Editing Tulsa race massacre (section)

==Survivors==
The Tulsa massacre claimed an estimated 150–300 lives; over 800 people were seriously injured, and many more are estimated to have had their lives drastically changed forever.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Hannibal |title=Black Wall Street }}</ref>

===Olivia Hooker ===
{{Main|Olivia Hooker}}

[[Olivia Hooker]] was born on February 12, 1915, in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Her family was one of the many families affected by the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when she was only six years old. Her family's home in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma was broken into by a group of white men with torches and was torn apart. Many of her family's belongings were destroyed. One item that Hooker recalled was her sister's piano. She remembered hearing a group of white men whacking into the piano as she and her four other siblings hid under the dining room table, which their mother covered with a tablecloth. Her father owned a store in Tulsa, which she recalled was absolutely destroyed and only one safe was left standing. The only reason it was left standing was that it was too big and heavy to be destroyed or stolen. Hooker also remembered vividly her schoolhouse being destroyed and blown up with dynamite. After the massacre, Hooker and her family moved to Topeka, Kansas to rebuild their lives. Hooker recalled her mother telling her, "don't spend your time agonizing over the past." With a new fresh start in Topeka, Kansas, Hooker was the first African American woman to join the [[United States Coast Guard|Coast Guard]] (in February 1945).<ref>{{cite web |date=May 30, 2019 |title=Remembering Olivia Hooker |url=https://www.radiodiaries.org/tulsa-race-riot/ |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=Radio Diaries }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/olivia-j-hooker-coast-guard-pioneer-fordham-professor-and-activist-1425089415 |title=Olivia J. Hooker: Coast Guard Pioneer, Fordham Professor and Activist |first=Mara |last=Gay |date=February 28, 2015 |newspaper=The Wall Street Journal }}</ref> After leaving the Coast Guard, Hooker went on to earn her Master's degree in psychology from [[Teacher's College, Columbia University]]. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at the [[University of Rochester]].<ref>{{cite web |title=The indomitable Dr. Olivia Hooker |url=https://www.apadivisions.org/division-1/publications/newsletters/general/2012/04/olivia-hooker |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=apadivisions.org |language=en }}</ref> Hooker went on to have multiple jobs with her degree in psychology, mostly basing her work on the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Olivia Hooker retired from work at the age of 87. She died at the age of 103 on November 21, 2018, in her home in New York.

===Eldoris McCondichie===
Eldoris McCondichie was born on September 1, 1911, in Tyler, Texas. She was four years old when she and her family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Greenwood district. Her family was part of the working class. Her father had worked in a field and her mother did housework. On May 31, 1921, McCondichie was nine years old. She remembered being frantically awakened by her mother. She remembered her mother saying, "the white people are killing the colored people." McCondichie and her family evacuated their Tulsa home to find refuge up north from the massacre. McCondichie described how "airplanes were raining down bullets", and how no one had enough time to even put clothes on and evacuate their homes. She recalled seeing women walking on the railroad track with no shoes in their nightgowns. She remembered finding shelter in a chicken coop during the riots to protect herself from machine gun fire. After McCondichie and her family evacuated Tulsa, they found refuge in a farmer's home overnight. Her family traveled to [[Pawhuska, Oklahoma]], where they stayed for about 2–3 days until they knew it was safe to return home. Upon returning to Tulsa, Eldoris described what was left of the Greenwood district as "war-torn". She recalled many businesses and homes were burnt to the ground. Her family slowly rebuilt their lives in Tulsa and never left, referring to it as their "forever home".<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=Black Wall Street Survivor; Eldoris McCondichi |via=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx62joRN-YU |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/lx62joRN-YU |archive-date=October 30, 2021 |language=en |access-date=April 26, 2021}}{{cbignore }}</ref> Eldoris was married to Arthur McCodichie for 67 years and had four children; two sons and two daughters. She died on September 12, 2010, several days after celebrating her 99th birthday. Her final resting place is in the Crownhill Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.<ref>{{cite web |title=Obituary of Eldoris McCondichie |publisher=Ninde Funeral & Cremations |url=https://ninde.com/tribute/details/1511/Eldoris-McCondichie/obituary.html |access-date=April 26, 2021 |language=en-US }}</ref>

