The Damage Done
The portrait of Mother Randle graces the NY Times Magazine cover from May 30, ’21. Her face is an amazing pattern of deep creases, yet her eyes are clear and engaging. It’s not the easiest thing to be so frankly photographed, and her expression belies any concern. At 106 years-old, her gaze is as knowing and unyielding as a far younger person’s expression. The portrait photographer, Rahim Fortune, deserves credit for his work; it’s a striking photograph. If he gives me permission, I’ll add it to the blog, but I was late in asking.
Mother Randle (Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle) was 6 years-old when the 1921 Tulsa race massacre occurred, a white mob murdering some 300 and destroying the prosperous Black community of Greenwood. The story in the NY Times Magazine, The Damage Done, by Caleb Gayle is largely about the events of the riot. No mention is made of Mother Randle or the handful of the other survivors, possibly given their young ages, though it’s not explained.
The remains of the Greenwood district in June 1921—photo credit via The Library of Congress
At first blush, hearing about an event that ‘twas in another lifetime as Bob Dylan sang,[1] there has been the usual inclination to dismiss the retelling as merely bringing up an old grievance. In the aftermath from last year’s multiple protests and marches for equality and justice—in the shadow of George Floyd’s murder— without doubt it is disturbing to be reminded of the story.
As young boys, I took my sons to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. Ryan was five, Sean ten, and while I kept Ryan away from the most graphic parts, we walked through the room piled with the shoes of the Jewish victims and I told him why they were there.
It was not an easy experience for any of us, though it was also around the time of several Holocaust deniers speaking out, and it was important they understood the truth. Likewise, I told them they were descendants of slaveholders—something neither I nor their mother ever hid from them. Their mother came from South Carolina and I came from Pennsylvania; it just luck of the draw who came before us.
That such a totally segregated Tulsa district called Greenwood existed at all stands for the racism that stains Tulsa—as it stains the entire country.
[1] Shelter From the Storm by Bob Dylan
“Senate Bill 1, the first law passed by the new State of Oklahoma in 1907, was a Jim Crow act that segregated Black Oklahomans from everybody else. It prohibited Black and white (sic) passengers from occupying the same railroad cars—and then was extended to ban the sharing of public and private spaces throughout the entire state. The deep division between Black and white (sic) Tulsa, the very reason for the high concentration of Black people in Greenwood, was in part a response to these governmental measures. But it took extralegal violence to crush the rise of enterprising Black Tulsans.”
from The Damage Done by Caleb Gayle
This was 1907—the Civil War had ended in 1865, though it still wasn’t over.
Back in 1921, did those Blacks in Tulsa just get uppity? Thought they’d make good lives for themselves, get educated, build businesses and prosper? Oklahoman racists had been raised to know how to take care of that. It was as if Blacks were/still are seen as either slothful and ignorant or too ambitious to be allowed to exist.
Hell is here on earth, and it remains alive in the hearts of too many of our country’s men and women.
What struck me about Mother Randle’s portrait—beyond the beautiful intelligence in her eyes—is how much she looks to be Native American, those proud cheekbones, straight black hair. Could be she is—the Cherokee were driven out of Georgia to Oklahoma. Another culture we have to answer for in this country.
This past May, Governor Stitt of Oklahoma signed H.B. 1775, legislature that,
“prohibits the teaching of any material that indicates that racism is intrinsically intertwined with American history and affects the country today.”
from The Damage Done by Caleb Gayle
The quotes from Governor Stitt, and the bill’s supporters don’t sound extremist, so I went on a Google search to read the actual bill’s full language, and curiously couldn’t find it even on the state legislature’s website.
It would seem others have, and their reaction leads me to think: one can argue refusing to recognize the massacre occurred—as happened at the time, expunging it from history—closely models modern Polish claims they never aided the extermination of the Jews, or Turkey’s claim of innocence for the Armenian massacre.
Governor Stitt insists hiding this history is not the intent of the bill, but why then the sensitivity, the urgent need for this legislation other than to assuage his supporters’ guilt? And is their discomfort better than what’s in the past?
The best I can make of it comes from a guest opinion piece in the Oklahoman, We cannot be afraid to learn from the lessons of our past by Emily Busey
“The passage of HB1775 on the surface looks to be a bill of inclusivity and acceptance; but lift back the veil and what we are left with is the purposeful attack and attempt to dismantle history education as we know it. Now that the bill has been signed into law, it will strip away the ability for schools and universities to conduct diversity training on issues such as race, gender, religious tolerance and the like. It will limit what teachers are able to discuss with their students, perhaps going so far as to omit critical aspects of our nation’s past that are crucial to understanding our present. [highlighting added]
“One of my favorite passages from Letter from a Birmingham Jail, written by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 in part reads:
‘I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action' ... Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.’
“This passage is often omitted from excerpts read in history classrooms, but I leave it in—and I ask my students why. Why is this often left out? The answer is obvious—it makes us uncomfortable. King calls out the white moderate—you and I—for our complacency in a system that is inherently unjust, and that displeases us. We don’t like to be called out when we are wrong.
“I think it is important to make clear that to read this passage in a history classroom in 2021 does not mean white children sitting in that classroom are racist. No, the question instead is—how can we as a society confront our own systems of injustice and work together to make them better?”
from We cannot be afraid to learn from the lessons of our past by Emily Busey
Is this type of rearguard legislation too different from the Germans after World War II claiming they were innocents for averting their attention from the screams of their Furher and the Holocaust in their midst? Or the Polish for the pogroms? Or the Spanish for expelling the Sephardic Jews from Cordoba and the rest of Spain? Or the late Ottoman Turks against the Armenians, and the Greeks against the Turks?
