Lola Wilhelmina Guess was born on April 25, 1907, in McAlester, Oklahoma, just months before Oklahoma’s 1907 statehood. Her parents migrated to the state as children with their families. Her father, Henry Augustus Guess, was from Texas. Minnie Mae Jackson was originally from Memphis, Tennessee. The Jacksons had fled to Indian Territory when Minnie’s father, T.D., who may have worked in law enforcement, received word that a lynch mob planned to kill him. He sheltered in a neighbor’s house, hidden until he could safely leave. As Wilhelmina explained to Eddie Faye Gates during their 1994 interview, “If it had not been for those kind, courageous neighbors, the mob would have lynched nine black men that night instead of eight, and I would not be here today.”[1]

The Jackson family settled in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Minnie graduated from Guthrie School and became a teacher at Lincoln School. In 1895, she met Henry, who had come to teach in the area. The year before, he graduated from Paul Quinn College, a private college in Texas that the African Methodist Episcopal Church operated.

H.A. and Minnie married a few years later on June 26^th, 1901. The couple had four children, James being the oldest, followed by Bernice, Wilhelmina, and Townsend. Sometime during the early years of their marriage, the family moved to McAlester, Oklahoma, which was then considered the “capital” of the coal mining industry. The town also boasted of having the best school system in the state. Consequently, McAlester attracted people from far and wide and became one of Oklahoma’s most ethnically diverse towns, as witnessed by its 25% foreign-born population in 1900. 

Little is known about the family’s experiences in McAlester. What is clear is that Henry continued to pursue higher education. In 1903, he graduated with a Bachelor of Law degree from Howard University, a historically black college in the nation’s capital. His brother, James, was also highly successful. After graduating from Meharry Medical College in Memphis, he practiced medicine in Okmulgee, a manufacturing center of the time. James and other Black residents played a pivotal role in the expansion of Okmulgee.

 When H.A. returned to McAlester, he opened a law practice. Unfortunately, tragedy soon struck the Guess family. In April 1912, Townsend also died in the fire that destroyed their home.

In 1913, the family moved to Greenwood, where they started their lives anew. Briefly, Minnie worked at Dunbar, Greenwood’s highly lauded elementary school. From 1914 on, she contributed to the family as a homemaker. The change in pace allowed her and Wilhemina, now the youngest child, to spend several weeks in Texas, Kansas, and Colorado visiting relatives and friends. H.A. once again opened a law practice. After a few months, the Guesses moved from renting a room to a home they had purchased. Homeownership, education, and leisurely pursuits demonstrated the family’s arrival in Greenwood’s upper class.

As a child, Wilhelmina, who was nicknamed Tillie, enjoyed life in Greenwood. She fondly remembered her time at Loula Williams’ Dreamland Theatre, where she loved seeing Friday serials. As she recalled later, “It was hard for us to wait a whole week to find out what had happened to Hands Up and to Elmo the Mighty.”[2]  Wilhelmina’s favorite uncle, Arthur C. Jackson, also resided in Greenwood. Dr. A.C. Jackson was a renowned physician. The famous Mayo Clinic, long considered one of the nation’s greatest medical institutions, described him as “the most able Negro surgeon in America.” In her interview with Gates, Wilhemina recalled that one of their family heirlooms included the letter from the Mayo Clinic with these sentiments. However, as she explained, “all that medical stuff did not matter to me.”[3]  What mattered most was that her favorite uncle saved her life in 1916. When she was eight, Wilhelmina had a serious illness that caused her parents to fear they would lose another child. She credited her uncle with her survival.

Unfortunately, a few years later, the Guesses experienced another tragedy, this time in the form of a destructive mob. During the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a white mob attacked Greenwood, burning much of it to the ground and killing an untold number of victims.

When the tragedy first began at the Tulsa Court House, Wilhelmina, who was 14 years old, was playing near Booker T. Washington High School with her sister. The two returned home, but H.A. may have been one of the men who joined in the crowd of Black men, who sought to protect and upload Dick Rowland’s right to a fair trial. While Wilhelmina and Bernice remained at home with their mother, James departed with his father’s gun, intending to fight white terror. The chaotic situation grew worse.

