Investigative Journalist, Founder of Schools & A Teacher
Mary E. Jones Parrish “Auntie Sweet” 1Parrish was known as Auntie Sweet to her niece and nephew who were not related by blood, but rather social connections. Eddie Faye Gates, They Came Searching (Austin, TX: Eakin Press), 223. was born in Mississippi to Marcus David Jones and Fanny Watson Parrish. Her birth year is unclear. It is likely that this year was 1890 or 1892, though the 1900 census lists 1895. 2Year: 1900; Census Place: Beat 5, Jefferson, Mississippi; Page: 15; Enumeration District: 0089; FHL microfilm: 1240812
What is clear is that Mary was born into a large family with five siblings and ten half-siblings. Mary’s parents were divorced by 1910 and by the late 1910s, Parrish and several family members lived in Oklahoma. Her mother resided in McAlester, a town about 90 miles from Tulsa. Parrish lived in Boley, the largest of Oklahoma’s Black Towns and one of 13 still in existence. She listed the famous town as her residence when she applied for a marriage license in 1912. 3Larry O’Dell, “Boley,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BO008; and “Marriage Licenses,” St-Louis Globe-Democrat(St. Louis, Missouri), August 2, 1912.
Parrish married Simon Parrish of Quincy, Illinois. The two returned to Boley where two years laterthey welcomed their daughter, Florence Mary. Soon the couple relocated to New York. Parrish attended the Rochester Business Institute as a student of the shorthand department. 4Events of the Tulsa Disaster by Mrs. Mary E. Jones Parrish Collection. http://archivespaces.library.okstate.edu:8081/repositories/3/resources/1212 Her husband worked in the textile industry as a presser.
In 1918, Parrish returned to Oklahoma to visit family. As part of her travels, she visited a brother, who lived in Tulsa. She was immediately impressed by Greenwood. Parrish noted that in Rochester, Black Americans owned several businesses, but suggested that Black success there paled in comparison to Greenwood. She was also struck by the “harmony of spirit she saw between Black businessmen and women.” 5Mary E. Jones Parrish, Events of the Tulsa Disaster, 1923, 8.
About five months later, Parrish permanently relocated to Oklahoma to join her siblings in caring for their ailing mother. While in McAlester, she founded a “Natural Education school” (similar to technical education) where she taught typing and shorthand.
After her mother passed away, she relocated to to Tulsa. The City Directory reveals that Simon found work as a porter at Knoblock-Woods Laboratories while Mary worked as a typing and shorthand teacher at the all-black Hunton Branch of the YMCA. She was described as having a gift “with language.”
By March 1920, Parrish was making her mark on Greenwood. She established the Mary Jones Parrish Natural Education School. She operated the business out of the Woods building where she resided.
On the night of the Massacre, Parrish had just finished teaching her typewriting class. She immediately dove into a book she had been anxious to read. She was so engaged that she did not look up to notice the chaos outside for some time. Florence Mary, who was 6 or 7 years old, did. She was not able to gain her mother’s attention until she shouted, “Mother, I see men with guns.” Going to the window, Parrish took in the chaos. Hoping that the situation would resolve soon, she put her daughter to bed.6Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 18.
On the street, Parrish’s neighbors caught her up on the cause of the chaos. A White mob threatened a lynching, and members of the Greenwood community had gathered to protect one of their own. In Parrish’s words: “‘All hell broke loose.’” 7Parrish. Race riot 1921. 18. To Parrish it seemed preposterous this could be happening in Tulsa: “I had read of the Chicago riot and of the Washington trouble, but it did not seem possible that prosperous Tulsa, the city which was so peaceful and quiet that morning, could be in the thrall of a great disaster.”8Parrish. Race riot 1921. 19.
Once the weight of what was truly happening settled on her, Parrish took her daughter, read a couple of Psalms, and prayed for courage and safety. 9Parrish. Race riot 1921. 18. It was not until the morning of the following day that Parrish was able to take her daughter to flee the building and seek safety. “Amid a hail of bullets,” 10Ellsworth, Scott and Franklin, John Hope. “History Knows No Fences: an Overview” in Tulsa Race Riot, A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riot of 1921. (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma). https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf Parrish and her daughter ran through the streets hoping to find safety at a friend’s home in Greenwood Addition.11Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 21. When they reached her home, they found that the family had already fled, and so they joined the group headed out of town.12Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 21. Once they arrived at the section line, Parrish connected with a friend, and they were all able to get on a truck heading east toward safety. Eventually, they found temporary shelter at the home of a White woman just outside of town. 13Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 22-23; Brophy, Alfred L. “Parrish, Mary E. Jones” African American National Biography
After a couple of days, the Red Cross arrived to pick up refugees and return them to Tulsa.14Parish. Race Riot 1921. 24. Parrish and her daughter stayed at the Red Cross Headquarters while she attempted to obtain an identification card.15Police Protection cards were a part of the system enacted by martial law immediately following the massacre. A card was required for any African American resident to enter or leave the Greenwood district. Obtaining a card required the signature of a white employer who was willing to vouch for their character. The green card meant that holders were not suspected of being involved in the “riot” and that a White person had vouched for their character and employment.
Several of Parrishes’ friends and family urged her to immediately leave Tulsa. She was considering going to Langston when H.T.S. Johnson of the Inter-Racial Commission approached her for the Inter-Racial Commission.16Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 26-27 The commission was composed of two committees, one of “fair-minded white people” and another of a “no less representative group of Negro people.”17Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 137 Created less than a month after the Massacre, it sought to make a “greater and better Tulsa” by using inter-racial cooperation to rebuild the city.18Parrish. Race Riot 1921.137;Parrish. Race Riot 1921. 78
After the Massacre, Parrish accepted a job with the Commission to report on what happened. As part of her work, Parrish interviewed eyewitnesses, copied down the stories of survivors, and collected photographs along with a “partial roster of property losses” in the Greenwood community.19Ellsworth, Tulsa Race Riot. 27 Adding her own account of the horrors of that night, Parrish published the first book about the riot Events of the Tulsa Disaster, which remains an “invaluable contemporary account.”20Ellsworth, Tulsa Race Riot. 27 The book highlight through ads and through interviews, Black women’s enterprise.
Sometime after completing her work with the Inter-Racial Commission, Parrish moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma. For some time, she worked as the advertising manager at a Country Feed Store. By 1927, she was serving as a teacher at a manual training high school. Parrish and her daughter likely remained in Muskogee for many years since Florence Mary married William Bruner from the area. While Parrish’s exact whereabouts are unclear from the 1930s onward, it is likely that she continued to live in Oklahoma until her death in the early 1970s.
In present-day talks and interviews, Parrish’s great grand-daughter, Anneliese M. Bruner, explains that trauma of the Massacre continued long after the conspiracy of silence set in. The trauma adversely impacted the lives of adults like Parrish, and youth like Florence Mary, and later her son, William Bruner, Jr. 21Anneliese M. Bruner in conversation with Scott Ellsworth, May 25, 2021, https://magiccitybooks.com/event/virtual-event-anneliese-bruner/ Brunner, who published a new edition of Parrish’s work with Trinity University Press, is calling for those who cite and use this book, now one of the foundational texts on the Massacre, to grant equal attention to the **person** who wrote it. While keeping alive the history of her family, Bruner is committed to helping Americans to understand how history can and does repeat itself if we let it. In 1923, Parrish composed a history of the mob’s invasion of Greenwood. 98 years later Bruner took to the press and wrote about the angry mob that entered Washington, D.C. where she lived and stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Elizabeth Thomas
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Bibliography
Alfred L. Brophy. “Parrish, Mary E Jones,” African American National Biography (March, 2013)
Anneliese M. Bruner in conversation with Scott Ellsworth, May 25, 2021, https://magiccitybooks.com/event/virtual-event-anneliese-bruner/
Scott Ellsworth, and John Hope Franklin. “History Knows No Fences: an Overview” in Tulsa Race Riot, A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riot of 1921. (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma). https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf
Brandy Thomas Wells, telephone communication with Anneliese M. Bruner, May 28, 2021.
Events of the Tulsa Disaster by Mrs. Mary E. Jones Parrish Collection. http://archivespaces.library.okstate.edu:8081/repositories/3/resources/1212
Eddie Faye Gates, They Came Searching (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1997).
Larry O’Dell, “Boley,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BO008
“Marriage Licenses,” St-Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri), August 2, 1912.
Mary Elizabeth Jones Parrish. Events of the Tulsa Disaster, (Tulsa, OK: Out on a Limb Publishing, 1998).
Citation:
To cite this essay, using the following: Elizabeth Thomas, “Mary E. Jones Parrish” in Brandy Thomas Wells, ed. Women of Black Wall Street, 2021, https://blackwallstreetwomen.com/?page_id=176 (Access Date)
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