A thriving Black neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street” lies in ruin following the Tulsa race riot of 1921.
Credit: Library of Congress

May 31, 2021, marked 100 years since the start of the Tulsa race riot of 1921. It was one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in United States history.

From May 31 to June 1, 1921, groups of armed white men attacked Black residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The riot began after white vigilantes gathered to lynch (put to death without a lawful trial) a Black man who had been accused of attacking a white woman. The riot probably caused about 300 deaths and destroyed Tulsa’s Black business district.

On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, entered an elevator in the Drexel Building in downtown Tulsa. He encountered Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator. What occurred next is unclear. Many historians believe that Rowland may have either stepped on Page’s foot or tripped and grabbed Page’s arm to steady himself. Page screamed. A clerk from a nearby store, assuming that the girl had been the victim of an assault, called police. Rowland fled the scene and was arrested the next day.

Newspaper accounts and rumors about the incident led to widespread talk of lynching. On the evening of May 31, hundreds of white people, including many armed men, gathered near the courthouse where Rowland was held. Groups of armed Black men—many of them veterans of World War I—then arrived at the scene. They offered their services to the sheriff to help protect Rowland, but their offers were refused.

At around 10 p.m., shots were fired during a commotion near the courthouse. The Blacks who had gathered there were outnumbered, and they retreated. They went to Greenwood Avenue—the heart of the Black business district known as “Black Wall Street.” A white mob followed.

Scattered shootings then occurred near Greenwood Avenue in the early hours of June 1. Groups of armed Blacks assembled to hold off the white mob. Many Black residents fought to protect their businesses or families, while others fled to the countryside. Law enforcement officials deputized (appointed as agents of the law) hundreds of members of the mob. Members of the Oklahoma National Guard—all of whom were white—gathered near boundaries of Black and white neighborhoods. Among some whites, rumors attributed the violence to a “Negro uprising.” The mob grew to more than 5,000 white men.

Around 5 a.m., a whistle sounded, and thousands of armed white men marched into the Black business district. They burned and looted homes and businesses. National Guardsmen led thousands of Blacks at gunpoint to makeshift detention centers. Many who resisted were shot. Police did little to stop the arson and violence, and they spent most of their resources protecting white neighborhoods. In many instances, local members of the state National Guard joined in the attacks. Black eyewitnesses recalled white pilots firing on Black neighborhoods from airplanes above.

Thousands of armed white men burned and looted Black homes and businesses during the riot.
Credit: Library of Congress

Around 9 a.m., members of a National Guard regiment from Oklahoma City arrived in Tulsa. Locals called them the “state troops.” Order was restored around 11:30 a.m., when Governor James B. A. Robertson declared martial law (emergency military rule) in Tulsa County. By the time the riot ended, more than 1,200 structures—nearly the entire “Negro Quarter”—had been destroyed by fires.

There is documented evidence of at least 40 deaths in the Tulsa riot. Of this number, about two-thirds were Black. However, many historians estimate that around 300 people were killed. Some unidentified Black victims may have been interred in mass graves.

Authorities never brought criminal charges against Rowland. Authorities also brought no charges against white rioters. Neither the City of Tulsa nor insurance companies compensated Black property owners for losses. The Greenwood business district was eventually rebuilt, but many of its residents remained homeless for months.

Rebuilding begins in the Black neighborhood destroyed by the riot.
Credit: Library of Congress

Newspapers reported on the riot in the days and weeks after the event. Over time, however, the incident received little coverage. The riot was omitted from most Oklahoma history books and classroom lessons.

Blacks displaced by the neighborhood’s destruction line up outside a refugee camp at the Tulsa fairgrounds.
Credit: Library of Congress

In 1997, state officials formed the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission released an extensive report about the event in 2001. Tulsa’s John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park commemorates the victims of the riot. The park, named for a leading Black scholar whose own father survived the riot, officially opened in 2010.

