Fork Full Of Noodles with Krish Mohan #245-46 – Tulsa Race Massacre & The MOVE Bombing: Blemishes On American History!

Human rights. It’s one of the justifications that America uses to launch wars & xenophobicly attack other cultures & races. It’s why we hate the likes of China, Russia, Terror groups with vaguely Middle Eastern names, people that like Christmas, people that dislike Christmas and condemn socialism. The question is does America have the moral high ground to be judge, jury & executioner when it comes to human rights violations? The answer is no! The End, goodnight folks. 

Alright before people start freaking out & telling me “well if you don’t like it here go back to your own country!”, thank you for proving my point about xenophobia! But, I do have proof that America has no legs to stand on when I comes to human rights violations. Before we do, can I just address that ludicrous statement real quick? 

Anytime someone tells me to “go back to my own country” I usually say “you first Pilgrim!” After they shake off the confusion of hearing a brown man quote John Wayne, America’s manliest man that manned a manhood, I remind them that Americans are descendants of immigrants who brutally stole land from the Indigenous. This country technically belongs to the indigenous people who lived & worked with the land rather than on it using slave labor. 

In fact that’s where this particular tale of America’s long history of human rights violations begins. The Tulsa Race Massacre is connected to the passage of the Dawes Act, which gave the American government the right to divide native lands. Good, because I was worried that we’d never make manifest destiny into a law! But this allowed the newly freed black people to get their 40 acres of land.

Between 1865 & 1920, Oklahoma had the largest population of black people in the country. And Oklahoma wouldn’t be a state without Black people. They were the railroad workers, cowboys & sharecroppers that built the foundations of the state. Actually come to think of it, most states wouldn’t be a state without black people!

Several black entrepreneurs helped the community of Greenwood, aka Black Wall Street, in North Tulsa flourish. O.W. Gurley built a boarding house for black Americans. Gurley would often loan money to black Americans who would use it to start a business in the Greenwood district. He would help these businesses grow and expand so people could enjoy what the businesses had to offer. I mean what a mook right?! You don’t loan money to people to help their business grow. You loan money so people are indebted to you and you can exploit them for the sake of Capitalism. Clearly, Gurley didn’t get it. 

Despite that thought, Greenwood became one of the most successful areas in all of Tulsa. JB Stanford, a former slave turned into a lawyer & activist believed that black people need to pool their resources together and uplift their communities. And this was a dangerous thought because it sounds like a Commie-Pinko-Russia-Putin traitor talk. In Capitalism the only pool you need to worry about is the in-ground one built by exploited working class laborers. 

But the success of Greenwood came exactly because of that. One dollar would circulate through the community of Greenwood anywhere from 19-100 times before it was spent on a white owned business outside Greenwood. For the kids to understand that would be like keeping your venmos in the community for a fortnight, #YOLO. Greenwood had its own school system with a better education system than white schools. There was a business college, banks, 2 theaters, salons, nightclubs, hotels and even a functioning public transportation system. 

There are towns in America right now that don’t have a decent bus system. And in the towns that do, people don’t use public transportation because “the bus smells weird”! Well maybe if we funded public transportation more, busses, trains & trams could have better ventilation and a bathroom! We have such a backwards way of dealing with transportation. I think cars should be used for long distance travels and if you’re moving within a city, public transportation should be readily available and better funded…and they don’t smell that bad.  

Greenwood even had its own newspaper called the Tulsa Star! Founded by AJ Smitherman it educated the citizens of Greenwood about their rights and would cover pieces of legislation that are either beneficial or harmful to black Tulsans. They’d cover stories that involved Oklahoma’s first piece of legislation which involved instating segregation in the state. Ah, yes, signing discrimination into law like a democracy! This legislation segregated Tulsa into a Black North & a White South, because you don’t want to mess with classic racism. Much like new Coke, new racism is gonna be weird and will make you very gassy!

Again, what a mook! Newspapers are supposed to tell you which billionaire to fawn over, how Russia is bad and where the hottest sales are happening! The Tulsa Star didn’t have any commercials and didn’t try to justify wars! It’s like they don’t even get what Corporate journalism is supposed to be about!  Where is the propaganda?! You’re just educating the pleabs you fool! 

The Tulsa Star advocated for an armed black populace and how taught folks how to protect themselves. It’s like they understand the responsibility of owning a fire arm and what “well-regulated” means! And I bet the Tulsa Star understood comma placement unlike the Second Amendment who used commas like a first grader who just discovered what punctuations were!

