Dick Rowland
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Dick Rowland was an African-American shoeshiner whose arrest in May 1921 was the impetus for the Tulsa Race Riot. At the time of his arrest, Rowland was said to have been nineteen-years-old.
Rowland's birth name was reportedly Jimmie Jones. [1] It is not known where he was born, but by 1908 he and two sisters were orphans and were living in Vinita, Oklahoma. Jones was informally adopted by an African-American woman named Damie Ford. In approxiamtely 1909 Ford and Jones moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they were reunited with Ford's family, the Rowlands. Eventually, Jones took Rowland as his last name, and selected his favorite first name, Dick, as his own. Rowland attended the city's segregated schools, including Booker T. Washington High School.[2]
Rowland reportedly dropped out of high school to take a job shining shoes in a white-owned and white-patronized shine parlor located on Main Street in downtown Tulsa. There were no toilet facilities for blacks at the shine parlor where Rowland worked and the owner had arranged for his Black employees to be able to use a "Colored" restroom that was located on the top floor of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 S. Main Street.
On May 30, 1921, Rowland attempted to enter the Drexel building's elevator and, although the exact facts are disputed and unknown, according to the most accepted accounts he tripped and grabbed the arm of the 17-year old white female elevator operator, Sarah Page. The startled Page reportedly screamed and a white clerk in a first floor store reported seeing Rowland flee from the elevator and building. The clerk called police and reported the incident as an attempted assault.
Rowlands was arrested on May 31, 1921. Subsequent actions by white citizens in an apparent attempt to lynch him, and by black citizens to protect him, sparked a riot that lasted 16 hours and caused the destruction by fire of 35 city blocks and 1,256 residences in Tulsa's African-American neighborhood of Greenwood, and over 800 injuries and the deaths of at least 26 blacks and 13 whites.[3]
The case against Dick Rowland was dismissed at the end of September, 1921. The dismissal followed the receipt of a letter by the County Attorney from Sarah Page in which she stated that she did not wish to prosecute the case.
According to Damie Ford, once Rowland was exonerated he immediately left Tulsa, and went to Kansas City.[4] Little else is publicly known about the remainder of Rowland's life.
