Tulsa burned 95 years ago today. The Smithsonian has found a contemporary manuscript.

[Recursion]

I just did a GD post on the riots; we'll see how that goes.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-lost-manuscript-contains-searing-eyewitness-account-tulsa-race-massacre-1921-180959251/?no-ist

Anyways: the Smithsonian has apparently found a long-lost contemporary account by a black lawyer, the father of John Hope Franklin. It is in the new NMAAHC on the Mall.

The ten-page manuscript is typewritten, on yellowed legal paper, and folded in thirds. But the words, an eyewitness account of the May 31, 1921, racial massacre that destroyed what was known as Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street,” are searing.

“I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building. Down East Archer, I saw the old Mid-Way hotel on fire, burning from its top, and then another and another and another building began to burn from their top,” wrote Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960).

The Oklahoma lawyer, father of famed African-American historian John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), was describing the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving black neighborhood known as Greenwood in the booming oil town. “Lurid flames roared and belched and licked their forked tongues into the air. Smoke ascended the sky in thick, black volumes and amid it all, the planes—now a dozen or more in number—still hummed and darted here and there with the agility of natural birds of the air.”

Franklin writes that he left his law office, locked the door, and descended to the foot of the steps.

[Hydra]

1. 5th rec on the GD thread

*goes to read*

[raging moderate]

2. So horrible.

We have got to find a way to get such stories out into the mainstream more.

[brer cat]

3. Way too much of our history

has been covered up and whitewashed (how appropriate that term is!) to hide the atrocities and inhumanity. Every time I read about Trump's call to "make America great again" I can only think of a white male standing on the bloody body of a person of color.