One might think that the paper was being alarmist, but this was the early 1900s when the Ku Klux Klan was still powerful and very violent. Partly because the Republican Party had shifted its views on the KKK. The party went from demonizing the Klan and hunting them out of communities to being friendly with them after McKinley turned GOP into the party of big businesses and bosses! 

Greenwood’s success had caught the ire of the white communities. Most of these white folks were low to middle class working in the booming oil industry at that time. The economic solidarity of Greenwood was a threat to White Bosses who were using racism as way to keep their wealth intact. This is Classic Capitalism, unlike New Capitalism which is exactly like Classic Capitalism but in a new suit and slightly more gassy.

It’s the classic method of exploitation to convince white workers that the reason they’re poor isn’t the greed of the Bosses but rather the black men & women who are hoard their rightful wealth. It’s the dangerous mix of racism, manifest destiny & white supremacy that’s still used to this day! This is the origins of the “immigrants stole my jobs” myth! So white Tulsans were looking any excuse to attack the thriving black community of Greenwood. 

And they found their excuse in Dick Rowland in 1921. A good amount of Greenwood residents had to work in the greater Tulsa area and were in the oil business. But there were some who were inspired by entrepreneurial spirit of Greenwood and started their own smaller enterprises. Dick Rowland was a 19 year shoe shiner in Tulsa, and made a pretty decent wage as one. 

Because of segregation there was only one black bathroom in the city. It was in Dexter building. When Dick Rowland entered the building and got on the elevator with the operator, a white woman named Sarah Page, residents claim they heard Sarah scream and Dick Rowland run away. Rowland is arrested for potential sexual assault and kept in prison. 

To this day, nobody knows what happened in that elevator. The most likely explanation is that Rowland tripped and fell into Sarah Page, causing her to scream in shock. But the Tulsa Tribune decided to run a different story. Now these guys get what journalism is about! You just print whatever. Proof comes later…or it won’t, who cares! We moved that paper baby! It’s all about dem subs!

Sidebar: Make sure you like, share and subscribe y’all! 

Also this makes the Tulsa Tribune America’s first tabloid! The next story they ran was about Woodrow Wilson’s underwear and whether Big Foot is real or not! Spoiler alert: He is not…probably.  

As a mob of white Tulsans surrounded the Sheriff’s department, Sheriff William McCollough and his men barricade the Sheriff’s office and are assisted by 25-75 armed black men from Greenwood. Most of the black men were World War 1 veterans. After a white Tulsan tried to take a Black Tulsan’s gun away, a shot is fired, which erupts the Race Riot! Overwhelmed by the number of white folks, the black folks retreated to Greenwood to regroup. 

The Lynch mob of angry white folks, who were now deputized by city officials and the Tulsa Police charged into Greenwood and proceeded to destroy the town and kill anyone who didn’t look like them. This was like the purge if it was racist. And look the purge is bad enough, so we don’t have to add racism to it, but boy did they! The Lynch Mob was arresting black people and imprisoning them in ballpark. This makes mass incarceration America’s favorite pass time.

1,256 houses were burned, 215 houses were looted and the business district faced irreparable damage. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system were destroyed. Perhaps the reason the busses smell bad is because its covered with the stench of racism! This is why we can’t have nice things. Because instead of asking if they can be a part of something awesome, jealous, propagandized white folks will tear it apart. 

There were reports of airplanes flying over the town dropping kerosene to spread the fire. And firefighters say they were threatened by the mob if they tried to put the fires out. 

The Oklahoma National Guard was called in to stop the riot after 12 hours! Upwards of 6000 Black citizens were arrested by the National Guard. The White citizens were disarmed and sent home, which some people see as a bigger injustice than wrongfully arresting innocent people of color. The Guard ended up putting the black citizens in an internment camp and would only release anyone if a white employer could vouch for them. These released black folks were marked with green tags. The Nazis heard about this and said “Well this is an interesting idea!” 

9000 Black Tulsans were homeless after this event. No one is actually certain about how many people were killed in this massacre committed by an enraged white Lynch mob. But there were many bodies buried in a mass grave or thrown down a coal mine. This coal mine eventually became a Sears parking lot, which explains the fate of Sears!

After this event, the Tulsa Tribune ran the story in the front page and a lot of other white Tulsans were selling postcards of the destruction, because Capitalism gives zero shits about anything except profits. The New York Times and Tulsa World also ran stories but public opinion of this event was not as celebratory as one would expect. Even in 1921, Lynch mobs and racial violence were unpopular. 

