My Life and An Era

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Why has no one made a movie out of this man's life?

My life and an Era.

I asked the same question after reading a biography of George Orwell, but seems even more pertinent with respect to B.C. Franklin.

This book is by an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life, but one that seems extraordinary in retrospect because he offers an insider perspective of a world that no longer exists. In the course of reading this story, I learned things I had either never known or heard about and never appreciated.

Franklin was born in Indian territory in 1877. His father was a former slave of a Chickasaw indian family. His father had purchased freedom for his family and had even fought in the Civil War for the North. Franklin's father then had become a successful, if illiterate, cattle-breeder and had been able to send his son, Buck Colbert, aka B.C., to college.

Franklin provides a lot of information about the Oklahoma frontier and its development into statehood. He offers stories about gun fights and going to see the “runs” by which Oklahoma was granted to settlers. He also describes Indian territory where the Five Civilized Nations had been relocated with their slaves. Although Franklin abhors slavery, he describes the relationship of the Indians and their slaves as somewhat more familial and indulgent.

Facts I had not known about include the classification of Indians as “white” as a way of putting a social separation between the Indians and their former slaves; the reduction of Indian Territory to the eastern half of Oklahoma; the efforts to bring the Indian territory in as a separate state; and the division of Indian lands into privately held plots for Indians and the freemen of some tribes, but not the Chickasaw.

Franklin went to a Negro college and did summer work in Chicago at the turn of the century. One of the nice things about the book is the “You are There” bits that we would not otherwise know. For example:

“On the 6th day of September, while I was working at the stockyard, the news was flashed over the wire that President McKinley had been shot in the stomach by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, while speaking at a public reception in the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. He lingered, and died on the 14th. On the day of his burial at Canton, Ohio, I became a part of an unforgettable experience. It was high noon, and there began the sound of many shrill whistles signaling the lowering of the body of the president into his grave. At that very moment every worker in the stockyards stood erect with head bowed for a full minute in honor of William McKinley, the 25 th president of the United States of America. Thousands of men who could neither speak nor understand English understood perfectly the meaning of it all and stood obediently with those who could. This action struck me as more than a phenomenon; it was nothing short of a miracle.”

This is a moment in time preserved in amber.

Franklin knew and experienced racial discrimination. On the other hand, Franklin distinguished between the racists and the “good whites.” His story is filled with events that I found surprising after a lifetime of media depictions of all whites as racists. For example, he was a lawyer, and there were many other Negro lawyers and doctors. Franklin passed the bar after home-study through an oral examination by white lawyers who apparently had no difficulties in passing him. He also was made a magistrate in one case by a white judge. The reader is constantly exposed to Negroes who were deputy marshals, county clerks, lawyers, doctors and college professors.

Obviously, there was racial discrimination, but that was mostly directed at the mass of Negros. Franklin found the “grandfather clause” which barred illiterate blacks from voting but allowing illiterate whites to vote as particularly obnoxious. Again, I was surprised to find that Oklahoma's grandfather clauses were struck down in 1915 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which, again, doesn't seem to fit the narrative. Given that Franklin was a lawyer, I suspect that he could vote at all times.

Franklin was in Tulsa during the Tulsa race-riot, which was not “white-washed.” He offers only a few pages to the details and his details are intiguing. Who were the white and the black World War I soldiers who warned the Negro community?

Tulsa had a vibrant and powerful black community. It was also the most segregated community in America, but according to Franklin, not because of white mendacity:

“Some years back, Tulsa had become voluntarily a sharply segregated city. In the beginning, there was no segregation or apparently any thought of segregating the races. They lived together and were buried together. This was due, mostly, to the fact that the Indians and freedmen owned most, if not all, of the land. The federal government was in sole control of the titles to these lands, either directly or indirectly, and did not concern itself with the separation of the races. In those days, I recall that Negro lawyers maintained their offices in downtown Tulsa and employed a white stenographer. There was at least one Negro barbershop, as well as a real estate office. At Archer and Cincinnati there was a roominghouse patronized by both races, and on the surface at least, no one thought anything about it. A few years before statehood, however, there came to Tulsa two very rich Negroes, O. W. Gurley and J. B. Stradford, who immediately invested large sums in large acreages of real estate “across the track.” Gurley bought some thirty or forty acres and had it surveyed, plotted into blocks, streets, and alleys, and put upon the market to be sold to Negroes only. Then adjoining land was purchased by real estate men of other races, plotted and surveyed, streets and alleys laid out, and placed upon the market to be sold to Negroes only; and ever afterward the same process was repeated. In the end, Tulsa became one of the most sharply segregated cities in the country.”

History is complicated.

Franklin also tells the reader that the Tulsa race riot had the positive effect of bringing together the Black and White community:

“Mob violence and lawlessness have never done a community any good and never will. Tulsa had been given a black eye in 1921, and the entire city felt the aftermath of the riot. This was especially true of the colored section. Negroes from Tulsa traveling elsewhere or abroad were taunted and ridiculed about what had taken place. As is too often true, people everywhere of all races thought Tulsa was an unsafe place in which to locate and do business, and most of them thought there was not a good white person in the entire city. To offset this widespread, entirely erroneous belief, there was a movement started early in 1925 to bring the National Negro Business League to the city. The idea was first discussed and actually started by my wife and others in the Federated Colored Women's Clubs of the city, and communicated to the local Negro Business League.4 The idea grew and became popular. The white section of the city, chagrined and still smarting under the almost nationwide misrepresentations of the good people of the city, thought the idea a good one and pledged their united support. Organizations were formed and committees appointed to carry forward the thought, and the national league accepted the invitation to hold its national gathering in Tulsa during August of that year. Never before or since have the races in Tulsa been more determined to put forth a united front, and the undertaking succeeded to a degree hitherto unknown or since.”

History is complicated.

B.C. Franklin was a life-long Democrat when blacks were Republicans because of his admiration of Thomas Jefferson. He advises that the shift in the black community to the Democrat party happened under Roosevelt.

Another surprising issue fraught with discrimination was denominationalism. Franklin was a Methodist; most blacks were Baptists. Denominational lines were very sharply divided and at times it seems that Franklin suffered more practical discrimination on account of religion than race.

This book makes for a fascinating retrospective, particularly in light of the political ideology about racial relationships that has been refined over the last decades. There is much to be ashamed of, but also some little bit to be proud of. The theme of Franklin's book is the Negro contribution to Oklahoma, a contribution that was made by an emphasis on education, discipline and good citizenship.