On Memorial Day 2025, via a social media post, Russell Cobb added to the brew that is part of Tulsa's sordid past. You can read a few of Dr. Cobb's stories on Medium and find details of his latest book "Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land". His instagram post, like much of his his storytelling puts him squarely in the middle of the story, a technique that serves his provocative writing style.
I wanted to share a bit of the research I had conducted in 2019 on the Tulsa Outrage. At Tulsa Morning Times newspaper clipping from November 18th, 1917 provides pertinent details but the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) pamphlet is a worthy document to explore. Both are at the bottom of the post.
The NCLB was founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) with Roger Nash Baldwin it's first director. In 1920 the organization became the American Civili Liberties Union. AUAM was at the forefront of the effort to push back in defense of the First Amendment liberties of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right of peaceable assembly to address grievances; rights which were coming under fire from the increasingly reactionary and authoritarian administration of Woodrow Wilson, fronted by his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. The (A. Mitchell) Palmer Raids, occurred between November 1919 and January 2020, his agents deported nearly 250 people, including notable anarchist Emma Goldman, and arrested nearly 10,000 people in seventy cities. As described in the 2019 New Yorker article, "When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals", the Palmer raids were the first mass deportation of political dissidents in the twentieth century'.
Think about that in context with 287G, a federal program that creates a partnership between ICE and state and local law agencies to enforce certain aspects of U. S. immigration law, a partnership that essentially aids in the process of deportations happening in the United States today; fast tracked deportations that are not giving these deportees due process. as provided under the Constitution.
The NCLB was founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) with Roger Nash Baldwin it's first director. In 1920 the organization became the American Civili Liberties Union. AUAM was at the forefront of the effort to push back in defense of the First Amendment liberties of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right of peaceable assembly to address grievances; rights which were coming under fire from the increasingly reactionary and authoritarian administration of Woodrow Wilson, fronted by his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. The (A. Mitchell) Palmer Raids, occurred between November 1919 and January 2020, his agents deported nearly 250 people, including notable anarchist Emma Goldman, and arrested nearly 10,000 people in seventy cities. As described in the 2019 New Yorker article, "When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals", the Palmer raids were the first mass deportation of political dissidents in the twentieth century'.
Think about that in context with 287G, a federal program that creates a partnership between ICE and state and local law agencies to enforce certain aspects of U. S. immigration law, a partnership that essentially aids in the process of deportations happening in the United States today; fast tracked deportations that are not giving these deportees due process. as provided under the Constitution.
Maybe it's a stretch to compare the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 with Tom Holman's Immigration Raids of 2025, but I'm have to agree with the "Boss", Bruce Springsteen who said, in the 4th track of his EP “Land of Hopes and Dreams”, 'they’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation'. I think we could all ask 'what outrage is next?'.
| Tulsa Morning Times • November 18th, 1917 | NCLB Pamphlet • February 1918 |
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Below is the complete pamphlet created by the National Civil Liberties Bureau in 1918.
| tulsa_outrage.pdf |
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