazy blood lust, white Americans, took pragmatic brutality to an art form, destroying the prosperous Black Tulsa, neighborhood of Greenwood.
How prosperous was Greenwood? It was nicknamed the Black Wall Street; Blacks were speculating quite well in the Oklahoma Oil Boom.
“Over 24 hours, as many as 300 people were killed and more than 190 of the community's businesses burned to the ground.”
21st Century historians are debating whether to call the Tulsa massacre a Massacre or a Race Riot. This Blogger will solve that branding problem; what happened in Tulsa was carnage. The Carnage.
To appreciate the scope and thorough efficiency of the Carnage, one must understand it through the prism of the Hindu-Muslim carnage during the Partition, or the Hutu Carnage of Tutsis.
It was kill crazy madness on an epic scale.
But it was an AMERICAN EVENT, WHICH MEANS IT WAS FULL OF PRAGMATIC BRUTALITY; The Carnage was not done solely out of racial hatred; nor the frenzy of mass killing. It was American pragmatic.
The white Oklahomans were not killing just any old Blacks, not the dirt poor farmers around Muskogee; they were, pragmatically, KILLING PROSPEROUS BLACKS.
Martin Scorsese is currently filming the book, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann; a book based on the true story of the decimation of the Osage.
In the early 1920s, white Oklahomans, perhaps the same ones who burned down Greenwood, decided to decimate the Osage nation, for they were getting too prosperous from all that oil.
“After the Osage are awarded rights in court to the profits made from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare for receiving the wealth to which they are legally entitled from sales of their oil deposits.
However, a long and complex process of custodianship is imposed upon the distribution of the profits from the sales being made for very high profits and very few if any of the Osage people see any of this money. Still, they are the legal owners of the land and its profits, which is irksome to some of the administrators of the land who have a history of poor relations with the Osage people. Those elements hostile to the Osage people then decide that they could greatly simplify their profit mongering of the oil profits by eliminating those whom they consider to be operating as the "middle man" before they can abscond with the oil profits.
The Osage are viewed as the "middle man" and a complex plot is hatched and put into place to eliminate the Osage people inheriting this wealth from oil profits on a one-by-one basis by any means possible. Officially, the count of the murdered full-blood wealthy Osage reaches at least twenty, but Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil>”
The Tulsa Carnage, and the Osage Decimation are the same thing; kill every minority who is prospering in 1920s Oklahoma. Pragmatic Brutality.
This Blogger spent a summer of his youth in Oklahoma, working on a ranch outside of Guyman, Oklahoma, in the Panhandle. This Blogger felt like a youthful Tolstoy in the Caucasus, among the wild and savage Chechens.
And it was a savage land; with nothing between you and the winds from the North Pole except barb wire. The Oklahoman was a hardy breed; with religion everywhere; not a vestigial religion like in Europe, but an active religion, for the people knew that they needed religion to tamp down the biblical sin within them.
And what was that Biblical sin?
Rodgers and Hammerstein knew; in their cheery fluff of Americana, the musical OKLAHOMA, they placed a dark character, JUD FRY, consumed by envy.
The same envy which caused the Carnage and the Decimation.
As one astute observer of his fellow Oklahomans said to this Blogger: “Never begrudge an Oklahoman his religious fervor, for it is only that religion which keeps him from killing everyone else in the state.”
Technically, Oklahoma was the last territory in continental America occupied by white settlers.
It was a dumping ground for defeated Native American tribes, Indian territory. It was a lawless place; the defeated native Americans were joined by renegades from all over the West. Few decent people went into the Indian Territory; fewer still lived there.
Then Judge Parker came along, the hanging judge. He hung 79 men; and miraculously Oklahoma became law abiding. Take That NOTORIOUS RBG.
It was so tamed, that they opened up the land, the Oklahoma Land Rush. The good obedient Americans were supposed to line up and wait for the cannon to fire; then ride into Oklahoma, and stake out their land claim. First come, first serve.
Except, many future Oklahomans snuck into the open land before the cannon fired, THE SOONERS. Those illegal people gave the University of Oklahoma, the nickname for its athletic teams.
One of the highlights of my summer in the Panhandle, was attending the prison rodeo at the state prison in McAlester. One could see lifers risk their lives with reckless abandon to stay on the bull for eight seconds. The rodeo was behind the big walls, and was well attended. It was started by a reform minded warden to keep the lifers from rioting; the reformed minded warden was later killed in a prison riot.
The state prison has had a lot of riots; it is Oklahoma.
To the best of this Blogger's knowledge, there are, in 2021, three living survivors, Black survivors, of the Tulsa Carnage.
“President Biden met with survivors of the 1921 attack in Oklahoma, one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in American history.”
Which brings us to reparations; are the descendants of the Carnage entitled to reparations?
This Blogger is adamantly opposed to reparations as outlined by the famed comic book writer, Ta Nehisi Coates. Reparations for Slavery have been paid, in full, at Chickamauga, Little Round Top, the Wheat Field, the Bloody Angel, the Peach Orchard, Shiloh and the Devil's Den.
But not one white man fought for the Blacks who endured the Tulsa Carnage; Reparations are in order, so that the American Universe can leave the sea of forgetfulness.
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