Credit: © michaeljung, Shutterstock

February 25th marks the founding, in 1837, of Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the first of a number of institutions now known as historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU’s). These prestigious and storied schools have educated many leading figures in U.S. cultural, legal, and political life. Just a few notable examples include the actor Chadwick Boseman; Vice President Kamala Harris; civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; filmmaker Spike Lee; and talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

Historically Black colleges and universities are institutions established before 1964 to educate Black students in the United States. Today, there are approximately 100 of them. About half are public and half are private institutions. Although HBCU’s continue to focus on educating Black students, more than 20 percent of their students are non-Black. A growing number of HBCU students come from other countries.

Some educational institutes for free Black adults were founded in the Northern States before the Civil War (1861-1865). The first university owned and operated by Black people, Wilberforce University, was founded in Ohio in 1856.

The Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States. Philanthropists and religious organizations soon established dozens of educational institutes for newly freed Black people, including the first such institutions in the South. Many of these schools initially taught such basic subjects as arithmetic and reading and writing, because teaching Black people had been illegal in the pre-war South.

Following the Civil War, Southern state-funded colleges and universities refused admission to Black students. The Morrill Act of 1890 required these states to open at least one land-grant university that accepted Black students. Land-grant universities were initially funded by the sale of land given to the states by the federal government. Southern States opened such universities, but provided much less funding for them than for schools serving white students.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the segregation of public schools in a landmark ruling in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination because of a person’s color, race, national origin, religion, or sex. Together, these acts forced the integration of public and private colleges and universities that had banned Black students.

Several HBCU’s closed following the desegregation of colleges and universities. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan, following through on an executive order signed by his predecessor Jimmy Carter, established the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This program works to improve the competitiveness of HBCU’s and to promote them to the nation at large.

Ibram X. Kendi
Credit: © Stephen Voss

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

You have probably heard of racism—and many of you have even experienced it—but have you heard of antiracism? A central idea of antiracism is that it is not enough for people to simply avoid racism. Rather, people must actively look for and work to eradicate racism in their own beliefs and in society’s institutions. Ibram X. Kendi (1982-…), an American author, historian, and activist, is a major advocate for antiracism. Kendi is known for his groundbreaking work as a scholar of race studies and Black history. His writings explore the idea of antiracism and the history of racism in America.

Ibram Henry Rogers was born in New York City on Aug. 13, 1982. He staged his first antiracist protest as a child in the third grade. He noticed that his teacher called on white students while ignoring non-white students. He witnessed her treating Black students disrespectfully. He protested his teacher’s racist behavior by refusing to return to class.

In 2004, he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and African American studies from Florida A&M University. He received a Ph.D. degree in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He married the American physician Sadiqa Edmonds in 2013. That year, the couple changed their last name to Kendi, and Ibram changed his middle name to Xolani. Kendi is a humanities professor at Boston University. He is also the founding director of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research.

Kendi has written several books focusing on racism, antiracism, and the Black American experience. His first book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, was published in 2012. In 2016, Kendi became the youngest person ever to receive the National Book Award for nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). He went on to write the popular How to Be an Antiracist (2019) and Antiracist Baby (2020), a children’s picture book.

Kendi also wrote the introduction for an adaption of the book Stamped for middle school and teen readers written by Jason Reynolds (1983-…), a popular American author of books for young people. The adaptation is called Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020). Reynolds writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade readers. His works explore a variety of topics from a young person’s perspective. Such topics include the Black experience. They also include such issues as gun and gang violence.

Jason Reynolds
Credit: © Gary Gershoff, Getty Images

Reynolds became interested in poetry at a young age. An interest in rap music inspired him to explore literature. He advocates using rap and comic books as nontraditional ways to reach young readers. Reynolds’s first book, When I Was the Greatest, was published in 2014. It tells the story of three Black teenage boys growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. Reynolds often chooses Black teenagers—particularly teenage boys—as his subjects. He portrays the uncertainty or fear many of the boys feel, to encourage young male readers to express their own emotions.

