On May 31st and June 1st, 1921, they tried to destroy everything.
In one of the worst massacres in American history, white terrorists eviscerated Black legacy in one murderous rampage across Tulsa, Oklahoma. More than 1,000 Black-owned homes and 200 businesses were destroyed. An estimated 300 people were murdered. With their hands, weapons, and even a bomb dropped from a plane, they savagely decimated a thriving Black community.
Flourishing churches, hotels, a theatre, business offices and other property totaling an estimated 4 million dollars.
Gone.
Many Black folks believed that although the massacre initially started after local Black citizens tried to protect a Black man accused of rape from being lynched, white terrorists desired for years to eliminate the town known as Black Wall Street. The oil boom had hit Tulsa and the northeast side was the only place remaining for expansion. And regardless of the devastation they would inflict, they wanted it.
The commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre sheds light on the stories, history, and legacy of Black Wall Street. It not only housed Black doctors, lawyers, bankers, educators, and artists, but it was also a temporary home to world-famous entertainer, Billy McClain.
Billy McClain
Even before McClain came to Tulsa in 1913, he was a well-known entity and one of the most famous Black Americans in the world. Beginning in 1891, McClain toured the country with black entertainment troupes. His first big success in America came in 1895 when he produced the play, Black America. In 1899, McCain and his wife, Cordelia, a singer and actress, headed to Australia with a troupe of entertainers known as the Georgia Minstrels and Alabama Cakewalkers. The group successfully performed for two years and received acclaim from Australian audiences.[1] When McClain returned home, he flipped the script.
Tired of playing demeaning blackface roles, McClain and the black comedian Ernest Hogan created the Smart Set Company in 1902.[2] The cast dressed up in fine clothes, had numerous costume changes, and tried to avoid “darkey” jokes and “coon songs.” Most importantly, McClain’s success demonstrated that one could sell blackness without having to succumb to notions of black primitiveness held by white audiences.
As a popular Black entertainer, McClain spent many years overseas. These travels brought him in close contact with another set of entertainers, Black prizefighters.
Like McClain, Black fighters including heavyweights Jack Johnson, Sam McVey, Sam Langford, and Joe Jeannette traveled overseas to Europe and Australia to fight for a living. It was outside of America where McClain connected with these men. In his first venture to Australia, he managed Black fighter Peter Felix to the Australian heavyweight crown. A decade later, he managed Sam McVey to secure a fight against champion Jack Johnson. Johnson, however, would not fight Black fighters, and it appears that McClain and McVey parted way by 1912.
A year later, McClain was in Tulsa.
There the globe trotter found a Black world suited for him. He envisioned Tulsa as the Mecca of a Black sporting world and started hosting lavish balls, theatrical performances, baseball games, and boxing matches. In 1915, he bought the Cosey Corner Café on 122 Greenwood and subsequently turned the establishment into his sporting headquarters called the Palm Gardens.[3]
Known around town as one of the best entertainment facilities in Greenwood, the Palm Gardens had sections for dances and billiards. It also had space for a general store, dining, and soda fountain. But the focal point of the business was boxing.
Black Boxing Success
The business of boxing was white controlled. Very few Black men in America owned their own club and only a few were allowed to operate as promoters. But McClain broke the mold and built Tulsa into one of the top fight cities in the nation.
He advertised his fights in both the white and Black papers. He promoted the best fights in the city and brought in the top Black fighters in the country. McClain had a no-nonsense reputation and folks flocked to his establishment.
Reading the local press, both white and black, it was clear that McClain had the best game in town. In 1918, he was the first athletic club in the city to receive an official state charter, giving him a license to host fights. Capitalized at $10,000, McClain started selling stock in his sports business.[4]
To further tap into the Black sporting world, McClain started The Referee, the first Black sports newspaper in the country. The Referee was a monthly publication which highlighted sports and the theatre industry. McClain used a Black publishing company, the Tulsa Star Printing and Publishing Company.[5] They also published the Tulsa Star, a successful Black weekly paper that was destroyed during the massacre. It’s unknown how long his publication lasted, and it’s not clear if one survived, but the fact that McClain found some reported success in a town that already had two established Black newspapers demonstrates how strong Tulsa was for the Black sporting world.
Unfortunately, yet not surprisingly, McClain’s vision of a Black sports world ran counter to what local white authorities deemed acceptable.
To them, Black Wall Street was “Little Africa,” a disparaging term frequently used by white dallies to describe a thriving community.
The police would routinely arrest and harass Black citizens like McClain on trumped-up charges. In 1915, after being arrested for supposedly creating a nuisance with his club, McClain complained to the Tulsa Star that he was being persecuted and not prosecuted. Three years later, the police arrested the well-known business owner for vagrancy. This arrest, as Black folks knew, was about putting McClain in check. Although he had a state-issued charter to host fights, white police officers were upset because they thought that he should not host bouts during the war. They felt patrons should use their money to support the troops. By troops, they clearly meant white soldiers. While Black men were allowed to join the military, the military refused to allow Black soldiers to fight with white American troops. They were viewed as laborers and were shipped off to fight with the French.
