HIS 100 PROJECT
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Southern New Hampshire University *
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Apr 3, 2024
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HIS 100 Project Template(1)HIS 100 Project – Taylor Bombinski 12/10/22
Use this template to address the steps in your Project Guidelines and Rubric. Replace the bracketed text with your responses. Ensure that you have considered your instructor’s feedback when revising your work. Proofread the entire document before submitting.
Part 1: Creating a Research Question
1.
Describe how your assumptions, beliefs, and values influenced your choice of topic.
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First and foremost, given the name Tulsa Massacre, I assumed that this was a violent event killing a mass amount of people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I can conclude from that that this was a terrible event in history that I can assume was unjust, as I do not believe killing is ever right in any way. I believe everyone is created equal in God’s image and therefore we all deserve the same rights. I believe that no one should have the power over another person’s life and that killing another human being is wrong in every way. I was raised as a Lutheran Christian believing in God, and while I may not go to church nearly as often as I used to, my belief in God has remained and has greatly influenced my personal values. I strongly believe humans need to be kind to one another, and so chose to explore the topic of human rights and inequality, and then landed on more specifically choosing the Tulsa Massacre, as I did not know much about the event.
2.
Discuss the significance of your historical research question in relation to your current event.
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Current events can often be connected to historical events. The killing of George Floyd by a police officer and the subsequent riots, protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement is what I would consider a current event that is related to my research question regarding the effects following the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. My initial historical research question (What have been the effects of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 on African Americans up to today?) is connected to my
current event because they both are about racism towards Black Americans and how that affected their lives. While there have been many situations of a white person or person(s) of authority killing African Americans publicized in recent years, I believe the case of George Floyd was a pivotal event in our recent history in terms of shedding light on discrimination and massive injustices that African Americans have faced and continue to face in today’s America. The Tulsa Massacre is known as perhaps the most serious and violent acts against the African American community to happen in the United States. Subsequently, the lives of African Americans of that Tulsa community known as “Black Wall Street” were destroyed and not given funds or respect to rebuild or give back to those people the property, business, etc. that they lost. Today, the killing of George Floyd by a white male police officer kneeling on his neck, is another act of massive injustice which shows that racism against African Americans still exists today. The lives of African Americans continue to be affected by racism because of how it is embedded in our history and has become what we now know as systemic racism. While overall, typically violent acts of racism maybe isn’t seemingly a huge issue in today’s society due to things like slavery and segregation being a thing of the past that happened before my lifetime and something I just learned about in school growing up, racist, unjust acts still do occur today, and that it is still a problem to be fully conquered. The effects of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 on African Americans up to today are that African Americans continue to experience acts of racism, and it continues to affect their daily lives. Society may have learned, grown, and evolved over time, but we are still seeing racism in today’s society, just in different ways. 1
3.
Explain how you used sources to finalize your research question.
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Overall, I used many primary and secondary sources to finalize my research question. According to my secondary source, “The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Collective Violence and Racial Frames”, “ideologies of race comprise frameworks that provide cues and justifications for action. Similarly, racial frames not only serve as interpretive lenses through which whites and blacks understand their social worlds, but they also direct action.”(Messer et al., 2012, p. 51) The article also explains that racial groups which participate in violence draw upon systemic racial frames which can explain how two racial groups may interpret the causation of collective violence in very opposed ways, even though both groups are aware of the same objective facts and conditions. (Messer, 2012). This particular source offered a lot of insight and analysis into what the views of whites on African Americans were and vice versa, which helped interpret what the social setting was at the time. The concept of racial framing is an interesting and analytical way of looking at how the social setting may have led to the massacre happening as well as what happened following it. By understanding racial framing of both perspectives white and black Americans, the entirety of the event can be more deeply understood, helping to learn as much as possible about the event and its historical context. This historical perspective and evidence from my sources therefore changed my research question. My initial question to explore the effects of the massacre on African Americans up to today may have been too broad and covered a wide range of time. My sources largely emphasize the life and perceptions of African Americans compared to white Americans who lived in Tulsa during the event, which posed a challenge for my original question which focused on effects of the event up to today’s time, and also was not focused on any particular historical perspective. As a result, I had to reconsider and change my question entirely. From a social perspective, segregation and racism were present and largely the cause of the event. The social settings are of interest to me as they affected the lives of African Americans both before and after the massacre. Social perspective of
both white and black Americans influenced the massacre and continues to influence the lives of African Americans afterwards. Socially, whites were still privileged and did not have to answer for their crimes or pay for the destruction of the properties held by those in the Greenwood District. Understanding these social perspectives not only helps explain why the event happened, but also helps explain what happened afterwards and how it affected African Americans after the event. This all led to my finalized research question: “How did social perspective impact the lives of African Americans following the Tulsa Massacre of 1921?”
