The Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre and the Wagalla Massacre
Learning about and responding to massacres on both sides of the ocean
To remember is to re-member, to put back together what has come apart, fallen apart, been torn apart. To remember is to build again, to pick and choose what will we will carry from the past into the present,
and into the next present
and the next and
to decide we will learn from it, grow from it, heal it, be changed by it.
I didn’t know about the Tulsa, Oklahoma 1921 massacre.
I spent a year digging into a massacre that occurred in 1984 in northern Kenya for a book I wrote, Stronger than Death: How Annalena Tonelli Defied Terror and Tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa.
Kenyan government soldiers terrorized several towns in northern Kenya, targeting one specific Somali clan for extermination. A number of Somali and foreign medical workers illegally rescued people from the violence, treated people at their tuberculosis clinic, and buried bodies in mass graves when no more survivors could be found. An Italian humanitarian, Annalena Tonelli, and a Somali nurse, Elmi Mohamed, kept a secret list of the names of the dead and missing, and another Somali smuggled the list out of the town, along with photographs sewn into the inside of his, and other aid workers, trousers.
Eventually the Kenyan government was forced to acknowledge that something had happened in Wajir, but blamed it on local unrest and limited the number of dead initially to 17, then just over 50. Villagers estimated up to 5,000 dead and the list created by Elmi and Annalena counts over 250.
Somalis are still seeking restitution from the government for the murder of family members, the destruction of property and livelihoods, the killing of their herds, and the rape and violent treatment of women.
I was shocked and saddened when I read stories of this massacre and spoke with survivors. The ongoing tension between Kenyan Somalis and non-Somali Kenyans must take this, and other violent acts, into consideration. To not re-member this, and then try to make peace or forge a new future, is cruel and naïve.
I didn’t know about the Tulsa Oklahoma “Race Riots,” before the name was changed to “Massacre.” Same event, different remembering.
Let’s call it a massacre.
To not re-member this, and other acts of racial violence in the USA, and then try to make peace or forge a new future is cruel and naïve.
May 31-June 1, 1921 after a brief interaction in an elevator between a young black man and a young white woman (she did not press charges and the most likely explanation of what happened is that the man accidentally touched the woman’s arm), a Tulsa newspaper headline called for the “nabbing” of the man. The man was arrested, a lynch mob gathered, and black residents arrived, armed and ready to defend the man. When a white man tried to disarm a black man, the gun went off. “All hell broke loose.” The white mob instigated murder, arson, the rounding up of random people, and the mass destruction of property in the black section of town. There are accounts of white men shooting from airplanes and dropping firebombs.
The total death toll is unclear but ranges from 30-300. Hundreds to thousands of people were hospitalized. Over 10,000 were rendered homeless. $1.8 million ($26 million in today’s dollars) in damages was reported. The vast majority of casualties, injuries, and destruction was to
black bodies
black-owned business
black homes.
The massacre was then buried and forgotten. Who learned about this in school?
Not here.
Not us.
Not that.
There are many parallels in these two massacres.
· The official number of dead is much lower than eyewitness and family member reports
· Government allowed/approved/supported
· Officially sanctioned lies
· Failure to prosecute
· Failure to provide restitution
· Racially motivated
· Preexistent tensions because what was supposed to be a weaker minority was flourishing economically and in terms of resources
· Global tensions: World War 1, Kenyan independence and the Shifta Wars
· A wider world that simply did not care
Or, a world that cared intensely and was ruled by people with a particular spin and a zeal to protect their own interests who stifled any legitimate care.
I am interested in my personal response to these events in history. In our response as Americans, as humans. I’m an American and have lived in the Horn of Africa for 18 of my 42 years. I tell myself that I care deeply about both my passport country and the African nations that have hosted me. But do I even know them? Do I know their histories and what part my nation, ancestors, and people of my skin color have played in these histories? Do I know what role these realities still play? Does it matter that I know these things?
It does matter. If I want to understand my current identity and presence and the way people receive me, how they perceive my work and words and behavior, I need to understand the context. Context without history is incomplete. Placing myself in relationship and trying to do effective work without understanding history is irresponsible.
It also matters that I interrogate my response because through that interrogation, in which I will become increasingly uncomfortable, I learn, grow, change.
So I ask myself:
Am I surprised that such a massacre occurred in Kenya?
Over there.
In a place like that.
Where people like them live.
Am I surprised that such a massacre occurred in the USA?
Here.
Places like this.
Where people like us live.
How did I feel when I finally heard about the massacre in my own country? Was I surprised? Sad? Horrified? Did I question the veracity of the reports? Did I think, “my people would never…?” Did I feel ashamed? Did I notice that my white skin, my inheritance, are connected to those who slaughtered their neighbors? Did I feel complicity? Did I imagine I would have been a different kind of white person in 1921? The kind who hid people and fed people and tended to their wounded bodies and spirits?
For a long time, I did not know that I needed to ask myself these questions. I didn’t know to interrogate both my responses and my connection to racial events, historic and current.
I thought I was one of the “good” white people.
Don’t we all?
I moved to Africa eighteen years ago where I have tried to learn from and partner with Somalis. My pastor is from Senegal, my parish council president from Burkina Faso, my music director from Congo, my choir leader from Madagascar, my daughter’s favorite teachers were from France and from Djibouti, her tennis coach from Ethiopia.
If I write all this down, am I a white person saying, “but some of my best friends are black?” That isn’t what I mean. In fact, none of my best, most intimate, friends are black. The people I look to for help, spiritual guidance, worship, athletic training, academic input, they are black. They aren’t black Americans. They do not bear in their bodies and in their memory four hundred years of enslavement by people of my skin color. I am the one with that history in my body and my flesh. Instead, they bear colonialism and imperialism and modern-day USA global dominance. What does this mean for our relationships?
Racism and the advantages that come with white skin are not limited by the borders of the United States of America. This horror runs far deeper than one nation and our history. Let us not be so arrogant as to imagine that the USA is the center of everything, even as that is what, problematically, defines so much of American thinking.
What does all this mean? To be honest, I don’t fully know. It means I am learning to ask better questions. I am learning to see things I didn’t see before. I am learning to be brave on this side of the ocean, in my home in east Africa, and to be brave on the other side, in my home in the Midwest.
It means that when I received a rejection for a book proposal from an agent I admire and her rejection said she could not place a book written by a white woman living in Africa even though it was a beautiful and well-rendered project highlighting a story that will not otherwise be told because I am on the inside of this particular story, I understood.
It means I am beginning to see more deeply the things that are broken
that we have broken
that we have allowed to be broken
that we broke.
It means I know now what was sown by white people for generations. We are not so isolated, we are not so disconnected. This is what we reap.
To read more about massacres in the USA, click here.
Don’t forget about our Zoom call today with Dr. Anu Taranath, author of Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World. This directly relates with the above essay. I am really excited to talk with her.