The Greenwood Race Massacre
An Interview with Representative Regina Goodwin
Regina Goodwin was elected to serve in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Tulsa, House District 73, in 2015. Guided by “The Power of We,” Rep. Goodwin fights for economic equity, criminal justice reform, health care and improving public education. She authored several bills now law, including HB 3393, which bans the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women during labor and delivery, and HB 2253, which clarifies voting rights for persons convicted of a felony. She has worked diligently on bills to mandate the use of body cams by police, revising the use of excessive force, banning jail time for fees and fines, and making hate crimes a felony. Rep. Goodwin led the blocking of HB 2328, where law enforcement would not be held to same standard of law as other citizens concerning excessive and deadly force, and aided in the removal of Live PD from the Tulsa community. Rep. Goodwin currently serves as Assistant Minority Floor Leader and Chairwoman of the Oklahoma Legislative Black Caucus.
Mary Jo Meisner: Good morning, Representative Goodwin, and thank you so much for taking time today to have a conversation with the Harvard ALI Social Impact Review about your life, your family and your work as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The Review has undertaken an exploration of the issue of reparations and the growing national interest in it as part of America’s reckoning with racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. It is a topic that is most often discussed from the perspective of how slavery and subsequent government policies led to the ongoing and enduring disparity in wealth between African Americans and white Americans.
But your experience as a fourth generation resident of the Greenwood district of Tulsa and a direct descendant of victims of the horrific race massacre that occurred there in 1921 offers a unique and particularly compelling lens from which to have this conversation. Your grandfather and your great aunt were in high school when the violence occurred, and I believe your great grandfather was a business owner in the district that was then known as the Black Wall Street because it was home to many prosperous Black families. And your father was a longtime publisher of the Oklahoma Eagle, the state’s longest running Black-owned newspaper. Now you represent Greenwood within the state legislature. Your roots in the district run deep and the impact that the massacre has had on your life must be searing, and yet it is only now, in the 100th anniversary year of these events, that the full story of what happened is beginning to be known and told.
Would you please tell us about Greenwood and what happened there in May of 1921.
Rep. Regina Goodwin: Yes, but before we even get to Black Wall Street, it is important to give some background of how these Black folks had such means in the 1920s and how they acquired that land. Certainly there were some free Black folks that had come to Oklahoma, but, by and large, it was during the Indian Removal Act, when the five tribes were being forced to move West and parts of the state would become known as Indian territory. We're talking about Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek tribes; they also had Black folks that were enslaved by them so that when they were forced to move West to Indian Territory, Black folks were forced to come as well. After the Civil War, many of the tribes sided with the Confederacy and when they lost that war, Native Americans were then told to give land -- 160 acres -- to the enslaved Black people that were with them. That was part of the negotiations and out of that a number of Black folks did get 160 acres of land.
So if you have land you can create wealth, and almost 2.5 million acres of land in that Indian Territory belonged to Black folks and on that land there was oil. So as a result of that you are going to have a number of people that were of means to build their businesses to help their families. And so, everybody soon got word that Indian Territory was a place to come to. They understood that there were some 57 or so Black townships -- this is before the state of Oklahoma was founded. My great grandfather felt that this would be a good place to live because his family was brought up in Mississippi where you could not get past a third- or fourth-grade education if you were a Black person. It was actually illegal for Black folks to be educated, to learn how to read and write. My great grandfather did not want that for his children. So he came to this Indian Territory which would become Oklahoma, and that is how you saw the growth of Black prosperity. And that's also how you saw a particular mindset converging in a particular area.
