Arnold, Juanita Delores Burnett

Source:

 African American National Biography

Arnold, Juanita Delores Burnett

(27 July 1909–21 March 2005)

, schoolteacher and activist, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Eugene Lawrence Burnett, an oil worker, and Mary Jane McGowan Burnett, a seamstress. As a youth, Burnett survived the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and was a plaintiff in the subsequent legal case, Alexander v. State of Oklahoma. Burnett grew up in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the early twentieth century, as Tulsa's economy boomed thanks to oil recently discovered in Oklahoma, Greenwood was a thriving enclave of African American businesses, schools, and churches. Her grandparents lived in Tulsa; her grandfather owned a grocery store and his family home. In a span of just a night and a day, from 31 May–1 June 1921, the lives and livelihood of the Burnett family and the Greenwood community were threatened when the Greenwood section of Tulsa was devastated by the Tulsa Race Riot.

Racial tension within Tulsa had been building for many years before the riot. Although the city's prosperity had earned it the nickname “Oil Capital of the World,” Tulsa was rife with conflict surrounding the influx of immigrants and uneasy relations between prosperous African American business owners and poor white laborers. As in many cities across the United States during this period, the Ku Klux Klan was active in Tulsa, and African American residents of Greenwood were well aware of the constant threat of violence and retaliation. The riot was sparked by the publication of a front‐page editorial in the Tulsa Tribune. The editorial accused a nineteen‐year‐old black shoeshine boy named Dick Rowland of assaulting Sarah Page, a white teenage girl, in the elevator of a building in downtown Tulsa—charges that were later dropped. Although the Tribune editors removed the article after the paper had run a few hundred copies, the inflammatory headline, “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” had already done its damage. When Tulsa police arrested Dick Rowland, a mob of thousands of white people thronged the courthouse ready to lynch the accused. A group of armed African American men gathered to protect Rowland from mob vigilantism, a shot was fired, and the riot began.

In her oral account of the riots, recorded in 1999 by Eddie Faye Gates, an activist and member of the Tulsa Reparations Committee, Arnold recalled the growing anger and fear among African Americans in Greenwood as armed white men began to roam up and down her street. Many carried torches made from oil‐soaked rags, which they used to set fire to homes and businesses. These men, Arnold believed, were “especially jealous of men like my father and grandfather who had nice homes and businesses.” Her father was among the group of men who armed himself, ready to defend his family and his home. One white man whom Eugene Burnett had ordered off his property returned the next day, ready for further confrontation—but by that time, the Burnett family, along with many others, had fled northward to safety. As they did so, her parents assisted wounded and elderly black men and women who had fallen behind. Her grandfather's grocery store was spared with the help of several white salespeople who were also regular customers of the store. On 1 June 1921, they came to the store intending to guard it, warning the mob as it approached to stay away. According to Arnold's recollection, the men warned, “The man who owns this store is a good man. He worked hard for his property. He has done you and no one else any harm. You will not destroy the efforts of this man's hard work” (Gates, 1999).

Arnold's grandfather was one of the few lucky ones. The mob destroyed more than a thousand homes and business in the Greenwood area during the riot, leaving thousands homeless. The Burnett family home was among those destroyed. Estimates of the death toll from this, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history, have varied; once conservatively estimated at around one hundred, some historians now believe that at least several hundred people, mostly African American, were killed. Many of the victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.

After the riot, victims' attempts to seek legal justice met with stiff resistance from Tulsa's government, and the Ku Klux Klan further stifled any dissent. It was not until 1997, with the creation of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, that the Oklahoma State government began to investigate the riot. The Commission gave its final report to the Tulsa City government and the Oklahoma governor and state legislature in 2001. The report recommended that five reparations be granted to the community of Greenwood, the survivors of the riot, and their descendants. These included reparation payments to survivors; reparation payments to survivors' descendants; the establishment of a scholarship fund for students affected by the riot; the creation of an economic development enterprise zone in the Greenwood District; and finally, the creation of a memorial and the reburial of human remains found in unmarked graves.

The Tulsa Reparations Coalition (TRC), an activist group that formed in 2001, took up the cause on behalf of the survivors to ensure that reparations would indeed be granted. On 24 February 2003, Juanita Arnold—along with more than one hundred other survivors—served as a plaintiff in Alexander vs. State of Oklahoma, a suit filed against the state of Oklahoma, the city of Tulsa, the chief of police of the city of Tulsa, and the City of Tulsa Police Department. However, despite the efforts of the TRC legal team, headed by Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, the drive to secure reparations was an uphill battle. On 9 March 2005, after a series of failed appeals and subsequent state court dismissals made on the grounds that the statute of limitations for filing complaints about the riot had passed, the TRC submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. On 16 May 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed their suit without comment.

Despite these setbacks, the fight has continued. In March 2007, Charles Ogletree appeared before the Inter‐American Commission on Human Rights to file a petition on behalf of the survivors. The City of Tulsa, which had by this time established a Human Rights Commission, was also debating whether to build a Tulsa Race Riot museum. Greenwood itself experienced a slow economic rebirth, evidenced by several commercial establishments and churches, but the district has not recaptured its former economic success. However, with the help of people like Juanita Delores Burnett Arnold and other survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot, the Greenwood Cultural Center, built in the early 1970s, now helps preserve the memories of the place once known as the “Negro Wall Street of America.”

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