It Is Written

Black Wall Street

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants:

Series Code: IIW

00:19 >>John Bradshaw: This is It Is Written.
00:21 I'm John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me.
00:24 Have you ever wondered what you're actually capable of?
00:28 Now, I don't mean do you have greatness within,
00:30 could you complete an Ironman,
00:33 could you run a Fortune 500 company.
00:35 I don't mean that.
00:36 Quite the opposite, really.
00:39 There are times, far too many times,
00:42 that we see the darkest side of humanity.
00:45 What does it take for a person to go
00:47 to one of those really dark places?
00:50 What do you have to have inside yourself
00:52 that makes you capable of going there?
00:55 ♪[Sad music]♪
00:57 In 1921, people who otherwise would have been considered,
01:02 for the most part, decent, law-abiding,
01:06 upstanding members of society,
01:08 took part in the massacre of 300 innocent civilians.
01:14 And the likelihood is you've never heard anything about it.
01:19 Here's some details.
01:21 Three hundred people murdered.
01:23 Thousands more injured.
01:26 Property damaged on a massive scale.
01:29 Businesses, homes, hotels, theaters,
01:35 personal property-- destroyed.
01:38 Insurance companies refused to pay out the victims
01:41 of this, this unfathomable horror.
01:45 And nobody was brought to justice.
01:49 The proper authorities weren't alerted
01:52 until well after they could have made a difference.
01:55 In fact, there was a concerted effort to keep help
01:59 from arriving to assist the victims.
02:01 And in case you missed it, 300 people were killed.
02:06 Hundreds were injured.
02:08 Ten thousand people were left homeless.
02:11 And 40 or so city blocks were burned to the ground.
02:17 So where did this take place?
02:20 Yugoslavia? The Soviet Union?
02:23 Cambodia?
02:24 No.
02:25 It happened here in the United States of America.
02:29 In fact, right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
02:33 right here on this spot where I am now.
02:37 The worst civil disturbance in American history.
02:42 It's an incredibly little-known atrocity.
02:45 The vast majority of people have got no idea
02:49 that it ever happened,
02:52 in spite of it being one of the worst incidents
02:54 of racial violence in American history.
02:59 And given the history of this country,
03:02 that's really saying something.
03:06 ♪[Folk music]♪
03:09 In 1921, Greenwood, Oklahoma, was a prosperous community.
03:15 In fact, it was the wealthiest black community
03:18 in the United States.
03:19 It was known as the Black Wall Street.
03:23 But on Memorial Day weekend that year, Greenwood's prosperity,
03:27 in fact, Greenwood itself, came to an awful, abrupt end.
03:36 Greenwood was populated exclusively
03:38 by African-Americans, many of whom were very prosperous
03:42 and ran successful businesses.
03:45 Because of Jim Crow laws, Greenwood's residents
03:48 weren't able to shop at white-owned businesses in Tulsa.
03:52 A hundred years ago Greenwood had its own hospital,
03:56 many doctors, including a nationally-renowned surgeon,
04:00 a library, schools, hotels, theaters, and a whole lot more.
04:07 At the time, Tulsa was a hotbed of the biting, bitter racism
04:10 that plagued the United States.
04:13 Between 1882 and 1968 there were almost 5,000 known lynchings
04:22 spread across more than 40 states.
04:24 Experts agree that there were undoubtedly more,
04:27 maybe thousands more.
04:30 Almost 3/4 of the people who were lynched
04:34 were African-American.
04:36 Think about what's involved in this.
04:39 Lynching was murder carried out by a mob
04:42 and often with the cooperation of law enforcement.
04:47 If law enforcement didn't actively participate,
04:50 and there were times the law couldn't prevent a mob
04:52 from doing what it wanted to do,
04:55 law enforcement officers often refused to try to prevent
04:59 the murder and were complicit in what went on.
05:04 Huge crowds would come out to watch lynchings.
05:06 Now, these weren't people coming to witness a public execution
05:10 that had been ordered by a court of law;
05:13 they were coming to watch mob justice.
05:15 They were coming to witness a murder.
05:18 Photographs of lynching victims would frequently be taken
05:21 and then turned into postcards,
05:23 which would be sent around the country.
05:26 There were times that the protagonists of or witnesses
05:30 to lynchings would cut off the fingers and so forth
05:35 of lynching victims and keep them as souvenirs.
05:40 So we're asking the question,
05:42 "What kind of person do you have to be to be capable of that?"
05:47 Now, first some background to the Tulsa race riot,
05:50 or the Greenwood massacre, as it's often called.
05:53 Before it had taken place, a 19-year-old white man,
05:57 Roy Belton, admitted to having murdered a taxi driver.
06:02 An angry mob seized him from the place where he was being held,
06:06 took him a few miles out of town, and lynched him.
06:09 What were law enforcement officials doing?
06:11 They were there,
06:12 keeping the peace and diverting or directing the traffic.
06:18 Up until this time, 20 African-Americans
06:21 had been lynched in the state of Oklahoma, but never in Tulsa.
06:26 Well, now, black Tulsans realized or figured
06:28 that if the white population was prepared to lynch a white man,
06:32 it wouldn't be long before they lynched a black man.
06:36 And sooner, rather than later, their fears were realized.
06:41 On May the 30th, 1921, a 19-year-old black shoeshine boy
06:47 named Dick Rowland entered the elevator of the Drexel Building
06:51 here at 319 South Main Street in Tulsa.
06:55 Why was he in the elevator in the Drexel Building?
06:58 Well, he wanted to use the bathroom, and as a black man,
07:02 he couldn't use the bathrooms that were used
07:04 by the white population,
07:06 and there was a colored bathroom on the top floor
07:10 of the Drexel Building.
07:12 Now, exactly what happened inside that elevator
07:15 isn't known, but it seemed that as the elevator began to move,
07:19 it lurched, causing the elevator operator,
07:23 a 17-year-old girl-- 17-year-old white girl--
07:27 named Sarah Page, to trip and fall forward.
07:31 It might be that Dick Rowland tripped and fell forward.
07:35 But whatever happened, in that moment,
07:37 young Sarah Page let out a shout of surprise.
07:42 And that shout of surprise ended up being
07:44 a young man's death sentence.
07:47 I'll tell you why in just a moment.
07:50 ♪[Music]♪
07:59 >>John: It's the challenge that confronts
08:01 every human heart: evil.
08:04 How can you be kept from sin?
08:06 And why do everyday people commit truly despicable acts?
08:10 Get the free offer,
08:11 "Evil: The Challenge of the Sinful Heart."
08:14 Simply call now: 800-253-300,
08:17 800-253-3000.
08:19 It's yours free.
08:21 Visit us online at iiwoffer.com.
08:25 Call 800-253-3000.
08:30 >>John Bradshaw: Thanks for joining me today
08:31 on It Is Written.
08:33 In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a booming city.
08:37 ♪[Solemn folk music]♪
08:38 Greenwood was a prosperous black suburb of Tulsa.
08:42 There were plenty of people in Tulsa, though,
08:44 who resented that prosperity,
08:46 and as a result, that Greenwood no longer exists.
08:54 A 19-year-old shoeshine boy named Dick Rowland
08:57 took the elevator to the top floor of the Drexel Building
09:00 at 319 South Main Street to use the colored bathroom.
09:05 Now, something happened inside that elevator that caused
09:07 the young white female elevator operator to scream.
09:11 It seems that the elevator lurched and that Sarah Page
09:16 fell in the direction of the young man.
09:18 ♪[Sad music]♪
09:23 Dick Rowland knew that that scream
09:25 was likely his death sentence.
09:27 He ran out of the Drexel Building as fast as he could,
09:29 hoping that no one would see him.
09:31 But somebody did see him.
09:33 They heard a white girl scream
09:35 and saw a young black man running.
09:38 Now, in this case, two and two did not equal four.
09:42 But this was Tulsa in 1921.
09:46 It wasn't long and he'd been arrested and locked up
09:49 in the Tulsa County Courthouse.
09:52 And shortly after that, a white mob arrived, demanding justice.
09:58 They wanted Dick Rowland lynched.
10:02 Sarah Page said repeatedly that Rowland had not harmed her.
10:07 She wasn't hurt, her clothes weren't ruffled,
10:10 but the police insisted that this was a case
10:12 of attempted rape.
10:14 She refused to sign a statement saying that that was so.
10:18 But there was no way the facts were going to get in the way
10:21 of an opportunity to put a young black man in his place.
10:24 His place being, in this case, the end of a rope.
10:33 ♪[Sad music fades]♪
10:35 Now, there was absolutely no basis in fact
10:39 for what the mob was claiming and demanding.
10:42 But here you had people you would assume were otherwise
10:45 law-abiding and responsible
10:48 demanding the death of an innocent young man
10:51 simply because of the hatred that existed in their heart.
10:55 Now, there was no lack of things fanning those flames.
10:59 It's said that more than 3,000 people in Tulsa at the time
11:02 were members of the Ku Klux Klan,
11:05 and there was a white-owned newspaper at the time,
11:07 The Tulsa Tribune,
11:09 that ran a number of editorials that were overtly racist.
11:13 One headline said, "A Negro Assaults a White Girl."
11:17 ♪[Ominous music]♪
11:19 After Rowland's arrest, the Tribune's front page screamed,
11:22 "To Lynch Negro Tonight."
11:25 But a large number of Greenwood men decided they were not going
11:29 to let that happen.
11:30 They knew the shoeshine boy had done nothing wrong,
11:33 and they weren't about to sit by
11:35 while yet another innocent young black man was executed
11:38 by a mob for a crime he didn't commit.
11:42 So that group of men,
11:43 among them World War I veterans who had served their country,
11:48 armed, came down here, the site of the courthouse at that time,
11:54 and they confronted that white mob of more than 2,000.
11:59 That mob had massed right here in this very area.
12:04 In the tension that followed, a shot was fired.
12:08 And it was all on.
12:10 ♪[Ominous music]♪
12:11 What followed was mayhem.
12:15 White Tulsans who didn't have guns stole guns and ammunition
12:20 from gun shops or hardware stores,
12:23 and they headed for Greenwood.
12:25 Greenwood, a symbol of black progress,
12:28 was burned to the ground-- completely.
12:33 More than 20 black churches, a hospital,
12:36 a funeral home, a school, a theater,
12:41 doctors' and lawyers' offices, hotels, grocery stores,
12:46 restaurants, and hundreds and hundreds of homes--
12:51 more than a thousand structures were all completely destroyed.
12:58 ♪[Solemn music]♪
12:59 Homes were looted.
13:01 Anything that could be taken was taken.
13:04 In years following, black residents who came back
13:07 to the area knew that those possessions
13:09 that they had left behind
13:11 were now in white-owned homes and businesses.
13:15 Now, if that was all, that would be bad enough.
13:19 But the human toll was much higher.
13:24 Three hundred people were killed, murdered, slaughtered,
13:30 for no other reason than the color of their skin.
13:34 If you were black, you were a target.
13:37 And there was no shortage of people willing to take aim.
13:41 So what does it take to enable a person to cross that bridge
13:46 and get to a place where they're willing to join
13:48 in a mob murder of people from their own community,
13:52 people who lived only blocks away,
13:54 people they interacted with,
13:55 people they passed by in the street?
13:58 How do you get from here to there?
14:00 Now, there was plenty that was allowed to cause the pressure
14:03 to build up in Tulsa--
14:05 the race-baiting newspaper-- The Tulsa Tribune--
14:08 the racism that was endemic in society,
14:10 the Ku Klux Klan, jealousy of the prosperity of black Tulsans.
14:15 But none of those things can be allowed to be used as excuses
14:19 for an atrocity like this.
14:20 People live with and deal with frustration of all kind
14:24 all the time without resorting to anything like that.
14:29 I'll give you an interesting case to consider for comparison.
14:32 In 1921, the same year as the Black Wall Street was destroyed
14:38 by a white mob and 300 people were murdered,
14:41 two Italian-American immigrants were convicted of robbery
14:45 and murder.
14:46 The crime took place in Braintree, Massachusetts,
14:50 and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted
14:54 of the crime.
14:55 There was an uproar.
14:57 Academics weighed in.
14:59 People protested that the two were innocent.
15:02 Writers and artists pleaded that the courts would reconsider.
15:07 Even Albert Einstein signed a petition.
15:10 Workers went on strike.
15:12 After the two men were executed,
15:14 200,000 people came out to watch the funeral procession.
15:18 This was a big, big deal because there were those who believed,
15:23 rightly or wrongly, that a miscarriage of justice
15:27 was being carried out.
15:28 But 1,400 miles away, at right around the same time,
15:33 300 people were murdered in cold blood,
15:37 and the silence was deafening.
15:42 So what has to take place in a human heart
15:45 to make it possible for somebody to go there?
15:49 "Racism," you might say.
15:51 Okay, but not every racist takes a gun and shoots somebody dead
15:56 and then burns down their home or their town.
16:00 "Mob mentality."
16:02 Okay, but people on that day knew the difference
16:04 between right and wrong.
16:06 There were many white people who sheltered and protected
16:08 African-Americans from the mob and saved their lives.
16:12 People knew better.
16:14 Now, here's why this is so important to you and me.
16:17 This is what the Bible says in Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9:
16:22 "The heart is deceitful above all things,
16:26 and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
16:30 Psalm 14 starts with these words:
16:33 "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'
16:38 They are corrupt, they've done abominable works,
16:41 there is none who does good.
16:44 The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
16:47 to see if there are any who understand,
16:50 who seek God.
16:52 They've all turned aside,
16:54 they have together become corrupt;
16:56 there is none who does good, no, not one."
17:01 The Apostle Paul quotes Psalm 14 in Romans chapter 3,
17:05 applying those verses to his day and, by extension, to ours.
17:10 So what we read in the Bible tells us that we are capable
17:13 of the most disastrous actions.
17:16 There lurks within every one of us the capacity for real evil.
17:22 So how does a person live a life that doesn't include
17:26 hate and violence?
17:30 What happened with the destruction
17:31 of the Black Wall Street reveals a spiritual problem.
17:36 Hatred is a spiritual problem. Racism is a spiritual problem.
17:42 All sin is a spiritual problem.
17:46 But thank God that the Bible makes clear that there is a way
17:50 that we can live without what the Bible calls
17:53 "the old man" of sin dominating our lives.
17:57 More in a moment.
17:59 ♪[Music]♪
18:07 >>John: Thank you for remembering
18:09 that It Is Written exists
18:10 because of the kindness of people just like you.
18:13 To support this international life-changing ministry,
18:16 please call us now at 800-253-3000.
18:20 You can send your tax-deductible gift
18:22 to the address on your screen
18:23 or you can visit us online at itiswritten.com.
18:27 Thank you for your prayers and for your financial support.
18:30 Our number again is 800-253-3000,
18:34 or you can visit us online at itiswritten.com.
18:38 [Artillery fires]
18:39 >>John: Just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor
18:41 in December of 1941, Japan attacked the Philippines.
18:47 In the midst of the death and destruction,
18:50 tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers
18:53 were captured and forced to march
18:56 on what would become known as the Bataan Death March.
18:59 ♪[Sad music]♪
19:01 The horror of that march is almost impossible for people
19:03 living in peacetime to imagine.
19:06 And so we ask ourselves, "Why?"
19:10 Why does a loving God allow such horrors to take place?
19:15 The answers don't come easy.
19:18 Join It Is Written on location in the Philippines
19:21 for "The March of Death" as we explore together
19:24 that challenging question: "Why? Why me?"
19:29 "The March of Death."
19:31 Watch now on It Is Written TV.
19:38 >>John Bradshaw: "In the beginning God created
19:40 the heaven and the earth,"
19:42 and when He did so, He gave to the human family
19:45 the ability and freedom to think and to do.
19:49 We were given freedom of choice.
19:52 But after sin entered the world,
19:54 we inherited from Adam and Eve a fallen nature.
19:59 We're born with a tendency towards evil.
20:04 David wrote in Psalm 58:3,
20:06 "The wicked are estranged from the womb:
20:10 they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies."
20:17 The Bible shows us what we're truly capable of,
20:20 both for good and for evil,
20:23 and in some Bible personalities, you see both.
20:27 We'll take a look at one incredible example
20:29 in just a moment.
20:31 There was a lot of race-based hatred in the Bible,
20:35 and some of the most breathtaking examples
20:38 of murderous hatred are found where you'd least expect.
20:43 In Jesus' day, the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other.
20:48 On one occasion, Jesus was heading to Jerusalem,
20:51 and He was planning to spend the night en route
20:54 in a Samaritan village.
20:56 James and John went ahead to get things ready.
21:00 But the Samaritans told James and John to get lost.
21:03 They didn't want any Jews spending the night
21:05 in their village.
21:06 James and John were furious.
21:08 They came to Jesus and they said,
21:10 "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven
21:14 and burn them up, like the prophet Elijah did?"
21:18 Now, think about this.
21:19 This was James and John, John who wrote the Gospel of John,
21:23 and the little Johns, and the book of Revelation.
21:26 They were asking Jesus if they could incinerate a village
21:31 full of people.
21:32 Where did this kind of hatred come from?
21:37 Now, consider the Apostle Paul.
21:39 This is that case study I said we'd look at.
21:42 Acts 14 says, rather matter-of-factly,
21:46 "Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there;
21:50 and having persuaded the multitudes,
21:52 they stoned Paul
21:54 and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead."
21:58 Now, this was straight-up religious hatred.
22:02 He was brutalized simply because of what he believed.
22:06 Acts 21:31 is speaking of Paul when it rather casually says,
22:11 "And as they went about to kill him..."
22:14 In Acts chapter 23, the authorities have to protect Paul
22:17 from a mob because they fear that that mob
22:20 is literally gonna tear Paul to pieces.
22:23 Later in the same chapter,
22:24 a group of 40 men take a pledge that they're not gonna eat
22:28 until after they have killed Paul.
