The Oklahoma Eagle Newswire
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\u201cGreenwood holds a special place in my heart…I was born on Greenwood in a rooming house, atop Holiness’s grocery store in 1937.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Oklahoma Eagle Newswire \u201cGreenwood holds a special place in my heart…I was born on Greenwood in a rooming house, atop Holiness’s grocery store in 1937.\u201d Washington Irving Rucker is a proud Black Tulsan. \u00a0Despite being born long after the events that America is only now coming to grips with \u2013 he recently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,115,103,117,104,105,106],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-entertainment","category-featured","category-juneteenth","category-local","category-national","category-tulsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19456"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWashington Irving Rucker is a proud Black Tulsan. \u00a0Despite being born long after the events that America is only now coming to grips with \u2013 he recently turned 84 \u2013 Rucker\u2019s reflections on growing up in segregated Tulsa and around Deep Greenwood speak to the lasting trauma experienced by the Black community following the race riot of 1921, and the resilience embodied in Deep Greenwood\u2019s rebirth and in the fortunes of a native son.
\nA born storyteller, Rucker\u2019s got a million of them. They often revolve around his early life and the obstacles he overcame to make it out of Tulsa and chart a career that took him around the world as a Jazz musician.
\nRucker\u2019s stories can be moving, like the ones about him climbing the \u201cmawberry\u201d tree as a child with friends. Some are heartbreaking, like when he is robbed of the \u201cBest Boy\u201d honor in grade school, despite having the highest GPA in his class (wrong color).\u00a0 Others are inspiring, like when teacher, C.D. Tate, knowing that Rucker had no father in his life, volunteers to take him to a father-son banquet.\u00a0 And a few stories are a little of both, like when he recounts being initially rejected from the Booker T. Washington High School band, but eventually granted a spot after a classmate declares to the instructor \u201cMr. Fields, Sain Sprangs can play, let him join the band!\u201d\u00a0 And so he did.
\nI now know that some of the stories I\u2019ve heard also describe his connection to the event that America is now commemorating: the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.\u00a0 Though told as anecdotes, his stories paint a picture of a community trauma that, while muted, was never completely forgotten.
\nWhen I asked Rucker what he knows about \u201cBlack Wall Street,\u201d the first thing he did was correct me on my language. \u201cThe term,\u00a0Black Wall Street\u00a0is foreign to my ears. I grew up, learned to play music, and had a career as a musician on\u00a0Deep Greenwood. It\u2019s always<\/u> been Deep Greenwood.\u201d
\nOkay then. With that bit settled and me properly schooled, we moved on to talk about the race riot in 1921: what, if anything, he remembered being told about it; and how \u2013 amazingly \u2013 he would not learn the full extent of the massacre until nearly half-a-century afterward.
\n\u201cThe history of Black folks was taught in parts...<\/strong>no\u00a0mention of a riot was ever spoken,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was always a \u2018disturbance,\u2019 not a race riot. We didn\u2019t talk about it. We didn\u2019t learn about it in school.\u201d
\nRucker\u2019s recollections do suggest, however, that not everything was forgotten.
\n\u201cVernon Baptist was a block away from Greenwood and Archer and had evidence and remnants of fire as did the other church on Elgin and Eastern. The basements were burned and left to remind folks of the \u2018disturbance\u2019 and to set the tone for Blacks north of Archer. As a kid, we went to Bible study from school to these churches,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cAnd still, Blacks remained mum. It was as though the riot never happened.\u201d
\nIn retrospect, the evidence of fire damage became a cautionary tale to the youngsters sitting for Bible lessons, know your place and stay in it, was being communicated loud and clear.
\nSome memories painted a vivid picture of the cruelty inflicted during the riots. \u00a0Rucker recalls that Tulsa\u2019s lone Black detective, John Smitherman, had one ear missing. \u00a0According to him, \u201cThey say the white folks cut off his left ear and made him eat it during the \u2018disturbance.\u2019\u201d
\nAs Rucker grew old enough to venture out on his own, nearly all evidence of the race riot was gone. \u201cBy the time I came around in the mid-forties, Deep Greenwood had risen, been rebuilt, and was again the center of black businesses, entertainment, and commerce.\u00a0 There was\u00a0absolutely no evidence\u00a0of the race riot that had taken place; save for mentions in passing of \u2018minor disturbances.\u2019\u201d
\nWith Deep Greenwood well established in its second life, Rucker would leave Tulsa in 1955 to join the Navy and so begin his 60-year career as a musician. The words of a mentor would prove prophetic: \u201cThis pair of sticks will take you all over the world.\u201d\u00a0 And so they did.\u00a0 He would eventually land in Los Angeles where \u2013 sometime in the 1970s \u2013 he would learn about the true horror of the massacre in Deep Greenwood. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I was a grown man living in California that I first learned about some race riot in Tulsa. I had never heard about it in that way.\u201d
\nFollowing the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, when some news outlets declared it to be America\u2019s first act of domestic terrorism, Rucker would angrily object to the characterization, which he came from ignorance or an attempt to diminish the experience of Black Tulsans in 1921.\u00a0 He told his daughter how airplanes were used to bomb Black Americans in 1921; and how local veterans and law enforcement were a part of the mob.
\nAnd Rucker would later recount how a remnant of those munitions was found in 1945 by a childhood friend, James Bolton, who had been looking for scrap metal for the war effort.\u00a0 Black children were known to walk up Brickyard Hill on their way to school, so the idea that an unexploded bomb would be left there was, he said, \u201cA cruel reminder of the catastrophic event that in a way shaped the mentality of Blacks who lived north of Archer.\u201d\u00a0 He laments the ongoing \u2013 and not too subtle \u2013 segregation that is still evident, with Blacks living largely on the North side of Archer and Whites living on the South Side.
\nThis week, Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the attack testified to Congress.\u00a0 She spoke about the far-reaching impact on Black Tulsans who saw family fortunes wiped out and journeys toward self-sufficiency and determination derailed. \u00a0\u201cI have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not, and other survivors do not. And our descendants do not,\u201d she said. Fletcher is among the Black Tulsans and others calling for compensation for their losses.
\nRucker has mixed feelings about the commemorations underway; especially in today\u2019s racially charged climate. \u00a0\u201cI hold on to my Greenwood roots and my love for Deep Greenwood with all my heart to this day,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cThat there would be a celebration of this time in our history, though, is tantamount to the trauma\u00a0and pain it must have been in 1921.\u201d
\nAcknowledging the massacre in Deep Greenwood is an important first step, he concedes, but he is firm that it can\u2019t be the last. \u201cI do hope that voices are raised, not silenced. I do hope we stand up for all that is due to us as citizens of America.\u00a0I want to hear the drums of freedom and hope and equality before my time is up.\u201d
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