One of America’s worst outbreaks of racial violence happened 100 years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma when a white mob killed 300 black people, ran amok in one of the country’s most prosperous Black communities known as Black Wall Street, destroying hundreds of Black-owned businesses, churches and homes – the equivalent of $32 million dollars worth of damages nowadays. 10,000 were left homeless and a further 800 injured. Witnesses reported seeing bodies tossed into the muddy Arkansas River or dumped into mass graves, making it impossible to count the dead.
It was triggered when a young white woman screamed inside a building and a young black man was arrested for assaulting her though she later said nothing happened.
The attack and killing started around 10pm on 31 May 1921 – the Gemini Sun was in a rebellious square to Uranus opposition Jupiter, which last has a habit of amplifying whatever it touches. More significantly the Sun was conjunct a heated Mars, and Mars was in an ‘accident-prone’, bad-tempered and cruel (assassination associations) square to Saturn. Uranus was also in a disruptive trine to Pluto as well as an explosive, no-compromise square to Mars. And Mercury was close to Pluto which wouldn’t help since it tends to exaggerate negative opinions and bitterness.
The North Node is Libra hints that learning to cooperate would be the mature way to go while Venus sat on the South Node pulling the unevolved back into primitive reactions.
The Tulsa incorporated chart, 18 January 1898, has a Sun, North Node and Venus in Capricorn as befits a commercially ambitious hub with Mars Mercury also in Capricorn. The signature Neptune Pluto in Gemini of the time sat across from Moon, Saturn and Uranus in Sagittarius making for a tough-minded local temperament, though also paranoid and prone to wild fantasies.
When the massacre occurred tr Pluto was exactly opposition the Tulsa Mercury – shades of the USA chart at the moment – which leads to hasty thinking, high levels of irritability, lies and does lend itself to mob fever. The tr Sun Mars, tr Uranus and tr Jupiter Pluto were also moving in hard aspect to the Tulsa Pluto Neptune in Gemini and Saturn in Sagittarius maybe Moon – on the day and in the shocked aftermath.
Just a stray thought – Jupiter Saturn is always written up in slightly upbeat language but my impression is that in Earth signs it has a much less agreeable effect.
Thank you Marjorie. What’s so deeply awful about this is that it is only one example of massacres in the United States.
There is a horrific history of specific events that includes the estimated slaughter of 24-27,000 Native Americans in California between 1846-1871; massacres of Chinese migrants in 1871, 1887, and 1885; massacre of striking miners at Columbine in 1927. Numerous instances of black communities being killed and attacked include the horrendous Opelousas massacre of 1868, in which at least 300 black Americans died. They were attacked for trying to join the Democratic Party. And the list goes on and on.
The US Pluto return has a great deal of work to do. The ‘home of the brave and the land of the free’ is not alone in having a half-buried history of violence and oppression, obviously. I hope that once the realities of history are more widely acknowledged everywhere, humanity might evolve and learn to choose peace and harmony. Well, I can always hope.
Thank you, Marjorie. One of the appalling things I just learned is that Tulsa was one of three prosperous Black Wall Street communities — the others were in Virginia (Richmond) and North Carolina (I think Raleigh) — that all were destroyed by White mobs in the same general time frame. And all were buried by White revisionist history. So devastating for the communities.
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It was only the past year, in the context of BLM, that I heard about the horrific Tulsa massacre. The NYTimes did a virtual reconstruction of the many thriving businesses along with professional offices that were burned down.
A personal note about Jupiter-Saturn – I was born under such a conjunction in Capricorn – making Saturn very strong, and weakening Jupiter (tho Jupiter can bring much needed cheer). I’ve found that, regardless of the domain in my life, any optimism would eventually be dashed, whereas a bit of pessimism (or rather, lack of expectations) + hard work could bring some of Jupiter’s luck as a reward. Not fun to live with at all, like being the party-pooper of your own life, always having to temper your own enthusiasm and hopefulness.
“America in Retreat” by Michael Pembroke is a very grisly summary of a bully-boy nation.
A century later, racism is still topical in this country.
America never fails to disappoint. This appalling story is a timely reminder of the cruel viciousness behind its apple-pie
image.
‘America never fails to disappoint. This appalling story is a timely reminder of the cruel viciousness behind its apple-pie image.’
So so sad that words fail!! However I will say absolutely agree! Wonder whether Jupiter has something to do with this overblown cookie cutter image whilst ignoring for so the realities to be addressed within its own societal design. Illusion/ Head in the sand?? Is that Neptune??
It strikes me that the massacre was a defining moment for the country in its subsequent design within policies to dis-empower African Americans as a community so they will not utilize strength to try that again . To put it lightly they were forced to ‘give up’ at that aspiration point, on a collective level and as a result? Huge implications!!! Some or most of what playing out to date.
Just an aside but it might make you think about the mindset of a people/person that thought/think black people are not of value.
Did you know that during Slavery sugar was more expensive at auction than buying a slave??? Think about that to add context in general and to what was done that day, and the mindset of a people (collectively)!!!
Further, did you know the irony is that today black people more than most other races are more predisposed to having ‘sugar’, i.e. diabetes? Wow!! You can’t make it up.
Shocking!!
Thank you so much for this piece Marjorie! And Jennifer E, I agree 100% with what you say about African Americans being forced to give up the aspirations they held after that. From my understanding, the Black Wall Street was considered a beacon of progress for African Americans all over the country, a symbol of what could be achieved with their own hard work and dedication.
Yep!! Not to mention Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who some say inspired them to organise and position themselves to that point. Regardless of what they want to say about him, even Martin Luther King and other activists thereafter mention his name as an inspiration in fighting for what was their right. Yet, look what they did with him (in the holy set up of things)!!
By the way, for non-‘black’ people – there is a distinction between the black Caribbean experience versus the African experience versus the black American experience, later to be inter-changeably. All influenced by Slavery within their different templates by design creating different beasts. Fast forward to the mindset now, and here we are!!
Jennifer E, the fact that 74 million people voted for that amoral grifter Trump who called upon neo
nazi thugs to back up his fraudulent claims that he was robbed of the Presidency, is utterly unforgivable.
Harry T. Moore, Martin Luther King Jnr and Medgar Evans were very brave men who saw America as a
beacon of hope and aspirations for people of all colours and creed had their dreams violently cut short
by the murderous nihilism at the heart of American society.
Thank you, Marjorie. There are simply no words.