MATTIE and TYLER BRIDGEWATER

Tulsa: where race and class are joined .. again?

Within the past several days, the racial ugliness and death in South Florida have shifted (or more accurately, returned) to Tulsa.  Two more marginal white males have been taken into custody for wanton killing of several persons because they appear "black".  The Yin-Yang media (in this instance, ABC News) has rushed to obfuscate racial connections in spite of Face Book evidence to the contrary.

Mattie Bridgewater was my great-aunt, the sister of my grandfather.  I grew up on stories about the racial pogrom that took place in Tulsa in the 1920's, where they lived and were a part of the thriving Black Wall Street movement of that day.  In his book of that name, Hannibal B. Johnson describes the Greenwood District phenomenon of black entrepreneurship and economic development.

I was told stories of how my relatives fled an on-coming armed white mob; bent on robbery and murder.   It was clear from those stories that the mob was motivated by economic jealousy inflamed by race and class.  Uncle Tyler is described in the book as Tulsa's first black physician and real estate magnate.  I have in my files a complete listing of properties owned by my aunt and uncle.  They now form the campus of Oklahoma State University, Tulsa; thanks in part to the sorry history of federal housing programs and agencies.

Fast-forward to yesterday, and we find the Repoob's candidate for the Presidency in 2012 waving the bloody shirt to rabble in St. Louis.  The citizens of this country can't afford to return to this sorry past.


Pleading for continued silence and waiting to a better time to discuss this threat to our safety and security as a nation is not the wise tactic.  After thirty years of racial double-speak in politics; joined now by gender and class double-speak, the people must awaken and take action to put an end to the spread of this disease.

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