I think that it is important to know when you talk about Black Wall Street that it didn't just blossom out of nothing. There were certain advantages to the area and people thought they would come and escape oppression and racism, and that was the case for awhile, until we got to where we built up a dynamic community. We had hotels. We had doctors and lawyers and educators. We had publishers of newspapers. We had pilots of airplanes and owners of airplanes -- like my grandfather who owned his own airplane and knew how to fly. You had the Williams family that had the Dreamland Theatre in Greenwood. So we would hear these stories passed on from generation to generation, and knew of the wealth that was in that community. There were a number of millionaires, Black millionaires. JB Stratford owned the Stratford Hotel. That hotel would rival any white-owned hotel; it had chandeliers and fine dining and the whole high-end experience. I just want to paint the picture of Black Wall Street. You had that side of life, but you also had the underbelly of life that would be bootlegging liquor and peddling drugs. You could get the Holy Ghost at one end and heroin at the other. So there were other aspects of life that that I don't think I would aspire to participate in, but certainly that was a part of it and I always want to tell the balance of that story, because it was about people.
Meisner: That timeframe was from the turn of the century to the early 20s. Is that what we're talking about?
Rep. Goodwin: Yes, absolutely. After you come out of the 1866 Treaty and then the early 1900s. My folks would come to Oklahoma in 1914 and establish themselves and again it was because there was a campaign to come to this area, about how wonderful Oklahoma as a state would be. So that's why the background always has to be told before we dive right into the massacre.
Meisner: Yes, it is such an interesting and necessary background. Thank you.
Rep. Goodwin: Racism was very prevalent at the time as it is today. You had a bustling community that was known as the Greenwood district. But there was also jealousy among some racist white folks who did not want to see this burgeoning area, did not appreciate the fact that you had Black folks who were doctors, who were educated. You had folks who referred to the area as Little Africa with the intent to be disparaging. White folks who didn't know any better, who did not want to know any better. Months before the massacre, there were meetings that were held by white folks in particular who wanted to control that area. And so you've got this tinderbox and all you need is someone to strike a match and to set it off.
There was a young white lady, Sarah Page, who was an elevator operator in the Drexel Building. I believe she was 17 years old. You had a young Black man named Dick Rowland who was 19 years old and was a shoeshine guy. He had dropped out of school and was making a lot of money. He was a hustler, but it was an honest living and he was good at what he did. His clients were the oil executives, the corporate execs in Tulsa; he was making a good living, shining their shoes. Every day, though, because of segregation, Rowland could not just dart into any bathroom; he would have to go way over to the Drexel Building to use the facilities there. That is where he was entering the elevator on May 31, 1921. It's not exactly known what happened then. Either the elevator didn't meet the floor even and Rowland stumbled getting onto the elevator. Then it was said that there was a scream or holler and a white man comes and sees Rowland run off the elevator. The headlines would read: “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.” And then there was a headline: “Lynch Negro Tonight.” I want to stop there to say that it's been suggested by descendants of Dick Rowland that there was a relationship between him and Sarah Page that very few people talk about. They say that Sarah Page came over and had Sunday dinner at his family’s home, that she was known to the family. But, regardless, you get a mob of folks that are seeking to find him, which they do. They arrest him and they accuse him of assault.
At that time, you had Black World War I veterans who had just come home from the war, who were bound and determined not to have another Black man lynched. In Tulsa specifically it was still common for Black folks to be lynched. So these World War I vets went down to the courthouse where Dick Rowland was being held and said “Hey, you're not going to kill Dick Rowland.” The Sheriff said, “Look, we got this under control.” And the Black men leave. Often folks don't know this, that they left the area. But then there were thousands of folks gathered, so the Black men went back down to the courthouse and they were all armed. A white man says to a Black man, “What are you going to do with that gun?” and the Black man says, “I'm going to use it if I have to.” The white man reaches for the gun, a struggle ensues, the gun goes off and I think it was a Pierce Oil Co. executive who was the first to be shot and killed, and from that point, the Sheriff would say that “all hell broke loose.”
That would then lead to a very organized, state-sanctioned, city-sanctioned violence against the entire Black community. On that day, approximately 11,000 Black folks lived in the area and there were 35 square blocks of the Greenwood district that would be destroyed through fire. They would use bullets and machine guns and airplanes that were dropping what they called turpentine balls down on the Greenwood community. This is how the destruction would begin and some 300 Black people were murdered, and thousands were injured. Some 1,200 homes were destroyed and burned to the ground. And, again, if you were Black in that day and your home was being attacked by white mobs, you either could run out of the house and chance being felled by bullets or stay inside and be burned alive. Those are the stories that are recorded and that is how many folks were murdered -- either through fire or through gunfire.
The newspaper of the day was the Tulsa Star. There was a Mr. Smitherman who was then publisher of the Star. He was known for fighting for justice and civil rights and he was very outspoken when it came to lynching. He already had a record of trying to defend those that were being violated and being murdered. My great grandfather, James Henri Goodwin, was the business manager of the Tulsa Star at the time. Between May 31 and June 1, that whole facility was burned to the ground. They were able to salvage the press. The violence started that evening, burning and looting, and then it became very galvanized the next morning when a whistle blew and it was a signal to attack the Greenwood area. That was the completion of the destruction that day.
My grandfather was a senior in high school during the massacre. My great aunt Anna, the sister of my grandfather, was also in high school at the time. On the night of May 31, when the murder and the arson would begin, they were preparing for prom and for senior activities, just like we did when we graduated from high school. They were planning graduation ceremonies and they were decorating a hotel to prepare for the big dance when they got word that trouble was coming, and they were told to go home. They had no idea that the trouble would be one of the greatest massacres, racial massacres, in American history on American soil. My relatives owned some 14 or 15 homes in Greenwood. They would rent out these homes to different folks and all those homes were destroyed. We had a two-story building at 123 North Greenwood that was burned to the ground. Their home that they actually lived in was untouched. My great grandfather James Henri Goodwin had a very fair complexion; he looked like a white man, many folks thought. And we're thinking that is how his house was left alone. When the white mobs came down the street, he just waved them away and they just continued down the street.
After the destruction, my great grandmother Carlie Marie Goodwin would go down to the courthouse. Mind you, murderers are still walking the street. A lot of folks were not talking about what had happened because they saw that the fire department did nothing, the police officers did nothing. As a matter of fact, they were complicit in the destruction and in the murder. And that's why there was no one that you could really go to, but in that atmosphere she went down to the courthouse and filed a lawsuit, as did many others. (There was an estimate of $2.7 million in economic damages in 1921 dollars.) They were rejected outright in the court system so she was never successful. These were the first attempts at reparations and to this day we still don't have reparations in Tulsa.
Meisner: You know, as a journalist, it's almost unbelievable to me that these events were not widely known until now. So in addition to the tragic events, despite all the destruction and lives lost, how was it the case that most people did not know? What is being done now to make this history known?
Rep. Goodwin: I am an Oklahoma State Representative, representing House District 73 which includes the Greenwood area. Prior to me, there was Rep. Don Ross and Senator Maxine Horner, who passed away earlier this year. Rep. Ross is still living. When he was the representative, he brought attention to the massacre 20 to 25 years ago. He convened a commission. At that time, he referred to it as a riot, but before that the victims referred to it as a massacre. Rep. Ross convened the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which brought worldwide attention to the massacre -- Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, and a number of other media outlets covered this story in great fashion. But ironically even Rep. Ross only learned about the massacre when he was a student in Booker T. Washington High School in the district where a Black teacher discussed it. Rep. Ross did not believe it was true; he challenged his teacher saying “There's no way that could happen. I would have heard about it. How could something like that happen here and I do not know about it?” So the teacher brought in articles and photographs the next day so that he could become educated. He would then in his later years become the state representative for Greenwood and convene this commission, which produced a 200-page report that detailed the race massacre.
So when you say a lot of folks did not know about it, that is one instance of a young man who would come to represent the area and how he learned about it. In my family, it was through oral history that I was told this story as I was growing up. I don't remember not knowing about it because our family was so affected. My grandmother Jeanne Goodwin had a book by Mary Elizabeth Jones Parrish, a Black woman who was a journalist and was an eyewitness in 1921 to the events of the Tulsa massacre and wrote a book called “Events of the Tulsa Massacre” about it. My grandmother had an original copy of the book and she would keep it under lock and key. And when I was a child she would allow me to go into the armoire and open it up to read it, and then I'd have to put the book back because she didn't want to lose that original copy. And so it was not only through oral history that I learned about it, but I was also able to read about it. But when you say “How did so many other folks not know about it?”, they call it the Conspiracy of Silence. Again, if you have murderers walking along the street, that have taken fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and you're looking at them and you know they were participants in this massacre, and you know there's no other people to help -- it was a matter of saving your own life. You weren't going to go and say, “Hey let's talk about this” because white folks did not want to talk about it and might kill you. So that went on for decade after decade after decade and it was a Conspiracy of Silence. Even today, you have people who say, “Well let's not talk about that. It's kind of an ugly history. Let's not discuss it.” So for Black folks, it was a matter of wanting to protect yourself and your children. And the white folks knew they were murderers, but It's not like they were running around saying, “Hey look at me. I'm a killer, come interview me.” So that's why so many folks did not know about it.
Meisner: What happened after that Commission, which was a couple of decades ago? Between then and now, it appears as if it went silent again.
Rep. Goodwin: So the Commission recommended reparations. The Commission said we would like to have an enterprise zone to build Black businesses for economic development. They talked about scholarships. They also recommended that there be an investigation into mass graves; if we can somehow find where these bodies have been buried, let's uncover them and give them a proper burial. We don't want to forget the family members who were murdered. Those are some of the recommendations that were made. But the only thing that the legislature did was the scholarships. And then while they said that they wanted the scholarships to go to all descendants of race massacre survivors, within the very same year the legislature came back and said they would allocate a maximum of $300,000 in total. So in the very same year, they began to diminish what they might offer to the community. It went from, “Let this be a starting point to let this be the maximum, we're not going beyond this.” And then they soon took out language that talks about descendants, which to me was wrong. What is the point of having a scholarship if you're not going to try to benefit the folks that were harmed the most? So even today, they're still giving out the scholarships, but you don't see the word descendant on the application anymore.
I wanted to have a conversation about all of this in 2021. I wanted to have an interim study done about what has happened with reparations in Oklahoma. Why have we not made good on these recommendations from a state-sanctioned Commission? They would not allow me to have the interim study in 2021; the Speaker of the House denied me that opportunity. He said that this has already been studied. But it has never been studied in Oklahoma by the state legislature. And why have we not made good on the recommendations from 20 years ago? It never happened, and yet in statements to the news media, the Speaker wrongly claimed that it was studied and did happen. For two weeks, I was trying to talk to the Speaker, but no one ever returned my call or my email. They just denied me the opportunity to have what I think is a very necessary study done. I was not allowed to have any discussion of reparations at the Capitol. So that lets you know what the mindset is in 2021 as it relates to reparations.
Meisner: In preparing to talk to you, it became very clear that there has been a lot of attention to the Greenwood massacre and the issue of reparations of late -- the New York Times, DeNeen Brown of the Washington Post, other journalists locally, nationally and internationally. And so, as a result, those of us who live elsewhere, outside of Oklahoma, have become aware now of what happened in Tulsa. And, of course, the marking of the 100th anniversary of the massacre. But it does sound as if it's been difficult to engage on the issue of reparations there, while throughout the country there is the beginning of a momentum around it. I'm wondering if there are not pressure points that have come from outside Oklahoma to begin or, more appropriately, to renew talk of reparations around the massacre?
Rep. Goodwin: Yes, there are pressure points within Oklahoma as well. There is a pending lawsuit and a very organized moment to discuss it. But I will tell you that the Mayor of Tulsa (G.T. Bynum) has said he believes reparations are a divisive topic. Of course, I don't agree with that. But that lets you know what they're thinking about reparations on the city level. At the state level, not only was I not allowed to have the new study done, I literally had to fight to have a resolution that would merely acknowledge the 100-year anniversary of the race massacre at the state Capitol. It was incumbent upon me, I think, as the state representative to certainly have that acknowledged by the legislature given that it had done work on the issue some 20 years prior. Reparations were recommended in the Commission’s report, but they wanted me to strike that word out of the 100th anniversary resolution. I said that I was not going to strike out accurate history from this resolution. I wasn't even telling the legislature that we're going to have reparations now, I was just saying that as a matter of record and a matter of history that the word reparations should be in the resolution. And they did not want that; they then went and offered another resolution. So this is the difficulty that we're having in terms of talking about reparations in Oklahoma. There was a Black Senator who went with a white Senator and authored another resolution counter to mine; it left out language about reparations. That was Senator Matthews, who also represents this district, but he opted to go along to somewhat diminish our history and offer a different version of a resolution.