Team publicity photo for the 1919 Chicago American Giants, a team that played in the Negro leagues.
Credit: Public Domain

Forty-eight years after his death, the baseball star Jackie Robinson just got 38 more hits. In December 2020, Major League Baseball (MLB) decided to grant major-league status to the Negro leagues—recognizing Negro league accomplishments as equal to those in the American and National leagues. The Negro leagues were professional baseball leagues formed for Black players, who were barred from playing alongside whites because of racial segregation. The leagues operated from 1920 to 1962.

Negro league teams were a source of pride for Black communities, where competition was just as fierce and the level of play just as high as in the segregated American and National leagues. Baseball historians agree that many players in the Negro leagues would have shone in the white leagues. Black entrepreneurs operated many of the teams and employed Black people from the local community as ticket-takers, ushers, and vendors.

The MLB plans to review the statistics and records of the approximately 3,400 players who played in the Negro leagues from 1920 to 1948 and incorporate them into major league historical records. The records from the Negro leagues are fragmentary, so the MLB will work with historians and statisticians to search for and review data from the period. The process will be ongoing, with records being updated as new box scores come to light.

In 1945, before the Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) Dodgers fielded Robinson, he played 26 games with the powerhouse Kansas City Monarchs, posting a blistering .384/.445/.606 slash line. Two years later, Robinson became the first Black player in the modern history of the MLB. The stats of some other early crossover stars, such as Larry Doby and Satchel Paige, will be greatly bolstered. Players who spent their entire careers in the Negro leagues, such as Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and Buck Leonard, will gain entry into the major league record books.

Satchel Paige pitched 18 seasons in the Negro leagues before entering Major League Baseball in 1948 at age 42. Credit: AP/Wide World

The decision makes some amends for a double injustice inflicted upon Black baseball players. First, they were barred from playing on major league teams. Then, their achievements were downplayed or dismissed because of a lack of MLB play. No Negro league stars were enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame until the induction of Paige in 1971.

The inclusion of Negro league statistics in the official baseball record books comes too late to offer any consolation to most of the leagues’ veterans. However, it recognizes these players’ incredible talent and their importance in the fight for racial equality and the history of the game. These records will testify to their dogged determination to play America’s pastime in the face of great injustice.

The American actor Chadwick Boseman was best known for his portrayal of the superhero Black Panther. Boseman died on Aug. 28, 2020.
Credit: Marvel Studios

The world of motion pictures was stunned on Aug. 28, 2020, with the death at age 43 of the African American actor Chadwick Boseman. Boseman was best known for his portrayal of T’Challa in the motion picture Black Panther (2018).

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born on Nov. 29, 1976, in Anderson, in northwestern South Carolina. He attended college at Howard University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 2000. He then pursued a career in the stage, writing and directing several plays.

Boseman also began taking roles as an actor. He played a recurring character on the television series “Lincoln Heights” (2007-2009). His breakthrough motion picture role came playing pioneering American baseball player Jackie Robinson in the film 42 (2013). Boseman went on to play American funk musician James Brown in the film Get on Up (2014).

Boseman’s most famous role was as T’Challa, better known as the superhero Black Panther. Boseman first took on the role in Captain America: Civil War (2016). In 2018, he starred in the character’s feature film, Black Panther. Boseman was praised for his performance in the film, the first major superhero movie to have a Black lead and a majority Black cast. He reprised the role of T’Challa in the films Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Boseman died of colon cancer.

American civil rights leader John R. Lewis
Credit: Office of John Robert Lewis

The world lost a major voice for the rights of African Americans on Friday, July 17, with the death of the American politician and civil rights leader John Lewis at the age of 80. A Democrat from Georgia, Lewis was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. He became nationally known in the early 1960’s for organizing student protests against segregation (the enforced separation of African Americans) and racial discrimination in the South. Throughout his life, Lewis worked to promote the rights and political involvement of African Americans.

John Robert Lewis was born near Troy, Alabama, on Feb. 21, 1940. Lewis attended segregated schools, and later graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. As a university student in 1961, Lewis volunteered as a “Freedom Rider,” challenging segregation at bus terminals throughout the South.

