Page 50 of The Love Audit
“And flourish they did. The biggest Black-owned hotel in the country. Movie theaters, restaurants, libraries, a damned airport. You wouldn’t even believe a place like that existed in the early 1900s unless you’d been there. Sometimes I wondered if the stories my grandfather would tell us as kids was true.” He chuckled, and I joined him.
“That’s what attracted my great-grandfather. He graduated from the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, just Tuskegee University today. He studied botany under Dr. George Washington Carver. Yes, that one.” He chuckled in response to my jaw drop. “He grew up on a plantation, probably knew everything there was to know about farming before he set foot in a classroom, but what he really had a knack for was inventing. He invented so many different types of farming equipment and growing methods, you wouldn’t believe it. Within two years of graduating, he’d tried to patent fourteen inventions. He’d either been cheated, robbed, or rejected every time.
“One day, he attended a speech given by Booker T. Washington—yes, that one,” he replied again to my shocked expression, “and hetalked about a place called Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Black people prospered without the burden of discrimination. That same day, in 1907, my great-grandfather gathered up his life savings and boarded a train bound for Oklahoma. He hired a Black attorney to file his patents, and within ten years, he was one of the richest Black men in the country. You won’t find him in any of your history books, even though half the food folks eat every day wouldn’t have made it to their tables without his inventions.
“He made a good life for himself. He worked hard. Supported his community. He moved all of his family from Alabama to Tulsa. Met a good woman and started a family. It should have been perfect, but it was too good to last.”
“So, your great-grandfather was there when…” My voice died away when I realized that I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. It seemed insensitive to use the word “massacre” when a man was discussing his family.
“He was supposed to be away on a business trip, but according to the story my grandfather would tell us, his grandmother had a dream and told his father that he needed to cancel his trip. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.”
“He obviously survived,” I started in a low voice. Sheer morbid curiosity was waging war with decorum in my mind. The beers didn’t help. “But how?”
“A damn miracle.” David continued, “God was watching our family that night. My grandfather would tell me this story every year when I was a kid: The day started like any other day, except it was the day after Memorial Day. My grandfather was getting ready for school. My great-grandfather was getting ready to fly toNew York for some kind of business meeting. My granddad remembered he was annoyed because he wanted to go on the trip but his mother, my great-grandmother, wouldn’t let him miss school. They were discussing the matter over the breakfast table when Mawmaw Babette came running into the kitchen telling my great-grandfather that she dreamed that if he left, something terrible would happen.”
“A dream?” I asked.
“Mawmaw Babette was my great-great grandmother. John William Pike married her daughter, Adelaide. She was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and according to my grandfather, she could see things in her dreams.”
I sat back in my chair and nodded as he continued his story.
“So, whatever she saw in her dreams was powerful enough for my great-grandfather to cancel his trip but not powerful enough to keep my grandfather and his siblings from missing school.” David let out a small chuckle.
“The trouble started that afternoon. My grandfather said that there was talk around town about some trouble at the courthouse. Something about a boy named Dick being arrested for trying to assault a woman in an elevator… a white woman. He was well-known around town and nobody thought he was guilty, but…” He trailed off and raised a telling eyebrow at me.
That look told me everything I needed to know. Too many tragedies in our history started the same way.
“He said the energy in the town was electric. Some of the businesses were closing early. My grandfather was told to go straight home after school. Some of the men in town were talking aboutforming a militia.” He adjusted himself in his chair and continued. “A white man had been recently lynched, and folks were afraid that something similar would happen. A few lawyers even went to the courthouse to try to help the kid, but things were getting tense.”
I was perched on the edge of my seat, rapt with attention; I wasn’t even aware that my beer was empty until I’d raised it to my lips to unsuccessfully take a sip. The story wasn’t completely unfamiliar. I’d heard stories about the Tulsa Massacre, but hearing David tell it in such detail, no doubt from countless retellings from his grandfather made it feel real. Too real.
