By Joseph Russell Benjamin Palm-Goodwin
My family coordinated and financed the entire rebuilding of Greenwood, so I know the bodies are not there, based on all the research and oral history I received.
The truth is, the massive amount of murdered black residences were dumped into the Arkansas River, floating down towards Muskogee. On the morning of June 3, the mayor of Muskogee called Tulsa’s mayor, declaring, “we have a problem. All those dead nergoes you murdered are floating onto the banks of Muskogee. We are not going to be responsible for cleaning up the mess you made.”
As such, a train was dispatched to recover the corpses. The train line used to connect tulsa to Muskogee was known as the Katy line, made famous by the Ku Klux Klan anthem K K K Katy. This line connected Tulsa to Muskogee, continuing westward. However, if you examine the maps from pre-1921 and I think 1923 or 1925, you will see the current area where the train depot is located, drastically changed.
This is an important fact, as the political rumblings coming from “white Tulsa” were squarely aimed at not having a ”negroized Tulsa” like Muskogee, a popular and controversial article published in the Tulsa Tribune, circa 1920. The political and civic leaders of “white Tulsa” had been planning on removing the black residents from Greenwood since statehood, this was done in order to build the city’s version of a union station type train hub.
This development was crucial for many Tulsa businessmen, who owned hotels that would benefit from the increased tourism to Tulsa, via the train. Thus, there was an economic agenda behind the racist actions of “white Tulsa” towards the blacks who called Indian territory home decades before the Archers declared Tulsa a city in 1898. Moreover, with the end of the Great War, numerous oil companies went out of business, as the demand for fuel was no longer needed to fuel the ships sending troops and supplies over to Europe.
This fact created an environment for the poorer, uneducated whites to become envious of their wealthy black counterparts, whose economy was unaffected by the economic downturn, as a segregated economy was the accepted norm in those days. There in fact was no attack of Dick Roland or Sarah Page, as both knew each other for months, as she was the elevator girl in the only building allowing the boot black to use the bathroom. They knew each other, as both were originally from Sand Springs, she was an orphan at one of Charles Page’s houses, and he a famous high school running back at Booker T Washington, Sand Springs.
Thus, the massacre was a coordinated attack, under the ruse of a racially motivated attack. Ironically, two of the three women who claimed to have witnessed the attacks were the of wives to Tate Brady, the hotel owner credited for encouraging the destruction of Greenwood, and Richard Jones, publisher of the Tulsa Tribune. This is why the Tribune published in its’ evening edition a hateful article encouraging the massacre of blacks. Look for the evidence in the May 31 edition, entitled, “Lynch all negroes tonight”. It has been conveniently removed from all records, to cover up and hide the crimes committed by Tulsa’s “civic and political” leaders of “white Tulsa.”
Fortunately, Brady killed himself a few years thereafter, shooting himself in the head, while he sat at his kitchen table. His Jefferson Davis inspired house still stands, located on north Denver. Devastated by his son’s death and the truth that there was no way out of his mounting debts, as no “respectable Tulsans” wanted to continue to do business with him for his racial inspired and hateful tactics, he became associated with everything wrong with Tulsa.”
Sadly, the Tribune didn’t receive its comeuppance until seven decades later, when in 1992, the paper published its last edition. Ironic that this truth is never shared, meaning why the massacre of Greenwood cannot be taught in the history books, because what is written is in fact part of the cover up, hence the silence.
Anyhow, that is where the bodies are buried, because once train tracks are laid down by the “White Man”, they will never come up or be removed.
