And…

Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 years later: Why it happened and why it’s still relevant today

The city’s “Black Wall Street” was among the most prosperous neighborhoods in America, and a Black utopia — and then it was burned to the ground.

May 28, 2021,

3:00 AM PDT

By Randi Richardson

Just decades after slavery in the United States left Black Americans in an economic and societal deficit, one bright spot stood out in Tulsa, Oklahoma — its Greenwood District, known as the “Black Wall Street,” where Black business leaders, homeowners, and civic leaders thrived.

But 100 years ago, on May 31, 1921, and into the next day, a white mob destroyed that district, in what experts call the single-most horrific incident of racial terrorism since slavery.

An estimated 300 people were killed within the district’s 35 square blocks, burning to the ground more than 1,200 homes, at least 60 businesses, dozens of churches, a school, a hospital and a public library, according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch.

Source: nbcnews.com for Randi’s complete article

   

On May 30, 1942, Fred Korematsu is arrested in San Leandro, California for resisting internment under President Franklin Roosevelt’s controversial Executive Order 9066, which called for the incarceration of nearly all Japanese Americans in the United States in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Following his conviction and incarceration in a Utah camp, Korematsu—then 23—filed suit in federal court. His case eventually wound up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1944 upheld the government’s claim that the incarceration was a matter of “military urgency.”

In 1983, however, a federal judge reversed Korematsu’s conviction for evading internment, ruling a “great wrong” done to him. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology on behalf of the government and authorized reparations for former Japanese American internees or their descendants.

Scholars and judges have denounced the Korematsu Supreme Court ruling as among the worst in the court’s history.

In 2011, an acting U.S. solicitor—the federal government’s top courtroom attorney—ruled a predecessor deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans posed no military threat. In Trump v. Hawaii in 2018, the Supreme Court effectively overturned the Korematsu decision, calling it as “gravely wrong the day it was decided.”

In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu, a staunch civil rights advocate, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. He died in 2005 at the age of 86. 

On January 30, 2011, California celebrated its first “Fred Korematsu Day”—the first day named after an Asian American in the United States.  Fred Korematsu challenged the legality of Executive Order 9066 but the Supreme Court ruled the action was justified as a wartime necessity. It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government attempted to apologize to those who had been interned.

Fred Korematsu decided to test the government relocation action in the courts. He found little sympathy there. In Korematsu vs. the United States, the Supreme Court justified the executive order as a wartime necessity. When the order was repealed, many found they could not return to their hometowns. Hostility against Japanese Americans remained high across the West Coast into the postwar years as many villages displayed signs demanding that the evacuees never return. As a result, the interns scattered across the country.

Source: history.com

On May 27, 1986, the U.S. Patent Office grants a patent to African American inventor Lonnie Johnson for his toy design simply titled ”Squirt Gun.” After a few name changes and additional patents, Johnson’s invention—ultimately re-named the “Super Soaker®”—would become the best-selling water toy of all time, eventually earning its rightful place in the American National Toy Hall of Fame.

Source: history.com

by Catherine Silva

This sign at the entrance of Innis Arden advertised to all entering the Shoreline subdivision that it was a “restricted community.”

The Communist Party Newspaper, New World, published articles attacking racial restrictive covenants in 1948.

[click to enlarge images]

A New World Map Shows Seattle’s “Ghetto,” 1948.

A January 22, 1948 New World column addresses the 1948 court struggles against racial restrictive covenants.

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 0 that agreements to bar racial minorities from residential areas are discriminatory and cannot be enforced by the courts.

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The Ornstein Case

Fact Sheet on Ornstein’s Residential Discrimination and Proposed Plan of action, January 30, 1953.

The questionnaire developed by the Sand Point Methodist Community Church, to reveal resident’s attitudes towards racial restrictive covenants.

Civic Unity Committee Memo summarizing the Ornstein family’s situation.

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Housing restriction was publically condoned and enforced.

A Victory Heights plat map in the North Seattle area.