I had to fight to get my language and the only reason they allowed me to have it is because I threatened national media coverage if they did not do it, because Washington DC had already acknowledged Tulsa and the race massacre. That is the only reason they passed House Resolution 1040 on the last day of the session of 2021. So I think it shows you what we're dealing with now as we talk about reparations. But on a more positive note, there has been a lawsuit that was filed on reparations; it is the third effort to seek reparations via a lawsuit, and it is a very well organized and concerted effort. And certainly the outside media helps keep the story alive. We have three known survivors of the massacre that we know of -- 107-year-old Mrs. Viola Ford Fletcher, 106-year-old Mrs. Lessie Benningfield Randle and the brother of Mrs. Fletcher who is 100 years old and whose name is Mr. Hughes Van Ellis. So we are still fighting and trying to do right by them. We're waiting on a judge right now to make a determination of whether that lawsuit continues.
Meisner: As you know, there are a growing number of efforts at the state and local levels to enact reparation laws or executive orders or reimbursement strategies -- a whole range of efforts, some of which we are going to be talking about in our other Review stories. Most of them are not driven by a specific event such as the massacre in Tulsa, but are more based on a desire or a need or a pressure to make amends as a result of slavery in the U.S. When you see these efforts, what are your views?
Rep. Goodwin: We in Tulsa cannot separate ourselves from the national effort. In U.S. House Representatives Bill 40 (Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act), we talk about reparations as it relates to enslaved persons, Black folks in particular, the transatlantic trade. (The late Rep.) Mr. John Conyers, who passed away two years ago, has been trying to get reparations as it relates to enslaved persons since 1989. I was asked to appear at two Congressional hearings on reparations this year -- one where I testified along with the survivors at the first national hearing on the Greenwood massacre and the other as part of a panel on HR 40, and how it ties into the more local issue of reparations. I certainly support the bill. It's unfortunate that Tulsa is not Ground Zero for showing folks how this should be done the right way. We're looking at efforts in California, efforts in Illinois, where reparations are underway. And people are calling it reparations; they're not afraid of the word. I've had people say to me, “Well, maybe, if you don't call it reparations, it would be better.” My thing is maybe if you are honest with yourself, that's exactly what it should be called. Why do we have to tap dance around words and initiatives to appease certain folks? The question should become, why in the Oklahoma legislature are there white men in particular not wanting to have to deal with this word? Why is that? Because you can't say that the state was not involved. You can't say that the city was not involved. When people say to me, “Well, you know, that was 100 years ago and the perpetrators are no longer with us,” I say that it was state-sanctioned violence, city-sanctioned violence, county-sanctioned violence. People died and these entities remain. It's unfortunate, really, that other cities would be leading the way. In Rosewood, Florida, they already made amends as it relates to reparations. There are other cities that have already done something about it. What is wrong with Oklahoma that we can't get this right? That's the question and I think it has to do with transparency. I think it has to do with accountability. And I think, quite frankly, in this age of Donald Trump who fanned the flames of racism, that he thrives in some parts of our society that supports him. He's just a part of a climate in part of America that has had issues with race for a long time, and what he really did is just magnify what was already there.
These folks weren’t just born yesterday, these folks have been living with us for a long time. Now they have a voice, they have a voice that it's okay to amplify hatred and amplify racism. There are some cities that are making progress, but by and large, America is not going in the right direction. Now we have leadership by President Biden, but you still have the same issues. Even with a Biden Administration, we do not have a bipartisan effort to do the right thing and pass HR 40 after some 30 years.