Or the White farmers in Georgia who drove out the Cherokee?
It’s often discussed how lions, particularly the male, will kill the young of another lion pride so that his own genes thrive. Which, for a species as threatened as the big cats, seems self-destructive. The same genetic excuse cannot be said of humans; these days our extinction—along with the world’s—is more threatened by our over-population. Yet we continue with same murderous instincts? If it isn’t imperative to protect each other to preserve the species, do we at least want to prove ourselves evolved from this kind of brutality?
My mother taught me to respect Mrs. Wilson who cleaned our house. I can only remember her by my mother’s—and my grandmother’s—instructions.
At age 106, Mother Randle lives worlds beyond race, beyond culture as we consider it. She was already in her mid-thirties when I was born, so she had lived nearly four decades. My own father only made it to 47. D says she’s not sure living to 100 appeals to her; her mother reached 92, though sadly afflicted. We’ve all heard the stories, Alzheimer’s, cancer, crippling disabilities—we’ve witnessed them in our own families and close friends. And it teaches you.
I want to believe Mother Randle is the exception, if for no other reason than to hope one of us has become exceptional.
I believe one must live in the present, with forgiveness for past mistakes and the will to improvement, though I’m fascinated by what a person as old as Mother Randle must have seen in her life.
Some argue that to speak ill of America’s history is to dishonor it. If it were the ‘most perfect union’ its founders aspired to see,
If as a teacher in Oklahoma says, we have a way to go, I agree. Martin Luther King argued the way to honor the founders’ vision is to work at expanding the meaning—all men are created equal. We will always be a work in progress—taking regressions as they come. If this experiment in self-government survives.
I wonder if ‘Mother’—used as an honorific in Black churches, comes from Africa. It’s such a sign of respect for an elder. An old fashioned tradition that’s seemingly been lost in our modern country. Except, it hasn’t been lost because our African American brothers and sisters have carried it with them—even into these days.
Mother Randle, ma’am, I wish you all the best.
Postscript: A previous NY Times illustrated article, What the Tulsa Race Massacre Destroyed provides more context. It’s written by committee: Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Anjali Singhvi, Audra D.S. Burch, Troy Griggs, Mika Gröndahl, Lingdong Huang, Tim Wallace, Jeremy White and Josh Williams
Frontier Justice
The NY Times Book Review from May 30, ’21 includes a piece by Randall Kennedy. Kennedy’s article, Was the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms Designed to Protect Slavery? reviews a book by Caro Anderson, The Second, Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.
Anderson argues the primary purpose of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms was the demand to enforce the slaveholders’ regime. There’s a resonance to the argument if one’s read much history of slavery in this country. Though back then, fresh memories of the King’s redcoat attempts at disarming the militias hadn’t faded, so slavery was by no means the only reason.
Efforts at ensuring slaves remained disarmed were widespread—something suggested that the colonists learned from when the Indian tribes had gained weapons in multiple trades.
“In early Quebec, Jamestown and Plymouth, colonists held an advantage in firearms only for a handful of years before Native people began building their own arsenals. The founders of later colonies, such as Pennsylvania or Georgia, arrived to find indigenous people already furnished with the best gun technology Europe could produce and keen to acquire more. Except under the rarest circumstances, no one state authority had the ability to choke Indians off from guns, powder and shot. There were just too many rival imperial powers and colonies in North America, their governments were weak, and the trade ran through a labyrinth of unofficial channels such as itinerant fur traders, Native middlemen and smugglers. Indians often wielded better weapons than Euro-Americans, including their armed forces. Europeans and, later, white Americans, controlled the manufacturing of firearms technology, but their leaders exercised little authority over its distribution in Indian country.”
from an essay, Guns, empires and Indians by David J Silverman on Aeon
By the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the former southern colonists understood the need to keep weapons out of the hands of their slaves. Plantation owners clearly understood the consequences of their repression. They, of all people, understood chaining another human to a stake in the ground might cause a desire for payback.
“These discriminations and the attitudes behind them, Anderson charges, have generated a baleful catalog of affronts that predate the establishment of the United States and that grow apace. She shows that the specter of armed Blacks was so alarming that white (sic) authorities revisited their fears obsessively, enacting statute after statute with alterations that invariably broadened prohibitions and intensified punishment [of Blacks bearing arms].
“Racism, however, for all its importance, is not the only major influence in the country’s affairs. Akhil Reed Amar’s careful explanation of the debate over the Second Amendment in The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998) points to considerations that Anderson notably slights, particularly ‘deep anxiety about a potentially abusive federal military.’ Anderson does not ignore altogether such concerns. She alludes to ‘the anti-Federalists’ heightened fear of a strong central government’ as a factor in their calculations. But in her telling, dread of Blacks was the essential, overriding cause of the Second Amendment, an entitlement ‘rooted in fear of Black people, to deny them their rights, to keep them from tasting liberty.’ Such claims significantly overstate the role of race in the amendment’s development.”
from Was the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms Designed to Protect Slavery? By Randall Kennedy
The direct lineage of White oppression against Blacks at the barrel of a gun, the bitter outcome comes with the daily news reports of Black on Black assassinations, as if they’ve turned on themselves in response to what had been overtly inflicted on them, now more covertly perhaps, though not always even that.
Frontier justice was practiced on Blacks as much as the Native Americans the European immigrants wanted out of the way. We, the descendants of Europeans, still have a way to go. As do we all.