Database of Seattle Restrictive Covenants
Click above to browse nearly 500restrictive covenants and see King County neighborhoods affected by restrictive covenants

W.E. Boeing Neighborhood Developments

A pamphlet cover advertizing the Blue Ridge “restricted” neighborhood as “a beautiful place to build and own your home.” Blue Ridge was one of several neighborhoods developed by Bill and Bertha Boeing.

This Blue Ridge list of “protective restrictions” is included in the same pamphlet that described the Blue Ridge area as “a beautiful place to build and own your home.”

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Lake Ridge was developed by the Goodwin Company and sold to the public as a “restricted” community. Click above to see the 1930 promotional brochure for the south Lake Washington neighborhood.

Restrictive covenants were a source of big profits for powerful real estate interests.

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Capitol Hill Covenant Campaign

Capitol Hill Racial Restrictive Covenant.

27 property owners signed this 1927 petition to restrict property use on their block.

Plat map of Capitol Hill showing some of the blocks covered by the restrictive covenants filed by homeowners after 1927.

A letter from the Capitol Hill Community Club petitioning Capitol Hill residents to donate the funds necessary to protect Capitol Hill’s racial restrictive covenants.

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The Campaign Against Racial Restrictive Covenant

The Christian Friends for Racial Equality (CFRE) Committee Against Discrimination appointed a cemetery committee to combat the problem of cemetery discrimination.

The Civic Unity Committee (CUC) issued this fact sheet on racial restrictive covenants in 1948 to educate others about the abuses of restrictive housing covenants.

This Christian Friends for Racial Equality (CFRE) Resolution to condemn Restrictive Covenants.

Carl Brooks, an outspoken civil rights activist, labor leader, and member of the Communist Party (CP), speaks out against racial restrictive covenants.

Civic Unity Committee (CUC) Meeting minutes from one of several meetings organized to combat racial restrictive covenants.

This January 1948 article from the New World argues that the race bans in Seattle’s restricted housing areas created the “ghetto” in the city.

Katharine I. Grant Pankey’s Report, “Restrictive Covenants in Seattle: A study in Race Relations.”

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Windermere racial restrictive covenant.

Because restrictive covenants often pushed black people out of restricted communities, the National Association of Real Estate Boards issued this 1944 report about housing options for “Negroes.”

Realtors sometimes advertised housing developments to Black and Japanese families only to reject them when they applied, as revealed in this 1949 Civic Unity Committee letter.

With the help of the Seattle Urban League, one residential community sought to prevent an elderly Black woman from purchasing a home, all in the name of democracy.

Albert Balch, developer of View Ridge, Wedgwood, and several other areas was notorius for advertising them as “restricted neighborhoods.

Broadmoor: Developed by the Puget Mill Company, Broadmoor banned Jews along with Blacks and Asians. In this 1934 brochure it is called a “Restricted Residential Park”

Laurelhurst plat map.

Richard Ornstein, a Jewish refugee from Austria, contracted to purchase a home for his family in the Sand Point Country Club area of Seattle in late 1952.  Unknown to both Ornstein and the seller, the property’s deed contained a neighborhood-wide restrictive covenant barring the sale or rental of the home to non-Whites and people of Jewish descent.  In spite of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed racial restrictive covenants unenforceable in 1948, Ornstein’s case reveals that this ruling yielded little power over the application of these restrictions on the individual level. Daniel Boone Allison, Head of the Sand Point Country Club Commission, approached the realtor negotiating the sale and announced:  “the community will not have Jews as residents.”1 Over the next several weeks Allison campaigned to stop the sale by both citing the covenant barring the sale of homes to Jews  and by threatening Ornstein with a list of ways intolerant area residents “could” respond to the presence of the Ornstein family in the neighborhood.  Despite the willingness on the part of the home seller, despite the support of civil rights activists, and despite the 1948 court ruling, Ornstein eventually became a victim of Allison’s threats and “made it clear that he [had] no intention of moving” into an area that did not accept his presence. 2