Black History Month: Ottowa Gurley

Gurley moved to Oklahoma at age 26, helping create what eventually became the town of Perry. Before that, he’d been a teacher in Arkansas…no big deal, except Gurley was self-educated, something that couldn’t happen anymore, either the ‘self-education’ portion or the ability to teach without going through the modern education bureaucracy (which is a deterrent for many who would teach).

The thing is–Gurley was restless and wanted to do more than teach–that’s why he grabbed land in Oklahoma (which was confiscated from the Indians and provided cheap to whites/blacks willing to move there). Perry was a reasonable place without much prejudice, predominantly white but mostly immigrant–people not part of slavery, just wanting their own liberty and to go about their own business. Gurley wound up the head administrator for the town school and then opened a general store to boot. By all accounts, Gurley was quite successful. He also grew tired of living in a small town.

In 1905, he moved with his wife to a new ‘boomtown’–Tulsa, Oklahoma, where land was set aside specifically for black settlers. Tulsa represented an incredible opportunity for economic prosperity for blacks–and it certainly was for the first two years until Oklahoma was granted statehood. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and its first legislation was to put Jim Crow laws and segregation into place. From that point on, blacks were limited in the land they could purchase and the business they could transact.

It is possibly hyperbole, but the best comparison for the treatment of blacks in Oklahoma is the ghettos of Jews across Europe. Isolate people because they are different, treat them as subhuman–and ultimately, there will be trouble. For Jews, these were the pogroms of Eastern Europe and eventually the radical extension of those ideas–the Nazi death camps and the Holocaust. In Tulsa, no one expected what eventually happened, certainly not Gurley.

In Tulsa, Gurley opened a boarding house for itinerant black workers. Eventually other businesses built up around it and residents named it for Greenwood, MS, so it became known as the Greenwood District. Gurley made sure to protect those living in his facility. He also provided monetary loans, serving as an informal banking establishment for the community as well. He continued to succeed, building up his worth, making him the equivalent of a multi-millionaire today as Gurley owned more than one hundred successful propertiesand businesses in the area.

During World War One, Oklahoma–and Tulsa itself–passed ever-more-restrictive laws regarding race, making it illegal to live in mixed neighborhoods. The US Supreme Court said this was unconstitutional and Oklahoma thumbed its nose at the Supreme Court, talking of states’ rights and sovereignty. This rapidly increased tension…and it got worse when black servicemen returned from WW1 after serving in Europe.

That’s because those soldiers saw that blacks in Europe did not have to live with segregation–that in many places they were treated far better than they were at home. They intended to stand up for their rights. That was true across America–there were quite a few ‘incidents’ in 1919 of whites attacking ‘uppity’ blacks asserting their constitutional rights. This included in Tulsa–though Tulsa’s violence was tamped down because of the city’s significant wealthy black businessmen.

But that wealth eventually stoked even greater jealousy from the white community that erupted in 1921 and the Tulsa Race Riot, destroying almost all of the Greenwood District. A black shoeshiner, a boy, was arrested for raping a white girl–witnesses said nothing happened and that everything was in broad daylight…no matter, the white-owned newspapers demanded justice and the Tulsa Tribune’s primary editorial demanded the boy be lynched for his actions.

Hearing that there was a carful of blacks armed with guns near the courthouse, more than 1,000 white men rushed to the courthouse. Most were armed–and they had the idea to get better weapons by breaking into the National Guard armory–turned away only when the NG commander informed them that if they entered the building by door or window, they’d be shot–the soldiers were ordered to kill, not wound.

by June 1, 1921, gun fights between blacks and whites raged across the city, the whites counting KKK leaders among those in charge, several having instigated violence regularly over the previous decade in Tulsa.

Gurley had resisted leaving. Tulsa was his home, but after the end of the Riot, Gurley’s properties were burned or leveled–his primary ones singled out for destruction. He lost half of his money, more than half of his property wealth–and that was enough for him. Rumors were spread that he’d been lynched by whites–a lesson/warning for blacks seeking prosperity. They were lies. Unwilling to live further in a segregated state where violence against blacks was encouraged, Gurley settled in southern California and lived there the remainder of his life.

I’ve written previously about the problems for black businesses that came about unexpectedly because of Jackie Robinson’s success. Here’s the opposite. Gurley did nothing wrong and was attacked because of his success. He was a successful serial entrepreneur, a self-made man–the American dream basically. It’s rare to come across mentions of Tulsa, 1921…rarer still to find stories about the men and women who made Tulsa’s black community, the Greenwood District, so successful.