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B. C. FRANKLIN

 

The Phenomenal Legal Mind of Buck Colbert Franklin

 

B. C. Franklin was an attorney, freedman, father of the eminent historian John
Hope Franklin, and Tulsa race riot survivor, was born Buck Colbert Franklin in
the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, now part of the state of Oklahoma, the
son of David Franklin and Millie Colbert.

 

David Franklin raised cattle, horses, and other livestock for sale. He also
farmed. Millie Colbert taught school. The seventh of ten children, B.C. went by
his initials as an adult to prevent whites from calling him by his first name.
His efforts were only partially successful, as many whites called him Ben,
assuming that he was named after Ben Franklin. In reality he was named Buck in
honor of his paternal grandfather and Colbert to honor his mother's family name.

 

Franklin s parents were freedmen a term used to define the black citizens of the
Cherokee Chickasaw Choctaw Creek and Seminole Nations known.

 

A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race
Massacre of 1921.

 

An Oklahoma lawyer details the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving
black neighborhood where hundreds died 100 years ago The manuscript, "The Tulsa
Race Riot and Three of Its Victims," by B.C. Franklin was recovered from a
storage area in 2015 and donated to the African American History Museum.(NMAAHC,
Gift from Tulsa Friends and John W. and Karen R. Franklin)

 

 

 

The ten-page manuscript is typewritten, on yellowed legal paper, and folded in
thirds. But the words, an eyewitness account of the May 31, 1921, racial
massacre that destroyed what was known as Tulsa, Oklahoma's "Black Wall Street,"
are searing.

 

II could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted
and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my
office building. Down East Archer, I saw the old Mid-Way hotel on fire, burning
from its top, and then another and another and another building began to burn
from their top," wrote Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960)

 

 

The Oklahoma lawyer, father of famed African-American historian John Hope
Franklin (1915-2009), was describing the attack by hundreds of whites on the
thriving black neighborhood known as Greenwood in the booming oil town. "Lurid
flames roared and belched and licked their forked tongues into the air. Smoke
ascended the sky in thick, black volumes and amid it all, the planes—now a dozen
or more in number—still hummed and darted here and there with the agility of
natural birds of the air." Franklin writes that he left his law office, locked
the door, and descended to the foot of the steps.

 

"The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all
too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning
building first caught from the top," he continues. “I paused and waited for an
opportune time to escape. 'Where oh where is our splendid fire department with
its half dozen stations?' I asked myself. "Is the city in conspiracy with the
mob?'" Franklin's harrowing manuscript now resides among the collections of the
Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

 

The previously unknown document was found last year, purchased from a private
seller by a group of Tulsans and donated to the museum with the support of the
Franklin family. In the manuscript, Franklin tells of his encounters with an
African-American veteran, named Mr. Ross. It begins in 1917, when Franklin meets
Ross while recruiting young black men to fight in World War I. It picks up in
1921 with his own eyewitness account of the Tulsa race riots, and ends ten years
later with the story of how Mr. Ross's life has been destroyed by the riots. Two
original photographs of Franklin were part of the donation. One depicts him
operating with his associates out of a Red Cross tent five days after the riots.

 

John W. Franklin, a senior program manager with the museum, is the grandson of
manuscript's author and remembers the first time he read the found document. "I
wept. I just wept. It's so beautifully written and so powerful, and he just
takes you there," Franklin marvels. "You wonder what happened to the other
people. What was the emotional impact of having your community destroyed and
having to flee for your lives?"

 

 

The younger Franklin says Tulsa has been in denial over the fact that people
were cruel enough to bomb the black community from the air, in private planes,
and that black people were machine-gunned down in the streets.

 

The issue was economics. Franklin explains that Native Americans and
African-Americans became wealthy thanks to the discovery of oil in the early
1900s on what had previously been seen as worthless land.

 

"That's what leads to Greenwood being called the Black Wall Street. It had
restaurants and furriers and jewelry stores and hotels," John W. Franklin
explains, “and the white mobs looted the homes and businesses before they set
fire to the community. For years black women would see white women walking down
the street in their jewelry and snatch it off."

 

Museum curator Paul Gardullo, who has spent five years along with Franklin
collecting artifacts from the riot and the aftermath, says: "It was the
frustration of poor whites not knowing what to do with a successful black
community, and in coalition with the city government were given permission to do
what they did."

