Episode 288 - Black History Month - Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre with Carmita from Missing in the PNW

TW - This episode we drop a few 'f' bombs, and a few other words we would not normally use.  But we are dealing with an act of domestic terrorism that has been concealed by polite history.  We discuss the rRise of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District of Oklahoma.  How discovering oil in the early twenties brought people of all colors to to the young state of Oklahoma unintentionally creating a community of Black entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and other professionals,,This created a segregation and suspicion drove them into the community of Greenwood where they built black schools, black theaters, black hotels and black shops.  Their community was so good and prosperous that even whites would shop there when they could get a product better or cheaper.  However, one night, a young man named Dick Rowland who worked in Tulsa had to use the restroom.  Being black, he couldn't go to the bathroom where he worked he had to go to one of the 'Black Only' bathrooms and the closest one was on the top floor of the nearby Drexler Building.  The elevator was operated by one Sarah Page and as Dick rode the elevator, it shook briefly, causing Dick to wobble, he grabbed Sarah's arm to right himself, and Sarah, not expecting the contact, yelled as she was very startled.  That's it...well Dick left the elebator a clerk saaw him and reported the incident to the police.  Police arrested Roland and Black World War I veterans showed up armed, to prevent the vigilante lynch mob from attacking the jail and lynching Dick.  It was this event that set off the Tulsa Race Massacre...an overnight series of assaults, unreasonable arrests, theft, arson and murder that devastated the district of Greenwood.  And we, along with Carmita from Missing in the PNW and Murder in the PNW, tell this true story from the dark history of America and Oklahoma in this 0h-yeah-this-happened, domestic terror and if-this-doesn't-make-your-blood-boil-nothing-will episode of the Family Plot PodcastBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/family-plot--4670465/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices