In late May and early June of 1921, horrible attacks were conducted against the African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Perhaps, more than 300 African Americans were killed, some in the most gruesome ways.

To some, it looked like America was almost in a civil war, with extremist groups on the Right and Left emerging almost at the same time. There were racist, pro-nationalist groups like the Klu Klux Klan on the extreme Right and the Communist Party on the Left. In between, conservatives and liberals tried to keep order, remain alive, and preserve the nation. It wasn’t easy.

Before the Tulsa massacre, J. Edgar Hoover of the Bureau of Investigation lead an effort to shut down the KKK. His agents often had to flee for their lives. The KKK would kill and threaten any Whites that opposed them. Their priority was to kill White Protestants who stood against attacks on African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and others.

Their opponents, the so-called anti-racists on the Left, were often just as violent and also targeted White Protestants, Jews, and Catholics who were against the extremists.

To truly be a humane person at that time, one had to stand up against both sides. It was like trying to stand in a washing machine. There was also a general sense of lawlessness that was emerging in the Roaring Twenties. It wasn’t easy to stand against one’s neighbors and friends that veered off into the extremes. And some Whites got killed over it. Or fired or run out of town.

Usually, the terror struck the White Protestant communities in the South first. If you didn’t get into line, you felt that you would be visited by some dangerous people at night. And there were too few who stood up.

I remember old stories passed down of secret meetings in a club house or out in another town. I also remember being told the names of the individuals involved. I remember how some relatives in Texas got fired for standing up against these organizations of bullies. The very act of taxing people to pay for putting windows in an African American school or providing health care to Mexican migrant workers was treated as a declaration of war.

This conflict was national in scope and continues. In 1965, a White evangelical Christian reporter at the The New York Times, John McCandlish Phillips, exposed the head of the KKK in Queens. The reporter’s life was threatened, the Times stood up, and an extremist remnant of the 1920s came tumbling down. You can read the rest of the story in the obits that were written after Phillips died.