Good Morning POU!
As Greenwood Oklahoma grew prosperous, Gurley, its architect and lawman, continued to be accused of being too moderate and racially conciliatory. That changed for a night when he had an encounter with three white men from Tulsa. He was forced to confront the race problem when it arrived on his doorstep.
Ottowa Gurley with other prominent men of Greenwood.
Three white men entered the Gurley hotel and encountered Gurley’s wife, Emma on the second floor. “We’re looking for good time girls” one of the men told Emma. Moments later, OW arrived to find the men harassing his wife. “What is your business here?” Gurley asked them. The men didn’t answer, and Emma spoke up and told OW what the men had said. Gurley rushed at the men and sent them to the ground with a series of punches. The men climbed to their feet and ran towards the stairs to escape but were sent tumbling down them by kicks from OW as he gave chase. The men bolted for the exit and ran away into the night. Beating three white men made Gurley a hero in Greenwood, but it begged the question: if the racial conservative Gurley had resorted to using violence against whites, was there any hope for lasting peace between Greenwood and white Tulsa?
Gurley’s reputation in Greenwood was boosted by his reputation for the beating of the three white men that harassed his wife. For a moment it seemed that the richest black man in Greenwood was putting aside ambition and becoming a man of the people.
It didn’t last.
In 1918, OW Gurley was charged with bribery by two women in Greenwood. According to the complaint, Gurley took rings from the two black women “to keep them out of jail.”. Gurley, who was a Tulsa sheriff’s deputy and charged with policing Greenwood, was rumored to have regularly demanded bribes from people accused of crimes in Greenwood in exchange for not arresting them. Gurley escaped charges and was able to keep his badge.
In 1919, three black men were arrested on suspicion of shooting a white ironworker. The men were transported to Tulsa County jail, across the train tracks from Greenwood – and put into a cell together.
Word traveled through the grapevine that a white mob planned to take the men from the jail and lynch them. Within hours a posse of black men were organized. More than two dozen black men carrying revolvers and rifles marched across the train tracks to the jail and barged in. They demanded to see the prisoners and got into a shouting match with the police. As the confrontation escalated, men on both sides began to move their fingers towards the triggers of their guns.
As the tension reached a breaking point, Gurley sauntered through the door. His hair was now gray and he wore glasses. He was a rich man and wore expensive suits with a sheriff’s star pinned to his breast and a pistol at his side. He walked up to the police chief and the two walked away conversing in whispers. A few moments later a deal had been brokered. Gurley gave assurances that the men wouldn’t be harmed and the police would allow the group to check on the prisoners if they left immediately thereafter. A delegation of the men from the group escorted by an officer went back to check on the men. A few minutes later they came back and reported the men were being treated well and they went back to Greenwood.
This sent chills through white Tulsa. The independence and strength of Greenwood had been reluctantly tolerated as long as Gurley could keep the blacks under control, but this “armed invasion” as it was later called, set off alarms. The negroes were getting out of their place.
A few months later, a white man was accused of assaulting a black woman on a trolley in downtown Tulsa. Gurley obtained a warrant but was forbidden from arresting him. Tulsa’s sheriff, Williard McCullough, reportedly ripped the warrant from Gurley’s hands, stating “he would never allow a black man to serve a warrant on a white man in Tulsa.” In response, Gurley handed McCullough his badge and resigned.
By 1921, Gurley was the richest and most powerful man in Greenwood. He was landlord to almost half the town’s residents and shopkeepers. With more than 100 properties in Greenwood, he was worth between $500,000 and $1 million ($6.8 million and $13.6 million). His net worth could only be guessed as Gurley kept his own money across the tracks in the white banks of downtown Tulsa. His hotel was one of the busiest in the district.
JB Stradford, Greenwood’s other founding father, was growing more popular. In 1918, he helped organize an armed group to turn back a lynch mob in nearby Bristow, Oklahoma. In Greenwood, Stradford’s more militant approach to civil rights became increasingly popular. In 1920 with the help of AJ Smitherman, he brought WEB DuBois to Greenwood. Gurley didn’t protest, in fact, he put him up in his hotel.
Du Bois gave several lectures to the residents, focusing on the need for blacks to become economically self-reliant and push back against lynching. He spoke of the burgeoning artistic renaissance in Harlem, New York; advocated for African Americans to organize for their rights and urged the people of Greenwood to protect their own people from lynching.