“My grandfather had gotten most of these details eavesdropping on a meeting his father was having with some other prominent men in the town. That is until his mother and grandmother forced him and his younger brothers and sisters to spend the rest of the night praying, lighting candles, burning oils and incense. He used to make a face when he talked about the way the house always smelled after one of his grandmother’s praying sessions.” He let out a nostalgic chuckle. “He said the smell would stick to your clothes for days.”
I smiled in agreement and slid another beer out of the cooler.
“His father and the men left the house after the meeting and his father didn’t come home for dinner. He didn’t see him again until he was shaking him out of bed in the middle of the night, shouting at him to get dressed. He said he could hear far-off noises that sounded like firecrackers and explosions. He could smell the smoke.” David paused for a moment. Just when I was about to ask him if he was okay, he continued. “He said the next thing heknew, he and his father were in the storm cave behind the house. The rest of his family was already there waiting. The last time they’d been in there was during a tornado the previous month. My grandfather said they spent that night talking, playing games, and drinking bottles of pop.” Another nostalgic smile appeared before fading. “That night was different. My grandfather said for the first time in his life, he saw fear in his father’s eyes. His mother had tears rolling down her face. He even said my great-aunt Marie was quiet, and that woman never shut up, even when I was a child.
“Their father took them to a hidden door in the cellar, which opened to a tunnel that led to a large underground shelter, just outside town. They were joined by a few more families, and they just”—he let out a beleaguered sigh—“waited.”
“Waited for what?” I asked. “For help? Rescue?”
David gave a small sarcastic chuckle before he answered.
“They waited for it to stop,” he said. “The men and the older boys took turns guarding the entrances to the shelter with guns. My grandfather was only thirteen, and he didn’t like to talk about that night in the shelter.”
I nodded in understanding.
“The next day, he left the shelter with his family to find most of the town razed to the ground, his home ransacked by God knows who. The storm cellar had been looted but luckily whoever was in there didn’t find the door to the tunnel. People he’d known and loved were gone forever. Government intervention was joke. The National Guard and the Red Cross were there ‘to help’”—he sketched air quotes—“but according to my grandfather they justmade things worse. He’d gone from living in a large house with his own bedroom and indoor plumbing to living in a tent with his entire family and relieving himself in a hole in the ground. Anytime he’d been hungry, he could wander down to his kitchen where there was usually a slice of pie or one of his mother’s turkey sandwiches waiting for him. Instead he was standing on line for hours to eat food he wouldn’t feed to his dog. His dog had also been lost in the riots,” David added as an afterthought. “It took three days before his father could get his affairs in order enough to get them all on a train to Alabama. I’ve heard this exact story so many times, but the delivery changed from time to time. Sometimes my grandfather had a tone of defiance. Sometimes he was angry. Hell, sometimes he’d tell the story with a smile on his face. The words never changed though.”
He sat for a long moment, staring into the distance. Just when I thought I’d heard the end of the story, he began to speak again.
“After everything went down, some of the families decided to stay and rebuild, but my great-grandfather wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t gonna rebuild Greenwood just to have it torn down again. Plus, he and his family lost a lot of people they loved. So, he decided with two other families—the Walkers, no, not that one,” he responded to my raised eyebrow, “and the Hodges—to start fresh someplace else. They pooled their resources, bought three thousand acres of land, and called it Miller’s Cove. They did their best to keep it hidden, but some secrets can’t be kept forever.”
“What do you mean by that?” I felt like I had an idea what he was alluding to, remembering Minnie’s outburst at dinner.
“Man, I’ve talked your ear off enough for one day.” David groanedand rose from his chair. I followed suit. “Get back home to that wife of yours.”
I was reeling from David’s revelation about the founding of Miller’s Cove. This man had welcomed me into his home and shared the details of his painful family history, and my sole purpose for being in this town in the first place was to force him to relive his family’s generational trauma.
