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Authors: Scott Ellsworth

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The next day, the
Tribune,
which at that time rather rarely printed front-page photographs, carried one each of Belton and Harmon. The newspaper reported that, in Harmon’s case, “the chances are that she will turn state’s evidence in the hope that she will escape heavy punishment by so doing.” As for Belton, the
Tribune
stated that he planned to “escape on a plea of insanity.”
58

Tulsa courthouse. Most prisoners were held in the jail on its top floor.

Early on Saturday morning, Homer Nida died. The same day, Roy Belton and Raymond Sharp were arraigned in court, and each pleaded not guilty to the charges. That afternoon’s
Tribune
quoted Nida’s widow as stating: “I hope that justice will be done for they have taken an innocent life and ruined my happiness. They deserve to be mobbed but the other way is better.”
59

Other Tulsans thought differently. Shortly before eleven o’clock on that same Saturday evening, several men in cars began to assemble in front of the courthouse. “In a few minutes,” the
World
later reported, “the handful of men outside the building had increased to hundreds and shortly a thousand people blocked the streets in curiosity and anticipation.” About fifty men in the crowd were armed with pistols and shotguns, and some had their faces covered with handkerchiefs. Soon, a delegation of these men entered the courthouse, and asked Sheriff Woolley for Belton. “Let the law take its course, boys,” the sheriff was reported to have replied. “The electric chair will get him before long, but you know this is no way to interfere with the law.” The men, however, were adamant, and they disarmed Woolley and ordered him to secure the release of Belton, who had been placed in a cell normally reserved for black prisoners on the top floor. Harmon and Sharp were left in their cells, and when Belton was led outside the courthouse, it was reported that onlookers cheered as his captors shouted, “We got him boys. We’ve got him.”
60

Belton’s hands were bound, and he was placed inside Homer Nida’s taxicab, which earlier had been stolen from the authorities. A large caravan of cars was formed, and after some zig-zagging through town, the line of cars, “nearly a mile long,” drove to the spot near Red Fork where Nida had been shot. The city police arrived at the courthouse after Belton had been taken away, and according to Police Chief John Gustafson, “We did the best thing, jumped into cars and followed the ever increasing mob.”
61

Once at the desired spot, Belton’s captors took him from the car and began to ask him why he had killed Nida. He denied that he had done so, and denied ever making a confession. The inquisition of Belton might have continued, but members of the crowd were anxious, and cries of “Where’s the rope” and “Don’t waste time” were to be heard. A rumor spread that a posse was in close pursuit, so the entire group moved to a spot along the Jenks road, about three miles southwest of Tulsa. By the time the crowd reassembled, it was reported that at least a thousand cars were present, and that women and children were among the onlookers. Most of the Tulsa police force had arrived, too, but they were instructed by Chief Gustafson not to intervene. Gustafson later justified his order by stating that “any demonstration from an officer would have started gun play and dozens of innocent people would have been killed and injured.” Instead, the local police kept the onlookers from getting too close to Belton and his captors, and it has been reported that they also helped to direct traffic.
62

Belton was led to the west side of the road, underneath a large signboard owned by the Federal Tire Company. A rope was secured from a nearby farmhouse, and a noose was thrown around his neck. He asked for a cigarette, which he smoked as he silently stared at his captors. Roy Belton was then lynched.
63
His body hung for eleven minutes, during which time one of his executioners reportedly yelled: “Don’t shoot! Don’t anybody shoot! Let him hang and suffer like Nida suffered!”
64
The
World
later reported that “sudden pandemonium broke loose” when the body of Roy Belton dropped to the ground.

Hundreds rushed over the prostrate form to get bits of the clothing. The rope was cut into bits for souvenirs. His trousers and shoes were torn into bits and the mob fairly fought over gruesome souvenirs.
An ambulance was finally pushed through the jam of automobiles. The body was carried to the car, late arrivals still grabbing for bits of clothing on the now almost nude form.
65

Belton’s body was then taken back to an undertaker in the city, and it was reported that a crowd of several hundred people “gathered despite the late hour and insisted upon viewing the remains.”
66

Police Chief John Gustafson said later that the lynching, while “regrettable,” was “probably inevitable because of the great feeling which had been aroused by the cruel manner in which Homer Nida was killed.” Furthermore, he stated: “I do not condone mob law—in fact, I am absolutely opposed to it—but it is my honest opinion that the lynching of Belton will prove of real benefit to Tulsa and vicinity. It was an object lesson to the hijackers and auto thieves, and I believe it will be taken as such.” Echoing the police chief, Sheriff Wool-ley stated that he thought the affair would prove beneficial to Tulsa because “it shows to the criminal that the men of Tulsa mean business.” Tulsa Mayor T. D. Evans was out of town during the affair.
67