22:31 Now, they didn't kill Paul,
22:33 and the Bible doesn't say exactly what happened to them,
22:35 so that means they either broke their pledge
22:37 or got...really hungry.
22:41 Paul was persecuted owing to a blind hatred brought about
22:45 simply because of what he believed.
22:49 Now, earlier in the book of Acts,
22:51 it was Paul doing the persecuting.
22:54 The great Apostle Paul, who wrote so much
22:57 of the New Testament,
22:58 was himself responsible for the deaths of many people.
23:04 Again, based solely upon what they believed.
23:10 Even Paul was capable of the worst crimes.
23:14 And we've seen this many times around our world.
23:18 Northern Ireland was divided owing to a political dispute
23:21 drawn basically along religious lines.
23:24 In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church
23:26 ruthlessly persecuted millions of Protestants.
23:29 But there were times those Protestants gained
23:32 the ascendancy, and they became the persecutors.
23:36 ♪[Melancholy music]♪
23:41 So who does this?
23:43 A lot of crime, a lot of evil is carried out by people
23:46 you would not think are capable of doing so.
23:50 But we all are. We are fallen.
23:54 It's what sin has done.
23:57 But here's the really good news in this.
24:01 No one has to cave in to hate or racism or animosity
24:07 or any kind of sin.
24:09 We can all be kept by the grace of God through the power
24:14 of the Holy Spirit at work in our life.
24:18 No matter your situation,
24:19 no matter what you're wrestling with,
24:22 no matter what your background is,
24:23 no matter what your challenge is,
24:26 God can do this for you.
24:29 That's why we pray in the Lord's Prayer,
24:32 "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
24:36 That's Matthew 6:13.
24:39 First Corinthians 10:13 says,
24:41 "No temptation has overtaken you
24:43 except such as is common to man;
24:46 but God is faithful,
24:48 who will not allow you to be tempted
24:49 beyond what you are able,
24:51 but with the temptation will also make the way of escape,
24:56 that you may be able to bear it."
24:58 Philippians 2:13 says that God "works in you both to will
25:03 and to do for His good pleasure."
25:06 Reporting on the aftermath of the destruction of Greenwood,
25:11 The Tulsa Tribune wrote this about black residents returning
25:15 to what was left of their homes:
25:18 "As they passed the city's most traveled streets,
25:22 they held both hands high above their heads,
25:24 their hats in one hand,
25:26 a token of their submission to the white man's authority.
25:30 They will not return to the homes they had
25:33 on Tuesday afternoon, but to heaps of ashes,
25:37 the angry white man's reprisal for the wrong inflicted on them
25:43 by the inferior race."
25:46 So who writes that? Who thinks like that?
25:50 Well, the truth is... people just like you and me,
25:54 but people whose hearts and minds
25:57 are not surrendered to God.
25:59 See, God gave to us freedom of choice.
26:02 If your freedom of choice is not surrendered to Him,
26:05 then there's no place that you are not capable of going in sin.
26:10 But when your life is surrendered to God,
26:13 that's when you're kept out of hate and in the hands of God.
26:18 So how is it with you?
26:20 Are you surrendered to God today,
26:21 or is there something that must be surrendered to Him now?
26:25 If there is, I want to encourage you to give your life,
26:28 to give your freedom of choice completely to God.
26:34 >>John: It's the challenge that confronts
26:36 every human heart: evil.
26:39 How can you be kept from sin?
26:41 And why do everyday people commit truly despicable acts?
26:45 Get the free offer,
26:46 "Evil: The Challenge of the Sinful Heart."
26:49 Simply call now: 800-253-300,
26:52 800-253-3000.
26:54 It's yours free.
26:56 Visit us online at iiwoffer.com.
27:00 Call 800-253-3000.
27:05 >>John Bradshaw: Let's pray together now.
27:07 Our Father in heaven, we realize when we look into the Bible
27:11 what we are truly capable of.
27:14 We look around the world-- we see the depths of sin.
27:18 We realize that could be us; perhaps it has been us.
27:22 I thank You for forgiveness, and I thank You for power,
27:25 the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives keeping us
27:28 where You want us to be kept.
27:31 Lord, the difference between living a life in You
27:35 and a life of sin and shame is Jesus in us.
27:39 Fill us with Your presence.
27:40 Keep us now, I pray,
27:42 in Jesus' name.
27:44 Amen.
27:45 Thank you so much for joining me.
27:47 I'm looking forward to seeing you again next time.
27:49 Until then, remember:
27:51 "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone,
27:55 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
27:59 ♪[Theme music]♪
28:09 ♪[Theme music]♪

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Revised 2020-02-17