BATTLE OF RACES

Hokitika Guardian, 13 August 1921, Page 4

BATTLE OF RACES

KIO K 1 L1.1’.1) IN \Y I tJ’JTO AN It BLACK. CONFLICT. NK\Y YOUK, Juno 7. About 10() persons—including “JO whites— have been killed and ©cvcial hundreds wounded during one of the worst race riots of recent years, which, breaking out in Tulsa, Oklamhoma, on Tuesday night, culminated yesterday in a pitched battle between A,OOO whites and Negroes in the streets. More than half a square mile ot houses in the Negro quarter were Mazing furiously; ter-ror-stricken Negroes were hunted from house to house hy armed men. The cause of Che outbreak was an alleged assa ult by* a Negro on a white girl. When the prisoner was lodged in gaol the rumour wont round the Negro quarter that whites had gathered in front of the prison and intended to lynch him. Armed Negroes immediately went, to the prison.

After an exchange of taunts and threats between the two factions, the whites broke into hardware stores and armed themselves. A little later shots hang out, followed hy a fusillade. The Negroes retreated slowly to their own part of the town. Firing continued throughout the night and several houses in the Negro quarter were set on fire. Dawn found the opposing force* facing each other across the railway tracks, the bodies of several Negroes lying between them. Shooting and wholesale incendiarism were renewed. The Negro quarter was surrounded hy

armed men in motor-cars. Soon afterwards flames arose from a dozen wooden houses White riflemen, according to tho New York “Times” account, fired at every Negro that appeared and went from house te house, firing into the windows. A massed attack was then delivered on the “black-belt,” (Negro quarter) by two bodies of whites, one from tho north and the other from the south. The assault made against a wooden church in which 50 Negroes had barricaded themselves failed with heavy loss. Finally a torch was put to tho building and the Negroes rushed out, firing a s'* they ran. Many Tell. Hundreds of Negroes fleeing from their quarters were stopped by the polico and horded into detention camps. Six thousand ate collected under an armed guard on , the outskirts of the town. Hundreds flocked out into the countryside, carrying their belongings on their hacks or in harrows. i Martial law was proclaimed in the district at noon yesterday. Detachments of tho National Guard (Territorials) arrived shortly afterwards armed with machine guns and took charge of the town. Parties of troops land police patr(filing the streets stopped all i passers-by, arresting those with rifles ! and other weapons. Damage by fire is ! estimated at £375,000.