We are hearing lots about apologies for slavery these days. The Hartford Courant, one of the oldest newspapers in America, has apologized for advertising for runaway slaves. That apology was inspired by a story about another great Connecticut institution, Aetna Insurance, which had written policies on slaves' lives. Now Congress is investigating the role of slave labor in constructing the U.S. Capitol.
In Oklahoma, the discussion about apologies and reparations relates to a more recent tragedy: the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Oklahomans are asking how their riot happened and what should now be done? Debate over reparations for the Tulsa riot centers on the city government's culpability in fueling the destruction.
On the evening of May 31, 1921, a mob gathered at the Tulsa courthouse, threatening to lynch a young black man who worked shining shoes. He was accused of attacking a white woman who worked as an elevator operator. Rumors began to circulate in the city that a lynching was imminent. The proud black community, which was reading "radical" literature such as the NAACP's Crisis magazine and talking about upholding the law against lynchers, decided to take a stand.
When black World War I veterans appeared that night to stop the lynching, "all hell broke loose," to use the parlance of the day. The Tulsa police department deputized several hundred white men, to help put down what it called a "negro uprising." According to widely circulated reports the new deputies were told to "Go out and kill you a damn nigger." Throughout the night groups of armed men went into the police station, planning their next moves.
The next day, around 5 a.m., those deputies, with other white mobs, invaded Greenwood, the black section of Tulsa, and left it in ruins. Greenwood residents were arrested and taken to detention centers. Those who had a white employer vouch for them were issued green tags, which they were required to wear, and released into the custody of their employers. Black men without employers were required to work cleaning up the burned area for no compensation other than meals and housing. By noon, more than a thousand homes had been burned to the ground and thousands were left homeless.
Now, a commission funded by the Oklahoma legislature is investigating the riot, seeking to "excavate a history that had been consigned to oblivion for the past 75 years," according to the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin.
In February the commission recommended paying reparations to survivors. It looked to precedents such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1988, which paid $20,000 each to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II; the settlement of claims of Holocaust survivors from Swiss banks, which had retained money deposited before the war by the survivors' families; and the two million dollars set aside by the Florida legislature for survivors of the 1923 attack on Rosewood, a black town burned during a week of rioting.
The case for reparations in Tulsa is particularly strong because the police deputies were responsible for much of the riot's destruction. As the Oklahoma Supreme Court acknowledged in a long-forgotten insurance case, after the deputies arrested Greenwood residents, some set fire to Greenwood's houses. The well-orchestrated attack left more than thirty blocks destroyed and perhaps as many as 175 dead.
Some Oklahomans say they should not be taxed for the sins of their parents and that current taxpayers did not commit the crimes that destroyed Greenwood. But successors often pay for their predecessors' actions. Current stockholders of companies, for instance, are held liable for pollution that occurred decades ago. Just because taxpayers did not themselves participate in the riot does not mean that the city as a political entity is freed from legal or moral responsibility.
As they decide what to do, Oklahomans are in good company. International discussion over apologies and reparations spans slavery and Native American land in the United States, apartheid in South Africa, Nazi slave labor, and war crimes China, Korea and the Balkans. Meanwhile, Tulsa and the Oklahoma legislature have the opportunity to restore something to the sixty survivors of the riot who are still alive and repair the city's good name as well.
Alfred L. Brophy is a professor of law at the University of Alabama and a writer for the History News Service. His book on the Tulsa race riot of 1921 will be published later this year.
