Race Issues

As African Americans fled the city, new dangers sometimes appeared. Mary Parrish later reported that as the group of refugees she was with "had traveled many miles into the country and were turning to find our way to Claremore," they were warned to stay clear of a nearby town, where whites were "treating our people awfully mean as they passed through".175 Similar stories have persisted for decades.

Whites detained fleeing African Americans as well as those that stayed near their homes and businesses (Courtesy Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa).

Not all white Tulsans, however, shared the racial views of the white rioters. Mary Korte, a white maid who worked for a wealthy Tulsa family, hid African American refugees at her family's farm east of the city.176 Along the road to Sand Springs, a white couple named Merrill and Ruth Phelps hid and fed black riot victims in the basement of their home for days. The Phelps home, which still stands, became something of a "safe house" for black Tulsans who had managed not to be imprisoned by the white authorities. Traveling through the woods and along creek beds at night, dozens of African American refugees were apparently hidden by the Phelpses during the daylight hours.177

Other white Tulsans also hid blacks, or directly confronted the white rioters. Mary Jo Erhardt, a young stenographer who roomed at the Y.W.C.A. Building at Fifth and Cheyenne, did both. After a sleepless night, punctuated by the sounds of gunfire, Erhardt arose early on the morning of June 1. Heading downstairs, she then heard a voice she recognized as belonging to the African American porter who worked there. "Miss Mary! Oh, Miss Mary!" he said, "Let me in quick." Armed whites, he told her, were chasing him. Quickly secreting the man inside the building's walk-in refrigerator, Erhardt later recalled,

Hardly had I hidden him behind the beef carcasses and returned to the hall door when a loud pounding at the service entrance drew me there. A large man was trying to open the door, fortunately securely locked, and there on the stoop stood three very rough-looking middle-aged white men, each pointing a revolver in my general direction!

"What do you want?" I asked sharply. Strangely, those guns frightened me not at all. I was so angry I could have torn those ruffians apart-three armed white men chasing one lone, harmless Negro. I cannot recall in all my life feeling hatred toward any person, until then. Apparently my feelings did not show, for one answered, "Where did he go?" "Where did WHO go?", I responded.

"That nigger," one demanded, "did you let him in here?"

"Mister," I said, "I'm not letting ANYBODY in here!," which was perfectly true. I had already let in all I intended.

"It was at least ten minutes before I felt secure enough to release Jack," Erhardt added, "He was nearly frozen, dressed thinly as he was for the hot summer night, but he was ALIVE!"178

The Zarrow Family. The parents of Jack and Henry Zarrow, founder of Sooner Pipeling, owned a grocery store in the riot-torn area. It was spared be cause they were white. The Zarrow's hid many of the fleeing blacks in their business (Courtesy Greenwood Cultural Center).

Some whites, in their efforts to protect black Tulsans from harm put themselves at risk. None, perhaps, more so than a young Hispanic woman named Maria Morales Gutierrez. A recent immigrant from Mexico, she and her husband were living, at the time of the riot, in a small house off Peoria Avenue, near Independence Street. Hearing a great deal of noise and commotion on the morning of June 1, Morales ventured outside, where she saw two small African American children, who had evidently been separated from their parents, walking along the street. Suddenly, an airplane appeared on the horizon, bearing down on the two frightened youngsters. Morales ran out into the street, and scooped the little ones into her arms, and out of danger.

A group of armed whites later demanded that Morales hand the two terrified children over to them. "In her English, she told them 'No'," her daughter Gloria Lough, later recalled. "Somehow or other," she added, "they didn't shoot her." The youngsters were safe.179

As the battle for black Tulsa continued to rage, it soon became evident, even in neighborhoods far removed from the fighting, that on June 1, 1921, there would be very little business as usual in the city of Tulsa. When Guy Ashby, a young white employee at Cooper's Grocery on Fourteenth Street, showed up for work that morning, his boss was on his way out the door. "The boss told me there would be no work that day as he was declaring it 'Nigger Day' and he was going hunting niggers," Ashby later remembered, "He took a rifle and told me to lock up the store and go home."180

Any fleeing families were denied freedom by whites positioned on escape routes (Courtesy Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa).

Downtown, normal activities were even more in disarray, as business owners found themselves shorthanded, and crowds of onlookers took to the streets, or climbed up on rooftops, to stare at the great clouds of smoke billowing over the north end of town. At the all-white Central High School, several male students bolted from class when gunfire was heard nearby. One of the students later recalled, "struck out for the riot area." Along the way, he added, they were met by a white man who handed them a new rifle and a box of shells. "You can have it," the man told them, "I'm going home and going to bed."181

The riot was felt along the southern edge of the city as well, particularly in the well-to- o white neighborhoods off of 21st Street, as carloads of armed white vigilantes went door to door, rounding up live-in African American cooks, maids, and butlers at gunpoint, and then hauling them off toward downtown. A number of white homeowners, however, fearing for the safety of their black employees, stood in the way of this forced evacuation. When Charles and Amy Arnold refused to hand over