===George Monroe===
George Monroe was five years old during the attack on the Greenwood district.<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=Tulsa Race Riot Survivor – George Monroe – remembers May 31, 1921 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmHmXJxO7Ao |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/kmHmXJxO7Ao |archive-date=October 30, 2021 |language=en |access-date=April 26, 2021}}{{cbignore }}</ref> He claimed some images could never leave his mind. He remembered seeing people getting shot and his own curtains being set on fire by a mob of white men. He also recalled hiding under a bed with his older sister, when a rioter stepped on his finger, causing his sister to throw her hand over his mouth to prevent the men from hearing his screams. George Monroe lived out the rest of his life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He became a musician, owner of a Tulsa nightclub, and the first black man in Tulsa to sell Coca-Cola. George Monroe died in 2001.<ref>{{cite web |last=Korth |first=Robby |title=Oklahoma educators are at frontlines of remembering Tulsa Race Massacre |url=https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2021/02/04/oklahoma-educators-are-at-frontlines-of-remembering-tulsa-race-massacre/ |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=StateImpact Oklahoma |language=en }}</ref>

===Mary E. Jones Parrish===
{{Main|Mary E. Jones Parrish}}
[[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. 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 into the night under a hail of bullets. Mary Parrish wrote a first-person account and collected eye-witness statements from dozens of others and published them immediately following the tragedy under the title ''The Events of the Tulsa Disaster''. Parrish documented the magnitude of the loss of human life and property at the hands of white vigilantes. Parrish hoped that her book would "open the eyes of the thinking people to the impending danger of letting such conditions exist and in the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.'<ref>{{Cite book |last=Parrish |first=Mary E. Jones |title=The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 |publisher=Trinity University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-1595349439 |location=San Antonio, Texas }}</ref> A new edition was published in 2021 by Trinity University Press under the title, ''The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. ''The new edition includes a new afterword by Anneliese M. Bruner, Parrish's great-granddaughter. ''The New York Times'' called Parrish's "a story of survival... remains relevant a century later" while ''The New Yorker'' called it "The first and most visceral long-form account of how Greenwood residents experienced the massacre."<ref>{{cite news |last=Louis |first=Pierre-Antoine |date=May 29, 2021 |title=A Witness to the Tulsa Massacre, and a Family History Forever Altered |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/us/mary-jones-parrish-tulsa-massacre.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20211228/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/us/mary-jones-parrish-tulsa-massacre.html |archive-date=December 28, 2021 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |website=The New York Times}}{{cbignore }}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Luckerson |first=Victor |date=May 28, 2021 |title=The Women Who Preserved the Story of the Tulsa Race Massacre |url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/the-women-who-preserved-the-story-of-the-tulsa-race-massacre |magazine=The New Yorker }}</ref>

===Lessie Benningfield ("Mother Randle")===
Lessie Benningfield, also known as Mother Randle, was born in Morris, Oklahoma on November 10, 1914. Her parents were farmers; she had three sisters and a brother. Benningfield does not recall much due to her young age during the massacre. She remembers a mob of white men barging into her home and then destroying her family's house. She has memories of feelings of intense fear while trying to evacuate her home and get somewhere safe with her family. She spent the rest of her childhood and young adulthood in Tulsa and graduated from [[Booker T. Washington High School (Oklahoma)|Booker T. Washington High School]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Oral history interview with Lessie Randle |url=https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/hundred/id/2212 |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=dc.library.okstate.edu |language=en }}</ref> Benningfield is now a part of an active lawsuit with the Greenwood Advocates, which is a team of human and civil rights lawyers fighting for justice for victims and their families. Benningfield states she still has nightmares of seeing the piles of dead bodies she saw during the massacre. For her 106th birthday, which took place in 2020, the community raised thousands of dollars for her to remodel her home.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hughes |first1=Amber |date=September 2, 2020 |title=Survivors, descendants of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre announce new lawsuit |url=https://www.fox23.com/news/local/survivors-descendants-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-announce-new-lawsuit/PDEDXUEMONB3ZA2AUXKQNHISOM/ |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=Fox23 News |language=en }}</ref> Since then, she has been interviewed several times and remained in the public eye during the 2021 centennial anniversary of the massacre at the age of 107.

===Hal Singer===
[[Hal Singer]] was born on October 8, 1919, in Tulsa, Oklahoma to two working-class parents. His mother worked in a wealthy white resident's home as a cook and his father worked producing oil rigging tools. Singer was 18 months old when the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 took place. A white woman, for whom his mother worked, put his family on a train to Kansas City during the massacre so the Singer family would have a safe place to wait it out. Up to the day of his passing, Singer recalled how forever grateful he was for the woman's kindness. When his family returned to their home, it was burnt to the ground. They had to rebuild their whole lives again from scratch. However, they stayed in Tulsa in the Greenwood district all through his childhood.<ref>{{Cite AV media |last= |first= |title=Hal Singer – Short Doc |date=October 13, 2014 |via=Vimeo |url=https://vimeo.com/108827668 |work=Sutherland Media |access-date=April 26, 2021 }}</ref> As a young boy, Singer hung out by the rail tracks and invited [[jazz band]]s to come over and have some of his mother's cooking. This helped him in the long run as he became an iconic [[saxophonist]] of his generation. Singer went on to play with and for [[Duke Ellington]], [[Ray Charles]], and [[Billie Holiday]]. He was married for over 50 years to his wife Arlette Singer. On August 18, 2020, just months before his 101st birthday, he died in [[Chatou]], a suburb of [[Paris]], [[France]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Schlotthauer |first=Kelsy |title=Hal Singer, jazz saxophonist and Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, dies at 100 |url=https://tulsaworld.com/entertainment/hal-singer-jazz-saxophonist-and-tulsa-race-massacre-survivor-dies-at-100/article_03f58f12-a074-57e7-9854-5d6de80eb19c.html |access-date=April 26, 2021 |website=Tulsa World |language=en }}</ref><ref name=independent>{{cite news |url=https://www.macaubusiness.com/jazz-saxophonist-hal-singer-dies-at-100/ |title=Jazz saxophonist Hal Singer dies at 100 |date=August 21, 2020 |publisher=MacauBusiness.com |access-date=September 8, 2020 }}</ref>