McClain easily beat the charges—even the white press thought it was ridiculous— and never stopped hosting fights. In fact, he used proceeds from his fights to provide for the families of local Black soldiers and to assist the Red Cross.
McClain’s refusal to stop his fights, and solely support Black causes signaled that this proud Black man would not be kept down.
Tulsa, The Black Boxing Mecca
In 1919, McClain used another power move to create his Black sports Mecca. He created a new colored heavyweight championship that rivaled the belt worn by Jack Dempsey, who had recently defeated Jess Willard.
There had been colored heavyweight championships since 1882 when white champion John L. Sullivan declared he would never fight a Black man. By 1919, in theory, there shouldn’t have been a need for a colored championship since Jack Johnson cracked that racial barrier in 1908 by besting Tommy Burns. But after Jess Willard defeated Johnson in Cuba in 1915, a fight scheduled for 45 rounds, white boxing power brokers drew the color line again.
Living in Tulsa, McClain learned that Black folks had the power to create what they envisioned exclusively for them. He reasoned that with 15 million Black Americans there was no need for integrated fights. Instead, he would build his own Black championship. He plastered papers across the nation with advertisements of his affair and to attract fighters like Sam Langford, Jack Thompson, and Harry Wills. He even hoped to reach his friend Jack Johnson, who was residing in Mexico at that time to avoid a 1913 conviction of the Mann Act. McClain even designed an immaculate $1,500 diamond belt for the winner who would be crowned the Black champion.[6]
The first match of the tournament, set for August 3rd, 1919, pitted Langford against Thompson. This was not unintentional. McClain manifested the match as part of a larger Black Tulsa celebration of Emancipation Day, a commemorative holiday like Juneteenth (also celebrated in Tulsa) that Black folks in America had celebrated since the end of slavery in Jamaica in 1834.
Expecting more than 5,000 fans, McClain arranged for special trains to take Black folks from Greenwood to the Convention Hall in the city.[7] The fighters worked out at the renowned Dreamland Theatre, a business that perished in the massacre. By all accounts, the event was a fistic and financial success. McClain, as the main referee, called the fight a draw. To the delight of fans, that called for a rematch.
But McClain’s success attracted white promoters who craved what he created. After the first bout between Langford and Thompson, local white promoters representing the Tulsa Athletic Club signed the two fighters through their white managers, thus securing their rematch. They were also able to entice Harry Wills, the leading Black heavyweight, to come to Tulsa to take on the winner. This removed McClain, the only major Black boxing promoter in the nation, out of the fight game that he cultivated.
Before the Langford-Thompson rematch in October, McClain moved to Kansas City and opened a successful chiropractic business. His absence did not deter Black fighters from showing up in Tulsa, curiously even after the massacre. But now it was for white promoters at white venues.
Billy McClain and Black Tulsa History
McClain left Tulsa before the massacre, but his impact is irrefutable.
He made Tulsa a Black boxing mecca. When his community needed him, the pugilist turned into a philanthropist and supported his people through sports and entertainment.
McClain was appointed health inspector of Black Tulsa in 1918 and had the daunting task of helping the community survive the Spanish Influenza. He frequently held boxing exhibitions in Tulsa to raise funds for Black causes. This included starting an employment bureau at the Palm Gardens, raising thousands of dollars for poverty-suffering families of Black soldiers fighting in the war, giving proceeds to the Red Cross to support Black troops, and financially supporting the local Black hospital.
It should come as no surprise that after the massacre, McClain used his promoting powers to stage an event in Kansas City. He raised thousands of dollars and collected tons of needed clothes for the Black refugees in Tulsa.[8]
Living in Black Wall Street for six years taught the renowned globe trotter the importance of building community in Black America. McClain, who died by fire in 1950, is emblematic of the Black citizens that built Greenwood. They saw a possibility of a thriving Black world and they crafted it in their image.
The Tulsa massacre was designed to destroy that sense of Black power.
But because of Black successes like Billy McClain, Tulsa’s Black history can never be demeaned, belittled or destroyed.
[1] Bernard L. Peterson Jr., Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People (California: ABC-CLIO, 2000), 174-175.
[2] Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” & the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 82.
[3] Tulsa Star, September 3, 1915.
[4] “New Charters,” Tulsa Daily Legal News, January 21, 1918.
[5] “Tulsa Leads World,” Tulsa Star, January 26, 1918.
[6] “Negro Gloves Stars to Mill for Colored Title of the World,” Quad City Times, July 24, 1919.
[7] “Negroes Plan Great Emancipation Day Celebration Here,” Tulsa Daily World, August 3, 1919.
[8] “A Benefit for Tulsa Victims,” Kansas City Star, June 6, 1921.
