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The “Red Record of Lynching Map,” 1889-1921 (NARA ID 149268727), Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Image from Tulsa Red Cross Photo Album of the Tulsa Massacre and Aftermath, NARA ID 157688056 

What’s the Deal about Tulsa?

Today's post is by Miriam Kleiman, National Archives Program Director for Public Affairs.

Even long after the Civil War, thousands of African Americans were hanged, burned and shot to death, beaten, and tortured by white mobs who celebrated these atrocities and were rarely prosecuted for their crimes. In 1918, Rep. Leonidas Dyer of Missouri submitted a bill (HR 13) to establish lynching as a federal crime. Dyer said that lynching—and the refusal by localities and states to prosecute the perpetrators—violated victims’ 14th Amendment rights.  

Following Congressional action on child labor and the passage of Prohibition, Dyer appealed to his colleagues and questioned their priorities:  

If Congress has felt its duty to do these things, why should it not also assume jurisdiction and enact laws to protect the lives of citizens of the United States against lynch law and mob violence? Are the rights of property, or what a citizen shall drink, or the ages and conditions under which children shall work, any more important to the Nation than life itself? (Cong. Rec, House, 65th Cong., 2nd sess. (5/7/1918), 6177–6178).

While his bill faltered, racial violence intensified and increased. Black servicemen who had fought for their country in WWI came home to face an outbreak of racial violence known as the “Red Summer” because of the extent of bloodshed.

The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 was one of the worst worst instances of mass racial violence in American history. The violence centered on Tulsa’s Greenwood District (aka “Black Wall Street”) a commercial area with many successful black-owned businesses. In 24 hours, hundreds were killed, thousands displaced, and 35 city blocks were burnt to ruins.

The Tulsa Chapter of the American Red Cross aided many victims and compiled a report with photos of riot scenes, devastated areas, National Guard troops, destroyed homes, dead victims, and massacre survivors in temporary housing. Warning: Some images are graphic and viewers might find them disturbing for racial violence.

With NAACP support, Rep. Dyer heightened his efforts. In 1922, after the so-called “Dyer anti-lynching Bill” had passed the House and awaited a Senate vote, Dyer submitted this “Red Record of Lynching Map” to Congress showing lynchings by state and naming congressmen who opposed the Bill.

The map was created by a leader in the anti-lynching crusade, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and author of two anti-lynching texts, Southern Horrors and The Red Record. Wells-Barnett is one of a number of minority women featured in the National Archives Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote exhibit marking the centennial of women’s suffrage. Video below produced and edited by Kyra Wilkins, former National Archives intern. 

Dyer reintroduced the measure in each new Congress in the 1920s, to no avail. Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century alone, and such efforts continue today. 

Learn more in Rediscovering Black History blog posts:

“Portal Spotlight: Civil Unrest and the Red Summer” by Bob Nowatzki, Archives Technician, National Archives at College Park, MD.

“When the Government Can’t Help” by Netisha Currie, Archives Specialist, National Archives at College Park, MD.

Additional online resources:

National Archives Records on Civil Unrest and the Red Summer

US House: Anti-Lynching Legislation Renewed

National Archives News special topics page: African-American History

Resources for African American Research

Read the eyewitness account of the Tulsa massacre by attorney Buck Colbert Franklin (John Hope Franklin’s father) in Smithsonian Magazine

Robot Love

I am honored to have my C3PO images for Smithsonian Magazine selected in the Editorial category for the juried Communication Arts 2018 Photo Annual issue. It won’t ever not be exciting to be included in those pages.

Each project I do hits home for different audiences in different ways, but these C3PO images have been some of my most widely resonate. This droid has a firm grip on our national (and beyond) cultural memory. It was a unique challenge to photograph this icon as a piece of machinery, a sum of metal luster and wires - apart from but as a compliment to everyone’s knowledge of and affection for this American character.

I photographed C3PO for the National Treasures feature of Smithsonian Magazine (as apt a place for him as you could come up with) where it was selected the Most Powerful Image for that publication for 2017.