===Essie Lee Johnson Beck===
Essie Johnson (1916–2006) was five years old when the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 took place. Her family evacuated their Tulsa home in the early hours of May 31. Beck remembers her parents making her and her siblings stay away from the windows because there were active shooters targeting the windows of homes. She describes the feelings of fright and confusion. Her family had to evacuate their home since almost all homes were being burnt to the ground in her neighborhood. Her mother took Beck and her four other siblings and started running to find shelter elsewhere. Beck recalls watching airplanes above her dropping bombs onto the roof of houses causing them to catch on fire. Her mother was trying to get her and her siblings to Golden Gate Park. Beck's father stayed behind to help as much as possible and to assist injured people. Beck recalls once they got to Golden Gate Park, they hid behind trees. Beck and her family soon after that found shelter in churches and school basements for the remaining days. Once they were cleared to go back, their home was burnt to the ground. Beck recalls having to live in a tent on the dirt waiting for their house to be rebuilt. She describes the whole experience to be awful.<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=KAV's Video: Tulsa Race Riot Survivors Speaks |via=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8652jvVcPWI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/8652jvVcPWI |archive-date=October 30, 2021 |language=en |access-date=April 26, 2021}}{{cbignore }}</ref>

===Vernice Simms===
Vernice Simms was seventeen years old when the Massacre took place. She lived in the Greenwood district with her family as she attended [[Booker T. Washington High School (Oklahoma)|Booker T. Washington High School]], where she was preparing for her prom. Simms remembers vividly being in her backyard when bullets started raining down and everyone was cautioned to get into the house as quickly as possible. As the riots and massacre progressed, Simms and her family found refuge at a white family's home, where they were safe from the massacre. When they returned to their Greenwood home, everything was burnt to the ground. Simms and her family had to live in a tent. She recalls Booker T. Washington High School being turned into a hospital for the wounded. Simms volunteered at the hospital where she fed and gave water to people who were injured during the massacre. While her house was being rebuilt by her father, she finished high school in Oklahoma City. Afterward, Simms studied at [[Langston University]]. After she graduated from university, she came home to see her house finally rebuilt. She recalls never getting any money from insurance or the government to help. Simms described the events as devastating and scary.<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=Black Wall Street Survivors; Vernice Simms |via=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuM1n940IYM |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/HuM1n940IYM |archive-date=October 30, 2021 |language=en |access-date=April 26, 2021}}{{cbignore }}</ref>

===Lena Eloise Taylor Butler===
Eloise Taylor was nineteen years old and she lived in Greenwood when the Massacre took place. She was the daughter of the famed Horace Greeley Beecher Taylor, better known as "Peg Leg" Taylor. According to Taylor's great-granddaughter, who has passed on Eloise's story, Eloise witnessed some of the first gunfighting of the Massacre. She recounts how Peg Leg Taylor "fought his way to" Eloise and helped her escape into the woods north of the city, where they then lay and hid while White rioters continued to hunt down and kill other survivors around them. "...they found some of the people that were out there in the woods laying on their stomach—Lord help these people!—and they just shot 'em. Right there on the ground where they lay. I'm talking about kids...women. They didn't care. Old people. People who had breastfed them. They didn't give a damn. They killed 'em right there on the ground..." Eloise was reportedly so terrified that when "...finally her daddy told her to 'get up...get up and c'mon,' she said [in order] for them to move, he had to hurt her. She said he had to hurt her to make her stand up." Eloise and her father then walked several miles to a nearby town, where they "got help, got warm, got clothes, got food, and moved on", and where they also "decided that they would never talk about it again". Eloise finally opened up to her great-granddaughters about her experience in 1997, only a few short years before she died in 2000 at the age of 98.<ref name="Taylor Account" />