I'm not saying all white men and all white women. I'm just saying when it comes down to it, unfortunately, you only have small pockets of folks in America that are doing the right thing. And I don't want reparations to be confused with good policy. You're going to have good policy and good policy that incorporates reparations, but let's not confuse the two. If you have a great housing program in your city, don't just label it reparations. It’s really just doing what you're supposed to do. In addition to that, we should also have reparations. Don't just say “Hey we got a great economic development plan here and we're calling it reparations.” That doesn't count. We need to be clear about that, too. As we talk about policies around the nation and what's happening, I think we need to be clear.
Meisner: I am very mindful of your time. This issue is just so incredibly complex and is tied up with so many other things going on in our country overall right now, that it is difficult sometimes to see the potential for progress. On a final note, I would love to hear from you about what life in Greenwood is like right now, in terms of a community that was destroyed 100 years ago. What is it like now?
Rep. Goodwin: So for years after the race massacre, Black folks came together and they rebuilt their own community and they did it in pretty quick fashion, and it would again become a bustling area. But then there would be urban removal, as I call it, and red lining and an expressway built that cuts across the community, as they did across the nation, and with that would come decline. Right now, you've got a half a block that they refer to as Black Wall Street, but not a lot of Black-owned businesses. Still the oldest business there is our family newspaper, the Oklahoma Eagle, which grew out of the Tulsa Star. My great grandfather James Henri Goodwin was the business manager of the Star, then my grandfather would become the owner of what would become the Eagle. The Eagle newspaper is still in the Greenwood community. I grew up at 1415 North Greenwood so I literally grew up in that community. Today, we're looking at some planning going on for some 56 acres that were given back to that particular community that the Development Authority held that was not being used properly, so now there are plans underway. How it all works out, we're going to see.
When President Biden came to Tulsa in June, he talked about the expressway that cut through the heart of Greenwood (when it was completed in 1975). I wanted to have a study done on having it taken down as happened in Milwaukee, as happened in Rochester, New York. So we know that there are monies in the infrastructure bill that specifically are designated for deconstruction of highways. I would like to see that happen. We know that is a big project. We know there are many who are for it, there are some who are against it. Those against it are probably also those that own that land, so it's a matter of working that out and seeing if we can bring more voices to the table. So that is all part of what’s going on, as well as some housing initiatives. But if you were to come here right now, like many other journalists have, you might say “Is this it?”
As it relates to the race massacre survivors, I initiated a project -- knowing that because they are advanced in age and reparations and lawsuits take time and the outcomes are uncertain -- to get cash in their hands right now. So I initiated an effort to raise money from everyday folks and we were able to raise $625,000 for the three race massacre survivors. They have that money and, by God's grace, there's pastor Michael Todd of Transformation Church in Tulsa and Minister Barbara Littlejohn that helped and agreed to give $200,000 to each of the survivors and an additional $100,000 to one of the descendants of one of the survivors. They also gave $100,000 to the Greenwood Cultural Center which has been here for 25 years. There are some good things that are happening and we still have that spirit. We still know the difference between right and wrong, and we're going to continue to try to build this community. So that's where we are in Tulsa right now.
Meisner: Thank you so very much, Rep. Goodwin, for the opportunity to have this conversation. It is almost, in some ways, too much to take in in terms of what occurred, but your efforts to try and repair the damages that were wrought there a century ago are incredible and we thank you for your time and consideration.
Rep. Goodwin: Absolutely, thank you again just for taking the time to learn more about this situation. I would say that we're going to keep trying on our watch.
About the Author:
Mary Jo Meisner is a senior business executive specializing in communications, media, government relations, and public policy. Over the course of a 30-year career, Mary Jo has been a journalist, a newspaper and business executive, and was the architect of a groundbreaking civic leadership arm of the Boston Foundation. After spending a year as a 2017 Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University, Mary Jo formed MJM Advisory Services, a bespoke consulting firm that advises senior leaders in the private sector on their social impact initiatives.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.