Part 2: Building Context to Address Questions
1.
Describe the context of your historical event that influenced your current event.
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The Tulsa Massacre occurred in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. More specifically, this happened in the
Greenwood District of Tulsa, which was a prosperous Black community, also known as Black Wall Street, segregated from the white citizens of Tulsa. This was roughly 6 decades after slavery
was abolished, but during the Jim Crow laws era in which African Americans endured segregation. (Messer et al., 2012) This meant African Americans were largely segregated from whites in all aspects of life socially. This is how the Greenwood District of Tulsa was formed, being a community built by Black Americans for Black Americans. Racism towards Blacks was still
heavily prevalent. The popular opinion among white people was that Black Americans were inferior to them, which resulted in segregation, etc. From an economical standpoint, Black Americans of the Greenwood District were very successful as evidenced by many Black-owned businesses, properties, and rising wealth. There are varying accounts surrounding the story of 2
what caused this event, but it was initially involving a young Black man getting on an elevator with a young white female elevator operator. (
Karatzas, 2018). It got out in the newspaper that this young man attacked and presumably assaulted the young white woman, which set off the series of events over the next two days which created the Tulsa Massacre. (Karatzas, 2018). Though this describes the historical context of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, it can also be said that this influenced the current event of the killing of George Floyd and the following spark of the Black Lives Matter Movement which was evidenced by protests and riots across the country.
The context is not the exact same, but the same underlying racism towards Black Americans is present in both the historical and current events. The active racism of the Tulsa Massacre influenced the active racism of the white police officer who killed George Gloyd, an African American man. Because this racism occurred in our history by white people who had higher authority over Black Americans, it therefore influenced the racism of a white police officer with authority over a Black man in his custody, resulting in the same situation to happen again.
2.
Describe a historical figure or group’s participation in your historical event.
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Overall, white people play a key group role in current and historical events. I would say that the actions of the white people of Tulsa as well as the local police department were a key group in the event of the Tulsa Massacre. Whites had more authority in society over African Americans and had control politically. Figures of authority such as law enforcement, etc. were made up of white people. While there are varying accounts of what started the Tulsa Massacre, it initially involved a young Black man and a young white woman on an elevator in downtown Tulsa. To summarize,
there are varying accounts as to what exactly occurred immediately following, it’s been said that the next day a local newspaper attacked the young Black man, saying and spreading the word that the man assaulted the young white woman. This led to the man
being arrested and word spread that the young man was to be lynched. A group of armed black men as well as a group of white men showed up to the Tulsa courthouse. It was during all of these groups gathering at this location that a shot was fired, resulting in the group of black men fleeing to the Greenwood District with a mob of white men following after them and firing shots, ultimately leading to whites raiding homes and businesses in the Greenwood District and setting fire to their homes and properties, ultimately burning down the community. (Karatzas, 2018).
The mob of white men and the police force were key in this event, as the whites attacked the Black community of Greenwood, and some sources have even said that the white citizens were even given weapons and made special deputies by local law enforcement to go and attack the black community (Karatzas, 2018), further emphasizing that white people were a key group of people in this historical event.
3.
Explain the historical figure or group’s motivation to participate in your historical event.
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Because white people were a key historical group in the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, there had to be
a motive for the participation in it. I think the group of whites were motivated to show to the courthouse by believing that the young black man attacked the young white woman and wanted
to see the black man lynched and punished for the presumed crime he committed. When the group of black men showed up to offer help to protect the young black man in custody, they were turned away by the sheriff. (Karatzas, 2018). However, I think the white men were angry at that not only because I presume that during this time of segregation in history that most can be presumed to have been racist, but because they were angry as well at the situation—a black man was assumed to be guilty of attacking a white woman and then more black men show up to
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help protect him—I presume that caused the white men to be angry which was their motivation for directly punishing the blacks themselves. A mass majority of white people at the time were thought of to hold beliefs that African Americans were inferior, and therefore people who didn’t
deserve the same respect and treatment that they would show their fellow white man. Again, there are varying accounts of what happened during the gathering of the groups of black and white men, but many accounts say a shot was fired which then caused all of the chaos that followed. The whites, who held more authority and were generally treated better than black people, blamed the Blacks for causing a riot, which then gave more whites motivation to go and destroy the black community of Greenwood.
