The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

By Mary E. Jones Parrish, Anneliese M. Bruner, John Hope Franklin and 2 more

Mary Parrish was reading in her home when the Tulsa race massacre began on the evening of May 31, 1921. Parrish’s daughter, Florence Mary, called the young journalist and teacher to the window. “Mother,” she said, “I see men with guns.” The two eventually fled and unwittingly became eyewitnesses to the death of hundreds of Black Oklahomans and the destruction of the Greenwood district, a prosperous, primarily Black area known nationally as Black Wall Street. The Nation Must Awake is Parrish’s first-person account, compiled along with the recollections of nearly two dozen others, of what is now recognized as the single worst incident of racial violence in U.S. history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781595349446

Mary E. Jones Parrish

Mary Elizabeth Jones Parrish (1892–1972) was born in 1892 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. She moved to Tulsa around 1919 and worked teaching typing and shorthand at a branch of the YMCA. A trained journalist, Parrish gathered eyewitness accounts from survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and chronicled her own experience fleeing the violence with her young daughter. Those accounts were published in her book Events of the Tulsa Disaster, which was privately printed in 1922.

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» PREFACE «

I came from Rochester, N.Y., in 1918, to visit a brother who lived in Tulsa. In Rochester, our people were of a limited number, and the sole business engaged in was restaurants, hotels, rooming houses, barber shops, beauty parlors, etc. During my few months stay in Tulsa, my eyes feasted on the progressive sights they beheld among our group.

Every face seemed to wear a happy smile. This peace and happiness was destined to change to a deep and quiet sorrow, for it was at this time that the hand of the World War was felt most keenly here. Our Uncle Sam summoned 250 Black boys at one time. These boys did not hesitate, but bravely heeded the call, many never to return to their then beloved Tulsa. These brave boys gave their lives to make the world safe for democracy. Is it safe? Let Tulsa, the city that suffered thousands of its innocent, law-abiding citizens to be made homeless,