 

"It’s a scenario that you see happen from place to place around our country . .
. from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., to Chicago, and these are in
some ways mass lynchings," he says As in other places, the Tulsa race riot
started with newspaper reports that a black man had assaulted a white elevator
operator. He was arrested, and Franklin says black World War I vets rushed to
the courthouse to prevent a lynching.

 

"Then whites were deputized and handed weapons, the shooting starts and then it
gets out of hand," Franklin says. "It went on for two days until the entire
black community is burned down." More than 35 blocks were destroyed, along with
more than 1,200 homes, and some 300 people died, mostly blacks.

 

The National Guard was called out after the governor declared martial law, and
imprisoned all blacks that were not already in jail. More than 6,000 people were
held, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, some for as long as
eight days. "(Survivors) talk about how the city was shut down in the riot,"
Gardullo says. "They shut down the phone systems, the railway. . . . They
wouldn't let the Red Cross in. There was complicity between the city government
and the mob. It was mob rule for two days, and the result was the complete
devastation of the community." Gardullo adds that the formulaic stereotype about
young black men raping young white women was used with great success from the
end of slavery forward to the middle of the 20th century.

 

"It was a formula that resulted in untold numbers of lynchings across the
nation," Gardullo says. "The truth of the matter has to do with the threat that
black power, black economic power, black cultural power, black success, posed to
individuals and . . . the whole system of white supremacy. That's embedded
within our nation’s history."

 

Franklin says he has issues with the words often used to describe the attack
that decimated the black community.

 

"The term riot is contentious, because it assumes that black people started the
violence, as they were accused of doing by whites," Franklin says. "We
increasingly use the term massacre, or I use the European term, pogrom."

 

Among the artifacts Gardullo and John W. Franklin have obtained, are a handful
of pennies collected off the ground from a young boy’s home burned to the ground
during the riot, items with labels saying this was looted from a black church
during the riot, and postcards with photos from the race riots, some showing
burning corpses.

 

"Riot postcards were often distributed . . . crassly and cruelly . . . as a way
to sell white supremacy," Gardullo says. "At the time they were shown as
documents that were shared between white community members to demonstrate their
power. Later . . . they became part of the body of evidence that was used during
the commission for reparation.”

 

In 2001, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission issued a report detailing the damage
from the riots, but legislative and legal attempts to gain reparations for the
survivors have failed.

 

 

The Tulsa race riots aren’t mentioned in most American history textbooks, and
many people don’t know that they happened. Curator Paul Gardullo says the
crucial question is why not?

 

"Throughout American history there's been a vast silence about the atrocities
that were performed in the service of white history. . . . There are a lot of
silences in relation to this story, and a lot of guilt and shame," Gardullo
explains.

 

That's one reason why the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, will be featured in
an exhibition at the new museum called "The Power of Place." Gardullo says the
title is about more than geography.

 

"(It's) the power of certain places, about displacement, movement, about what
place means for people," he says. "This is about emotion and culture and memory.
. . . How do you tell a story about destruction? How do you balance the
fortitude and resilience of people in response to that devastation? How do you
fill the silences? How do you address the silences about a story that this
community has held in silence for so long and in denial for so long?"

 

Despite the devastation, the black community in Tulsa was able to rebuild on the
ashes of its neighborhood, partly because Buck Colbert Franklin battled all the
way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to defeat a law that would have effectively
prevented African-Americans from doing so. By 1925, there was again a thriving
black business district. John W. Franklin says his grandfather's manuscript is
important for people to see because it deals with “suppressed history."

 

"This is an eyewitness account from a reputable source about what he saw
happen," he grandson John W. Franklin says. "It is definitely relevant to today,
because I think our notions of justice are based partially on our own history
and our knowledge of history. But we are an a-historical society, in that we
don’t know our past. The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American
History and Culture opens on September 24 of this year on the National Mall.

 

Franklin (1879-1960) led an extraordinary life; from his youth in what was then
Indian Territory to his practice of law in 20th-century Tulsa, he was witness to
changes in politics, law and race relations which transformed the south-west.

 

Allison Keyes is an award-winning correspondent, host and author. She can
currently be heard on CBS Radio News, among other outlets. Keyes, a former
national desk reporter for NPR, has written extensively on race, culture,
politics and the arts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 




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