Sept. 30, 1919: Elaine Massacre

Teaching Activity. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools. 20 pages.
Teaching about racist patterns of murder, theft, displacement, and wealth inequality through the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna.
Students meet dozens of advocates and recipients of reparations from a variety of historical eras to grapple with the possibility of reparations now and in the future.

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.

One of our most read “This Day in History” posts is about the July 29, 1910, Slocum Massacre—the racially charged murders by whites on the Black population of Slocum, Texas, and the subsequent cover-up of a community’s violent history.

Book — Non-fiction. By Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace. 2021. 144 pages.
Scipio Africanus Jones — a self-taught attorney who was born enslaved — leads a momentous series of court cases to save twelve Black men who’d been unjustly sentenced to death.

White supremacists destroyed the Black town of Rosewood, Florida, and murdered many of its residents. Descendants have fought for reparations and recognition of the history.

Article. By Linda Christensen. If We Knew Our History Series.
Students need to learn the hidden history of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and how this links to racial wealth inequality today.

The racist riots of 1919 happened 100 years ago this summer. Confronting a national epidemic of white mob violence, 1919 was a time when Black people defended themselves, fought back, and demanded full citizenship in thousands of acts of courage and daring, small and large, individual and collective.

As African Americans marched peacefully in response to their expulsion from elected office, more than a dozen were massacred near Albany, Georgia.

In response to the promotion of voter registration, a KKK-like group massacred hundreds of people, most of whom were African American.

The St. Bernard Parish massacre of African Americans was carried out by white men to terrorize the recently emancipated voters in Louisiana.

White workers murdered Black workers in Arkansas who were coming to work on the railways.

This massacre was committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white people in Springfield, Illinois.

In one of countless white supremacist massacres in U.S. history, white supremacists destroyed a thriving Black community in Oklahoma, known today as the Tulsa Massacre.