The
World
called the event “a righteous protest” and stated: “There was not a vestige of the mob spirit in the act of Saturday night. It was citizenship, outraged by government inefficiency and a too tender regard to the professional criminal.” The
Tribune
editorialized that “lynch law is never justified,” but criticized the courts and “our high officials” rather than the lynchers of Roy Belton. The
World
also criticized government officials, including Sheriff Woolley. It reserved special venom, however, for Governor James B. Robertson, Acting Governor Waldrop, and Lieutenant Governor Trapp, all of whom publicly condemned the lynching. The

World
accused them of having created a “pardoning orgy,” and concluded that “it is not government we have here in Oklahoma but a hideous travesty.” Furthermore, the newspaper ominously stated, “We predict that unless conditions are speedily improved,” the lynching of Belton “will not be the last by any means.”
68

Of Tulsa’s three newspapers, only the
Star,
the city’s black weekly, announced itself as “unalterably opposed” to the event. The editor of the
Star,
A. J. Smitherman, declared, “There is no crime, however atrocious, that justifies mob violence.” The black newspaper reported that, “sad to relate, Oklahoma shook hands with the American lynching state of Georgia last Saturday night at Tulsa and Sunday night at Oklahoma City by [the] lynching of a white boy and a colored boy by mob violence.” The
Star
added, prophetically: “The lynching of Roy Belton explodes the theory that a prisoner is safe on top of the Court House from mob violence.”
69

Chapter 3
Race Riot

 

Roy Belton’s death was of special significance to black Tulsans, whose brethren throughout the state were more and more the victims of white mobs. Any faith in the city’s white law enforcement officials had been shattered by the events of 1920. If a white could be lynched in the “Magic City,” what was to stop a mob from lynching a black? This question loomed large the next spring.

I

 

Opportunities for young black men in Tulsa in 1921 were severely circumscribed, regardless of education; therefore it is perhaps not very unusual that Dick Rowland had dropped out of Booker T. Washington High School to go to work downtown. One common occupation for Tulsa’s teenage black males in the early 1920s was to work at the white-owned and white-patronized shoe shining parlors on Main Street. Robert Fairchild, who during his after-school hours worked with Rowland, recalled that these young people were paid five dollars a week. “But,” he added, “the tips were just out of sight. At that time, you see, Tulsa was in the oil boom, and everybody would go to bed poor as Lazarus, and wake up rich as country butter. They didn’t know what to do with their money, and they’d come down there and get a shine, and they’d give you a dollar as [soon as they’d give you] fifteen cents.”
1

There were no toilet facilities for the bootblacks, so the owner of the shine parlor where Rowland worked arranged for his employees to use the restroom on the top floor of the nearby Drexel building. To get to the restroom, the bootblacks would have to ride up the elevator, which was operated by white women. So, as he often would do, on Monday morning, May 30, 1921, nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland went into the Drexel building to use the restroom. The elevator operator was a young white girl named Sarah Page, who was about seventeen years old. Minutes later, Dick Rowland ran out of the elevator. What actually transpired is probably forever clouded in obscurity, but many white Tulsans soon came to believe that Rowland had attacked the girl, scratched her hands, and tore her clothes.
2

But there are many other accounts as to what happened, perhaps the most common being that Rowland accidentally stepped on Page’s foot in the elevator, causing her to lurch back, and when he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling, she screamed.
3
In any event there is no real evidence that Dick Rowland attempted to assault Sarah Page. The preliminary police report on the incident did not mention Page by name, and the police did not arrest Rowland until the next day. More importantly, those who knew Rowland at the time do not believe that he would have done such a thing, and as Walter White of the NAACP later wondered: why were so many people ready to believe that Rowland was so ignorant as to attempt a rape in a crowded office building within earshot of many people?
4

Main Street, looking south from Third, in the early 1920s. The Drexel building is the fifth building down on the left. Across the street, barely visible beneath the Boston Shoe Store, is a sign for a shine parlor.
Courtesy of the McFarlin Library, University of ’Iblsa

Dick Rowland was arrested by two Tulsa police officers, one black and one white, on Tuesday. While the police were quietly conducting their investigation, the Tulsa
Tribune
decided to portray the incident in a vastly different light. What the Tuesday, May 31, 1921, issue of this newspaper said may never be known in its entirety. When the early issues of the
Tribune
were later microfilmed, someone had ripped out a front-page article and removed part of the editorial page. The original bound volumes of the newspaper have also been destroyed. However, in his 1946 thesis on the riot, Loren Gill stated that the
Tribune
“carried the following inflammatory news item prominently displayed on the front page”:

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