Part 3: Examining How Bias Impacts Narrative
1.
Describe a narrative you identified while researching the history of your historical event.
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Understanding the events as told by the narrative in primary sources found was helpful and impactful as it is more personable being from the perspective of survivors’ firsthand accounts of events, however, the narrative of my secondary source from The Western Journal of Black Studies in particular has most significantly influenced my understanding today of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. This source, titled “The Tulsa riot of 1921: collective violence and racial frames” from The Western Journal of Black Studies tells the stories of racial framing during the time of the massacre in 1921, giving insight into both white racial framing influencing whites actions in the massacre and also the black Tulsans of the time and gives reason into both groups’
sides of the matter. The authors analyze the difference between whites and blacks perspective on causes and fault of the riot, which gives more than simply a one-sided interpretation of the events, as it gives insights into how “these interpreted differences are rooted in divergent experiences, ideologies and location in the social structure.”(Messer et al., 2012, p.58). This is the narrative of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 as a racial conflict, resulting from the concept of racial framing of whites and counter framing of blacks which explains the viewpoints of both groups and how that went on to affect events during and after the massacre took place. This narrative encourages thinking of and analyzing the entire event from various perspectives, particularly the standpoints of the two key groups in this event–the white people of Tulsa and the African American Tulsans of the Greenwood District in 1921. Gaining insight into this story further provides one insight into groups’ behavior and actions surrounding violence due to racial
framing and conflicts, which not only helps understand the history of the Tulsa Massacre, but also other historical and more current events of similar nature. 2.
Articulate how biased perspectives presented in primary and secondary sources influence what is known or unknown about history.
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Biased perspectives about any event is evident in the use of extreme language and only providing a one-sided perspective or “side” of the story. For this reason, people reading or researching an event will receive a limited version of the whole picture, and may also be led to only believe one side or certain aspects of an event, which may then lead to a larger misunderstanding of an event. When people read or hear, etc. unbalanced information which may give an unfair or limited picture of the story, such as from media for example, people may take that information at face value and not do any further research from credible sources, and then go and spread the word about that unbalanced information they have, which then leads to more and more people having unbalanced information of an event. This can then influence what
people know or do not know about any event in history. For example, this can be applied to the current event of the riots of the Black Lives Matter movement really taking off after the death of
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George Floyd by a white male police officer. One news network reports a riot as civilians being reckless and violent and uncalled for which then paints the picture of protestors being a problem to be dealt with by law enforcement by force, whereas another news outlet reports the
same event as a peaceful protest of people using their right to peaceful protest to stand up for peoples’ rights in which law enforcement force was uncalled for. This information is then spread
to many, many people and may cause those people consuming the information to not do further
research about an event or to further research only focused on one part of the story, so then people only know a one-sided view of an event. This information is then repeated and written about in articles or the internet and is how the information lives on and becomes a part of history. What is known about that history is from those things written and collected–the biases and perspectives presented in those represent what is “known” about an event. If there are any missing perspectives, that will be the history that is unknown. 3.
Identify the perspectives that you think are missing from your historical event’s narrative.
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Unknown history exists due to missing perspectives. A missing perspective about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 could potentially paint the event in a whole new light or shed new information on the event that wouldn’t otherwise be known. For example, I did not find any firsthand accounts of the elevator incident between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page. There were different accounts of what happened here, but the newspapers wrote and spread news about it as if Dick Rowland, a young black man, assaulted Sarah Page, a young white woman elevator operator. There are rumors about what other people near the elevator heard or said about it, but there are no documented words from Dick Rowland or Sarah Page themselves about the incident, yet this is the event which ultimately led to the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 starting. If either of these missing perspectives were known, then we could perhaps truly know what actually happened in the elevator. I would even say that since it’s not known now, it seems like it also was not known then in 1921 either, since it seems like someone said the man assaulted the woman and just ran with that information. That information spread like wildfire, and caused the whole series of events. Considering missing perspectives, this event may have had a drastically different outcome and perhaps would not even have happened had someone stopped and investigated and had talked to Dick Rowland or Sarah Page directly and had gotten down to the bottom of it.