In fact political & business leaders realized what a PR nightmare it was to celebrate a massacre like this. Just to be clear, they were cool with the massacre but just not celebrating it publicly! You do it quietly and privately like God intended! So instead of making a statement to get rid of the Klan or reverse segregation, they hid the story.  The Tulsa Tribune deleted the story from their front page. The Tulsa World erased all record of it and even the proud white Lynch mobbers fell silent. When it doubt, sweep racial massacres under the every expensive rug made out of an endangered species. 

I don’t really care who I offend with this statement, but if you’re a Capitalist, you’re morally bankrupt. 

For decades nobody from future generations knew about what happened to Greenwood. No history books wrote about it and schools never taught it. Gee I wonder why? You know in Germany they don’t teach the history of Nazism. In Japan they don’t teach the Rape of Nanking. Leaving a gaping hole for history to repeat itself, despite your quiet shame. The only reason this story broke was because the mass graves were discovered in 1998. 

Eventually a bill is proposed in Oklahoma to teach the Race Massacre in schools. But Oklahoma legislators claimed the bill to be bogus because the massacre was already being taught in schools. I’m sure one of them even said “We teach kids that slavery is bad, what more do you people want!?” Gaslighting the American populous is America’s greatest pass time. As of 2004 the race massacre is being taught in schools in Oklahoma. 

The state also decided in a $33 million restitution, which is nice, but not nearly enough. Greenwood could’ve been a model for how to run this country but because a bunch of rich white people and their exploitative racism, we’ll never know how really transformative Greenwood could’ve been! I would wager to bet that we’d have far less poverty, crime, suffering and racial hatred if Greenwood would’ve thrived. 

The people that committed the Tulsa Race Massacre would be same people that say ‘well black people should comply with the police’ at every murder of an innocent black person. But these white racists are the ones who blatantly didn’t comply with the police and wound up genociding a prosperous black community. That’s because their fear and hatred is far more important than authority. A society ruled by ignorance, greed & exploitation is doomed to fail.  No matter how many unmarked graves you bury the truth in, it’ll resurface and show us how we squandered a good thing. 

Ok, so I know what some people might be thinking: “Krish that Tulsa thing happened like a hundred years ago! Things have changed. We got a Black President, followed by two of the whitest men you could ever imagine. Everything is different now!” Well don’t forget one of those white dudes is responsible for setting up the institutionalized racism in this country and the second benefited from it! 

We still see this kind of violence in our society today. And stories like this are often hidden from the public. We can see that in the way police brutality videos are hidden from the public. I’ll use a conservative’s favorite line when it comes to privacy: “If you don’t have anything to hide why don’t you just let the public poke around in those body cam footages?!”

Another one of America’s hidden human rights violations was in 1985 when the Philadelphia police department blew up a neighborhood in West Philly. Some of you might know West Philadelphia as the homeland of Will Smith before he gained his royal status. To a lot of people it’s the proof of one of the worst domestic atrocities America has committed. 

This story starts in 1972 when a man named John Africa started the MOVE organization. The name is not an acronym for anything. Their philosophy was “Everything that’s alive moves, if it didn’t it’d be dead”. MOVE were primarily naturists. The whole family took the name Africa! They believed in Nature’s Law. They stated “true law is self-explanatory & self enforcing”. Contracts with them were like a page or so, and very easy to read and comprehend. They barely used words like ‘thee’ ‘thou’ or ‘client’. They don’t have any fine print, which is only used by assholes who are definitely trying to take your first born child.  

Their point of view of right & wrong was a bit more nuanced. They believed that just because something is a law that mean it’s right. As they point out on their website, slavery was legal and so was killing Native Americans. Until recently it was legal for the police to put their knee on your neck as way to “subdue” you. We the people realized that was fucked up pretty damn quick! We didn’t need to have a complexly worded document to determine that. The MOVE organization would render lawyers obsolete and the film “Liar Liar” would become an art piece instead of some people’s first R-rated lawyer movie they saw!

They were huge environmentalists and believed all life on this planet is equally important. So they were huge advocates for animal rights! And they were such big animal rights activists that they had several different types of animals at their house. They also buckets of raw meat for them, which the neighbors would often complain about. 