In 1960, Lewis became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which organized student protests, such as sit-ins at lunch counters. In 1963, Lewis was a keynote speaker at the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1965, Lewis was a leader in the voting rights protest march from Selma, Alabama. He and other marchers were attacked by state troopers in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Lewis also suffered beatings by angry mobs and was arrested by police dozens of times.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Lewis to help lead ACTION, a federal agency that directed volunteer programs. In 1981, Lewis was elected to the City Council of Atlanta, Georgia. He served from 1982 to 1986, when he was elected to his first term in Congress.

Lewis was also the author of several books centered on his involvement in the civil rights movement. In 2011, Lewis received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by a U.S. president.

Lewis died on the same day as C. T. Vivian, a civil rights organizer and leader under King. Lewis’s death took on added significance in the wake of protests against police use of force against African Americans sparked by the killing of George Floyd and others.

A woman carries the Pan-African flag, a symbol of black unity, at a Juneteenth parade in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Juneteenth celebrations commemorate the freeing of slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
Credit: © Tippman98x/Shutterstock

June 19 is Juneteenth, a festival held in many African American and other communities to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. The name of the festival refers to the date, June 19—the day the last slaves were freed in the southern state of Texas in 1865. Juneteenth festivities often include plays and storytelling, parades, prayer services, and family reunions. Some communities hold longer Juneteenth festivals spanning several days as a celebration of civil rights and freedom.

However, this year’s Juneteenth looks different than celebrations past. The holiday is set against the backdrop of a pandemic (global outbreak) of the coronavirus disease COVID-19. Since March, much of the country has been under strict lockdown to help in social distancing. Many businesses and public places are only beginning to reopen. The celebration also takes added significance in the wake of protests against racism and the police use of force against African Americans, sparked by the killing of George Floyd and others.

Several museums and cultural centers are having virtual (online) Juneteenth celebrations. There will also be virtual film and music festivals. Another way to celebrate Juneteenth is to support such black-owned businesses as stores and restaurants—but be sure to follow social distancing guidelines to help keep everyone safe!

Juneteenth originated in Texas at the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for the slaves in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union. However, many slave owners in Texas suppressed information about the emancipation even after the war ended in April 1865. On June 19, Gordon Granger, a Union general, entered Galveston, Texas, and ordered all slaves in the state to be freed. About 250,000 people, among the last slaves remaining in the United States, were freed.

Juneteenth celebrations were held only in Texas and a few communities in other southern states in the years following the Civil War. African Americans carried the celebration with them, however, as they migrated to other regions of the country.

Former United States President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama (both center) pose next to their portraits at their unveiling at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Barack’s portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley (far left). Michelle’s was painted by Amy Sherald (far right).
Credit: © Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

Today, World Book celebrates two African American artists who gained wider fame when they were chosen to paint official portraits of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Kehinde Wiley painted the portrait of Barack Obama. Amy Sherald painted the portrait of Michelle. Both portraits now hang in the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Portrait Gallery.

Credit: President Barack Obama (2018); oil on canvas by Kehinde Wiley; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (© Kehinde Wiley)

Kehinde Wiley is known for his large, brightly colored portraits. His style has been called urban Baroque, a reference to the Baroque art movement of the 1500’s and 1600’s. Baroque art is large in scale and filled with dramatic details. Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official presidential portrait.

Wiley served as artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City from 2001 to 2002. It was in Harlem that Wiley developed his unique approach to portraiture. He approached strangers on the street, asking them to pose for him. He photographed the subjects in their street clothes and then painted them in a classical European style. Wiley continued this process in such places as Morocco, Haiti, and India. Wiley’s signature background depicts flowers and foliage or abstract shapes. The bright, detailed backgrounds are reminiscent of the Baroque style.

Credit: First Lady Michelle Obama (2018), oil on linen by Amy Sherald; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (© Amy Sherald)

Amy Sherald is also known for her paintings of African Americans, particularly for her use of grayscale in these paintings. Grayscale images consist exclusively of shades of gray. Sherald’s use of grayscale undercuts traditional notions about skin tone. Her paintings also feature bright accent colors and graphic patterns.