Part 4: Connecting the Past With the Present
1.
Explain how researching its historical roots helped improve your understanding of your current event.
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Extensively researching the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 along with considering bias, perspectives, context, and narratives of various kinds of sources of the event can be seen as some historical roots of my current event: George Floyd’s murder and subsequent Black Lives Matter movement. My research question was “How did social perspective impact the lives of African Americans following the Tulsa Massacre of 1921?” This question essentially aims to explore the effects of the Tulsa Massacre on the lives of African Americans after the event. In order to understand what happened afterwards, one must explore the events of the Tulsa Massacre and events leading up to it in order to try to understand the whole picture, or at least as much about
the event as possible. If the event in its entirety is not researched, there may be significant events, key figures’, or other perspectives or narratives that could be missed, which would limit the understanding of not only the massacre itself, but the effects afterwards as well. Because I needed to understand as much as I could about the Tulsa Massacre, I was able to gain a deeper 5
understanding of the historical roots of systemic racism and acts of racism that occur today, such as the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movement. 2.
Articulate how questioning your assumptions, beliefs, and values may benefit you as an individual.
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Perhaps understanding historical roots of an event is like individuals understanding their thoughts and actions about an event. In order for one to gain insight into how they think and what they do/things they act on, one must research their own “historical roots” of what makes them who they are–including one’s assumptions, beliefs, and values. Questioning my own assumptions, beliefs, and values would benefit me as an individual. Over time, we gain new experiences and new knowledge which may alter our thoughts and/or personality and therefore
things that make us who we are–our assumptions, beliefs, and values. Over time, we gain more experiences and grow as individuals. With time and gained experiences we gain insight into those experiences or perspectives of those experiences which may change the way we think about things, how and what we act on, and gain new knowledge and (hopefully) become wiser. Taking time to realize this about ourselves and examine or question our own beliefs and values may give us more insight into different aspects of ourselves such as why we maintain a particular religious belief or anything about how we go about our daily lives–our job we have, the friends we have, what we focus on in life, etc.--questioning all these things may allow us to more deeply understand human behavior or thought processes which gives us a deeper understanding of the world in general. If we have the capability to think critically enough to question our own beliefs and values, we can only continue to grow as individuals in emotional and intellectual insight of ourselves and the people and world surrounding us. It’s valuable to be
aware of our assumptions, beliefs, and values when encountering our personal, academic, and professional lives because being aware of those things helps us gain insight into and understand how we go about our personal lives, how we approach academics, what kind of job we have, and how we choose to act on things related to those aspects of our lives.There are potentially endless benefits of questioning ourselves–we can continue to pursue new experiences which then influences how we go on to gain other experiences and so on and so forth. 3.
Discuss how being a more historically informed citizen may help you understand contemporary issues.
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As we continue to go through life gaining experiences and knowledge, we naturally become more historically informed as we move along into our future. Going further and taking responsibility to become a more historically informed citizen doing a little more research and gaining knowledge from things in history may help us understand contemporary issues that we come across. If we have some prior or at least some basic knowledge of events of past economic
depressions for example, we can perhaps be more prepared in the present and may be able to see signs of a future incoming economic depression. This can not only help us to understand current events as it relates to the economy such as inflation, housing market, stock market, international relations, etc. and be more knowledgeable of our surroundings, but can also help us to live our personal lives better. Further expanding on the example of economic depression, we can change our personal spending habits in our daily lives to prepare for a depression. By being a more historically informed citizen, we may gain insight into causes and effects of historical events and can then further become citizens who take action to prevent similar events
from happening again. Being a more historically informed citizen may help us think more critically of contemporary issues and events and may allow us to be more knowledgeable or more insightful to contemporary issues. If we are able to gain more insight into things, we can 6
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perhaps become wiser about both historical and contemporary issues.
References
Messer, Chris M; Beamon, Krystal; Bell, Patricia A. (2012). The Tulsa riot of 1921: Collective violence and racial frames. Western Journal of Black Studies, 37
(1), 50–60.
Karatzas, K. D. (2018). Interpreting violence: The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and its legacy. European Journal of American Culture, 37(2), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.2.127_1
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