They were also anti-technology. Part of their philosophy was go back to the hunter gatherer days, but another part of their philosophy was anti-corporation and anti-capitalist. They believed that technology and science in the hands of capitalism and greed would end up destroying the planet. So to them the best thing to do is get rid of all technology and move to simpler form of life. 

MOVE believed in a minimalistic community living and community parenting. Women in MOVE would give unassisted births and believed in  breastfeeding. They also had the entire family raise the kids. MOVE really took the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” very seriously! Where as some people in America believe parenting is putting on Youtube and letting that parent the child. And as we all know by now, Youtube is a sinister bitch that will show your child hardcore porn involving superhero butts. 

MOVE also believed they should be armed not just for hunting purposes but also self defense. In fact they held political rallies in favor of the second amendment, which often offended their neighbors, who’d call the cops on them. I have watched large white men enter a Starbucks like it was a predator movie & people just go “oh that’s just cooky Carl, with his arsenal!”  But black folks exercising their rights to the second amendment yields an army to stop them. This is why racism is objectively dumb. Racist believe black people to be an inferior race but fear them for using the same weapons they do for self defense. Give them the gold medal for Mental Gymnastics in the next olympics. 

Most of the altercations with the police would often turn violent – go figure. The cops would use water cannons and force their way into their homes. During these bouts of violence the MOVE women have reported miscarriages due to the attacks from the police. In fact Life Africa, Janie Africa’s child, was killed in ones of these incidents. The police denied the existence of the child all together. Give those cops the Grand Dragon Racist Achievement Award! Big round of applause for being a vicious racist & a gaslighter of the highest order. If you’re wondering if the Jedi Mind Trick can be used for evil, the Philadelphia Police got you covered! They’re basically all Sith Lords who traded their lightsabers for a gun and a badge. 

In 1977 the city obtained a warrant to evict the MOVE organization. They ended up staying in that home for an extra year. And they made a deal with the city to turn over their guns if members of their organization were let out of prison. The city kept up their end of the bargain, but MOVE didn’t. 

In 1978, MOVE was forcefully taken out of their homes in a shootout with Philadelphia police. This ended when an officer was shot and killed. Everyone thought MOVE did it, but medical evidence shows that the officer was shot from the back when the members of MOVE were in front of him. Much like the Kennedy assassination, the official report in response to the public’s questions are: Shut the fuck up!

By 1985, they were in a second house that they reconstructed. They added additional layers of concrete and other tactics to make the house more bulletproof. These precautions were taken because of the amount of abuse they took from the cops. They were still doing their loud anti-capitalist rallies. The neighbors also complained they were playing profane music. There’s a Karen somewhere that just clutched her pearls at the mere thought of this! 

At this point the cops had obtained a warrant for the MOVE organization because of parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms & making terroristic threats. Most these threats were likely telling the people the truth about how toxic the Capitalist system actually is. 

500 police officers descended on the house to serve the warrant. I’m sure someone thought, maybe they could send one squad car to the house but the Commissioner decided “eh, it’s a Tuesday lets the get whole force out there! Making a fun racist bonding experience! We can all go for ice cream later! EVERYONE WILL HAVE VANILLA! NO CHOCOLATE!”

The cops came in on the loudspeaker yelling “This is America!” And they were right. It was America. A large group overly armed, white thugs ready to murder a group of environmentalists who biggest crime was a noise violation and having more meats than Arby’s. 

The Philadelphia police’s onslaught on the Africa family started with pumping water through a water cannon at their house. Then they pumped 10,000 rounds into the house. This is where their bulletproofing came in handy. The additional concrete barriers protected the people inside house. This went on for an hour and half. Sure if you’re watching Lord Of Rings, they haven’t even started their journey yet, but 90 minutes of bullets is absurd no matter how you shake it!

After a few hours Mayor Wison Goode, who hated the MOVE organization, approved Commissioner Gregor Sambor to use an explosive on the house. Using a helicopter they dropped 2 C4 bombs on the house. One of them connected with a gas generator on the roof setting fire to the whole house! As the fire raged on the Police Commissioner told the Fire Chief to let the fire burn and to put out later. Apparently Commissioner Sambor thought all Firemen were also pyrokinetics! And of course, the fire burned out of control. 

As members of MOVE would try to come out of the house, the cops would shoot at them forcing them back into the burning house. Its like that game you would play as a kid: would you rather die in a house fire or being shot to death by the racist police? And my question is always, why the fuck are we playing this game? Why are these the only options available!? 

