Module 9: Race in the 1920s
Well, in 1917 and 1923 some of the most vicious racial violence in American history. Black workers who had been historically confined to the South had begun to move north and to compete with whites for factory jobs. The black workers often found jobs as strikebreakers, the only way many could could get hired. In addition, animosity flared as black veterans returned from World War 1 insisting on the civil rights that they had fought for in Europe. In Tulsa, 40 city blocks were leveled and 23 African America n churches and a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed. In 1921, Tulsa (about 12 percent black) had the Southwest's most prosperous African American business community. A government report said that 26 blacks and 10 whites had died, and another 317 were injured. A recent scholarly study concluded that black deaths approached 100 and may have been much higher. Another incident of racial violence that took place on New Year's Day in 1923, in the tiny black settl