Sherald began specializing in painting African Americans during her graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She believed that African American subjects had been underrepresented in the art world. In 2016, Sherald won first prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

February 26, 2020

In the waning days of February, Black History Month in the United States, today World Book looks back at the career of the African American mathematician and computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan. Vaughan was the first African American to hold a managerial position for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Vaughan’s work at NACA and NASA helped break down gender and racial barriers in the sciences. In 2016, her story was among those told in the Hollywood feature film Hidden Figures.

Dorothy Vaughan helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. Credit:NASA

Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on Sept. 20, 1910, in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1929, she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1931, Johnson was hired as a mathematics teacher at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. There, she met Howard Vaughan, a hotel bellhop. Johnson and Vaughan were married in 1932.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II (1939-1945). Millions of American men left the workforce to fight in the war, and many jobs were left vacant. In an effort to fill these vacancies, NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory began hiring women for positions that had previously been available only to men. Vaughan was hired in 1943. She was assigned to a racially segregated, all-black unit of women mathematicians called West Area Computing. In 1949, Vaughan was promoted to section head, making her NACA’s first black supervisor, and one of the agency’s few female supervisors. Under Vaughan’s supervision, the West Area Computing unit mathematically analyzed the aerodynamic properties of aircraft.

February is African American History Month in the United States. Credit: © African American History Month

When NACA transitioned to NASA in 1958, segregated facilities were outlawed. This marked the end of West Area Computing, and Vaughan was transferred to the new Analysis and Computation Division. There, she became an expert in FORTRAN (Formula Translation), an early high-level computer language. A high-level language is a computer programming language that allows the user to write programs that are independent of the computer’s hardware. As a FORTRAN programmer, Vaughan had an important role in the development of space vehicles. She also contributed to the Scout Launch Vehicle Program, which launched over 100 satellites and probes into outer space.

Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. Her work at NACA and NASA helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. She died on Nov. 10, 2008. The American author Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) chronicles Vaughan’s life and career, along with those of other members of the West Area Computing unit. The American actress Octavia Spencer depicted Vaughan in the film based on the book.

The former NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson died at age 101 on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: NASA/LRC

Another prominent African American mathematician of West Area Computing, Katherine Goble Johnson, died at age 101 on Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. Read her Behind the Headlines feature from last year’s Women’s History Month here.

February 19, 2020

In honor of Black History Month, today World Book remembers the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African Americans who served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). The name Tuskegee Airmen is used most often to refer to combat pilots, but the group also included bombardiers, navigators, maintenance crews, and support staff. Members of the Tuskegee Airmen were the first African Americans to qualify as military aviators in any branch of the armed forces. Many became decorated war heroes. In 2007, the United States awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African American pilots, crew, and support staff that served in the Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). This photograph, taken in Ramitelli, Italy, in 1945, shows airmen at a tactical meeting. Credit: Library of Congress

Last February, the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., hosted an event called “African American Pioneers in Aviation and Space.” Among the special guests at the event was the Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee, who turned 100 years old in December 2019. McGee flew 409 aerial combat missions during World War II, the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1957-1975). His military honors include the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and two Presidential Unit Citations. McGee was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.

Daniel “Chappie” James, one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, poses with his P-51 Mustang fighter plane during the Korean War. Credit: U.S. Air Force

At the time of World War II, the U.S. War Department had a policy of racial segregation. Black soldiers were trained separately from white soldiers and served in separate units. They were not allowed into elite military units. In 1941, under pressure from African American organizations and Congress, the Army Air Corps began accepting black men and admitting them into flight training. The men were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Base, near Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a college for black students in rural Alabama.

Credit: © African American History Month

The training program began in 1941. One of the first men to earn the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot was Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who later became the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. Davis commanded the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the nation’s first all-black squadron, which trained at Tuskegee. The 99th operated in northern Africa. Davis later commanded the 332nd Fighter Group, which also trained at Tuskegee. The 332nd became known for its success escorting bombers on missions over Europe.