By the end of this 11 people were dead, including John Africa and 5 of them were children. 60 houses were completely destroyed and 250 people were left homeless. The only survivors from the Africa family were Ramona & 13 year old, Birdie. Ramona was arrested and incarcerated for 7 years for rioting & conspiracy, after the cops bombed her house. This is like punishing a serial killer’s victim’s family for not being “careful” enough! 

“Well Mrs. Rodney if you were a better parent your son wouldn’t been eaten! Now we’re going to let Mr. Dahmer go back to his house and live his days as upstanding citizen who’s taken population control under his supervision!”

A commission that investigated the incident found the event unconscionable and determined that the neighborhood wouldn’t have been bombed if it were a white neighborhood. But no penalties were awarded to any of the officials involved in the bombing. Because in America racism isn’t a crime, just a way of life. Mayor Goode did make a public apology because it was bad PR if he didn’t. 

And I’d love to say that’s where the story ends, but nope! This is the post credit scene of the horrific MOVE bombing. 

The residents of the neighborhood were promised rebuilt homes. The city chose a cookie cutter contractor to rebuild the houses on the cheap, which yielded in the homes having some problems. And one of the mayor’s straight up said he doesn’t care about that neighborhood. Most the residents left and the ones that remain are holding out, trying to prevent gentrification. 

This is what they do to primarily low-income, black neighborhoods around the country. They create conditions that make the area unlivable and then force the people out to gentrify the space. People need homes not another shop that sells pottery at an unaffordable price in a mini-mall! 

And I’d like to tell you that’s the worst thing about this post credit scene, but it is not! After the bombing, it was really hard to figure out which bodies belonged to who since most of them were badly mangled. But 2 of the children, Tree & Delisha Africa’s remains were taken from the crime scene, mishandled during transport & given to Penn State & Princeton for academic purposes. The parents, who were in prison at the time of the bombing, were not notified and their permission was not given. 

2 prestigious school, where you have to be very rich or open to a massive amount of debt to attend, used 2 kids bodies from a war zone for studies. As they learn the anatomy of the human body they didn’t learn the anatomy of their racist institutes that thought it was fine to use 2 black children’s bodies for science without the consent of their family. It shows you how deep racism has permeated into our society that even academia is colored with it. Penn State made a public apology but no apologies were given to the mothers. Princeton wanted to know what their annual income was before they made an apology, because the poors don’t count. 

Look you don’t have to agree or disagree with MOVE to see what the cops did as a crime against humanity. The worst thing they did was be loud and have meats in their backyard. If that’s awful to you, then don’t visit a college dorm. Raw meat smells like roses compared to the smell of sweat, spunk and missing ramen! 

And with this information not addressed or talked about there’s a likelihood it’ll repeat. It also shows you why some of these newer Civil Rights & Activist movements are decentralized yet very organized. Because if they were centrally and publicly organized the cops, the intelligence agencies and politicians will blow them up like they’re the final act of a Rambo movie! The real question is knowing all this how can we the people actually trust the justice system in America?  

America’s history is full of these sort of atrocities. From the treatment of the Black Panthers, the non-stop McCarthyism, the treatment of the indigenous, Julian Assange and so much more, it’s hard say that this is a country of good guys! So for them to come out and chastise another country because they don’t live up to the American standard is a double standard! And when you call these atrocities out, people keep telling you that “if you hate it here then go back to where you came from!” 

There is no perfect country. And that’s not even the point. Look, I call out injustice and inequality everywhere. Those things aren’t exclusive to America; it’s a humanity problem. We have to be less cruel to each other. We have to learn how to detect manipulation when we see it. 

The reality is that I live here in America. Which means this is the country I physically see the citizens in pain. This is where I know I can try to make a more just & equal world for everyone. This is why sharing these stories is important. And these stories are why America can’t claim they are bastions of Human Rights. 

Source:

https://www.history.com/news/black-wall-street-tulsa-race-massacre

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre

https://www.history.com/news/tulsa-race-massacre-cover-up

https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/burned-out-of-homes-and-history-the-tulsa-massacre/

What happened to Black Wall Street on June 1, 1921?

https://www.thoughtco.com/move-philadelphia-bombing-4175986

https://allthatsinteresting.com/1985-move-bombing#16

About MOVE

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/opinions-the-mishandling-of-move-children-e2-80-99s-remains-is-an-expression-of-anti-black-violence/ar-BB1gMDVY

https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Philly-health-official-forced-to-resign-over-MOVE-16175312.php