Serious
Games: another piece of hidden history
When Scott Ellsworth finished his senior research project
at Reed College almost 24 years ago, little did he suspect
that his work would prompt investigators to poke around
an Oklahoma graveyard this month, searching for grisly
clues about this country's biggest race riot of the century.
A native of Tulsa, Ellsworth decided to write about
a little-known bit of hometown history for his senior
thesis. As a boy, Ellsworth had heard mentions of a
race riot in Tulsa. As a college student, he began to
understand that white officials had covered up the deaths
of scores of black residents. Now, thanks in part to
Ellsworth's thesis, Tulsa and Oklahoma officials are
preparing to hunt for the bodies and, perhaps, try to
make amends.
On June 1, 1921, a young African-American shoeshine
boy in Tulsa was accused of assaulting a white elevator
girl. News of the alleged attack prompted an awful race
riot. Within 24 hours, hundreds of African-Americans
were dead and at least 1,000 of their homes and businesses
over a 35-block area were looted and burned to the ground
by rampaging whites. Thousands of blacks were herded
at gunpoint to makeshift internment camps while the
dead were quickly buried without markers. The local
press covered the riot, but only superficially. The
Tulsa Tribune, for example, reported on June
2 that nine whites and 22 blacks died. (Tulsa's two
black-owned newspapers were burnt down in the riot.)
The national press, such as The New York Times,
listed similar statistics.
Until recently, Oklahoma history books referred to
the race riot, if at all, as a terrible event that "got
out of hand," but didn't provide further details. Official
accounts of the conflict from the Oklahoma National
Guard, the Tulsa County Sheriff, and the Tulsa Police
Department have disappeared.
For five decades, the details of this awful event remained
a virtual secret until Ellsworth decided to make it
his history project in 1976. He compiled the complete
historical research, including photographs of burnt-out
and destroyed Tulsa, newspaper accounts, city directories
and what few public records remained.
"Ellsworth's work takes an objective historian's approach,"
notes John Hope Franklin, an eminent African-American
historian whose father survived the Tulsa race riot.
"Scott approaches the events critically. His work isn't
based just on personal history."
Following what he now calls the "thesis that wouldn't
die," Ellsworth continued his research in graduate school,
and his work was published in 1982 as a book, Death
in a Promised Land, before he received his doctorate
from Duke University.
Outside of Oklahoma and academia, Ellsworth's book
drew little attention until 1995. Then, a group of both
black and white Tulsans decided the city had to do something
to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the riot the
next year. They got a break, of sorts, when television's
Today show came to Oklahoma City for a week in
the spring of '95, following the bombing of the Murrah
Federal Building. Ellsworth says that during that week
Don Ross, a state legislator, met Bryant Gumbel and
said that as awful as the bombing in Oklahoma City was,
the state had an even worse tragedy--that a more awful
event had happened in Tulsa and never gotten any attention.
"Then Ross gave Gumbel a copy of my book," Ellsworth
says. "Gumbel read the book and said that the Today
show would come to Tulsa when the 75th anniversary commemoration
took place."
Gumbel kept his word, and with Today came plenty
of press coverage, from The New York Times to
National Public Radio. Ross reminded his colleagues
that the race riot had never been properly investigated
and persuaded them to set up a commission to examine
all aspects of the deaths, including the possibility
of reparations.
Ellsworth, who lives in Portland, has been a consultant
to the 12-member Tulsa Race Riot Commission since its
founding in 1997, serving as its primary investigator.
"Scott has explained the events of the past and how
they have affected the community," says commission chairman
Bob Blackburn, director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
"His work has been invaluable."
Commission member Eddie Faye Gates agrees. "Scott has
been wonderful," says Gates, a retired history teacher.
"As a result of his work and this commission, Tulsa
is no longer in denial."
One of the biggest questions Ellsworth has struggled
with is how many people were killed. "In my book I had
written between 50 and 250," he says. "That's all I
could speculate at the time. But there is new evidence,
and 300 is quite believable."
The other big mystery is what happened to the bodies,
and Ellsworth believes the commission is homing in on
the answer. One of the most promising sites is the Oaklawn
Cemetery in Tulsa. Although city records make no mention
of any mass graves, dusty cemetery and funeral-home
records show that riot victims were buried there. An
89-year-old man also has testified that as a child he
saw the burials take place.
Ellsworth got a break when Clyde Snow, one of the world's
leading forensic anthropologists, retired to Oklahoma
and offered his services.
When Snow became involved in the case, he brought in
anthropologists, archaeologists, police specialists,
medical examiners, and many other experts. Initial results
of ground-penetrating radar have confirmed the possibility
of mass graves at the cemetery.
Blackburn says the tests should be completed by the
end of October and excavation could start as early as
next month. "Of course, if we run into caskets, we'll
back off."
If, on the other hand, investigators find a mass grave,
they'll go on. "If we exhume and find bones," says Snow,
"we can determine the age, sex, stature, diseases and
injuries of the victims."
Identifying the victims is important for a couple of
reasons. First, it would give descendants some disturbing
but important information. Second, it could give them
a right to ask for amends.
"The issue of reparations has been a real lightning-bolt
dividing line between blacks and whites," says Ellsworth.
"The commission is grappling with it. There is precedent.
For example, Japanese-Americans, who were interned during
World War II, were given some financial compensation
from the federal government. The state of Florida paid
reparations to victims of the race riot in Rosewood,
a small town that was burned to the ground by whites
in 1923. In the case of Tulsa, there may be reparations
to individuals."
Ellsworth says the commission has tracked down about
70 survivors. He says DNA samples from any bodies discovered
could help identify living relatives.
"I would like to see some kind of reparations," says
Gates. "I know that reparations are divisive. But taking
responsibility for serious mistakes is a principle of
any civilized society."
The commission has to make a decision on reparations
by January and will rely on the historical report that
Ellsworth will most likely write. After a quarter-century
of research, Ellsworth has strong feelings about the
riot and what it means for Tulsa. "As a historian, you
have to keep your eyes open," he says. "You can't bend
to the political winds. And that's not easy in this
case, since it still has a lot of emotional content."
Serious
Games
Tulsa's race riot isn't the only secretive
bit of history that has caught Scott Ellsworth's attention.
The Portland historian is currently writing a book about
an illegal basketball game that took place in North Carolina
55 years ago. Ellsworth says that in 1944, a team of white
former college standouts enrolled at Duke Medical School
took on a black team from what was then North Carolina
College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University).
"They held the game at the black school on a Sunday morning,
when everyone in town was at church," Ellsworth says.
"No spectators were allowed. Every door was locked. The
black team beat the white team badly, and no one spoke
about it afterwards."
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 20,
1999