H.A. returned home around midnight, and despite the late hour, Wilhemina met him at the door of their home. She recalled her father walking in with a smile, but his eyes and body looked haggard. He pleaded with the family to get some rest, and though they climbed into their beds, there was little sleep to be had. After a bullet from the steady stream of gunshots shattered a window, Minnie dragged H.A. and her children from the house. They rushed out of the home when they realized they could not depart because the mob was on their street and just a few doors away.

H.A. hid Minnie, Wilhemina, and Bernice under the back porch and took shelter in the chicken coop because of the limited space. They heard the mob descend on the home and heard calls for the hiding family to come out.   Fortunately, it was at this time that a white bystander (who sold ground beef from a Black-owned restaurant in the district) warned them not to torch the property or the others because he owned them all. The mob grumbled but moved on.

After an hour or so, Wilhemina’s mother instructed her and Bernice to go into the home and gather all they could because nearby homes were on fire, and the family feared the fire would spread. They did the same for a neighbor who was a teacher. But when the girls opened the icebox and saw a lemon pie, they sat at the table and devoured it.   A short while later, a second White group appeared and ordered Bernice and Wilhemina to march with others to McNulty Park.

Their mother was not with them because she had departed when she received some bad news.

Her brother, Dr. Jackson, was one of the Massacre’s earliest victims when two teenage boys shot him. He was killed when he rushed out of his burning home with his hands raised high in the air. In discussing the Massacre years later with Gates, Wilhelmina remarked on the irony that her family had come to Oklahoma “to get away from racism, violence, and death.”[4] Wilhelmina’s aged and widowed grandfather traveled to Greenwood to claim his son’s body and give him a proper burial back in Guthrie. Dr. Jackson’s widow soon departed the state.

Wilhemina’s family worked hard to rebuild their lives in the following years. While the Guesses’ home was spared, H. A.’s torched office had to be rebuilt. From the outside, it may have appeared that the family had recovered, but the trauma of the Massacre ran deep. The Guess children stayed close by. The 1930 census shows that James, who was 26 and college-educated, was living at home and working as a porter at an office. Bernice, who was 24, lived at home and was listed as unemployed. The family boosted its income by taking in a lodger who worked in the construction industry. 

The lessons Wilhelmina learned from her parents about getting a good education, prospering, and serving the community inspired her next steps. As her father desired, she attended Howard, where she graduated in 1930 with a bachelor’s degree in education. From an invitation extended by her former principal at Booker. T. Washington, E.W. Woods, and Wilhelmina returned to Oklahoma to teach. She taught for a few months in a small town before receiving another invitation from Woods that brought her back to Tulsa. H.A. lived to see her graduation and success before passing away in September 1933.

In 1935, Wilhelmina married Theodore Eugene Howell, an Oklahoma native. After fighting in World War II, Theodore returned home and found work as a cook in a cafeteria. The couple had two children, Penni J. Howell (b. 1945) and David Eugene Howell (b. 1961 and perhaps adopted). Until Wilhemina’s mother relocated to Washington D.C., she lived in the Howell household.

Wilhelmina worked as an elementary school teacher for over 40 years, teaching at Booker T. Washington Elementary and Charles S. Johnson. In her work with students, she shared that she “tried to give young black students a sense of pride in their ancestry and history. I tried to motivate them to develop their talents, to excel, and to contribute their talents and service to the community.”[5]  Wilhemina appears to have succeeded in her efforts. Don Thompson, who photographed her and others for the Gates’s interviews, says that Mrs. Howell was his favorite teacher.

Outside of work, Wilhelmina remained quite busy. She was a member of the Parent Teachers Association and president of the De Classe’ Club, a bridge club in Greenwood that supported struggling families, especially during the holidays. She was an adult member of the Kinozuti Campfire Girls, an organization that gave girls the opportunity to do active and outdoor activities like the Boy Scouts. Wilhelmina was also secretary for the North Regional Civic Club, comprised of Booker T.  Washington graduates from the 1920s. They created a fundraiser to add a piano to the newly built North Regional Service Center Library.

Wilhelmina was deeply committed to activities that supported fellow survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In 1978, she served as the committee secretary for the Reunion Committee of Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors, a reunion that honored the classes of 1916 through the 1920s of Booker T. Washington. In October 1989, she and Mabel Little gave a talk at the University of Tulsa about the Massacre, where she shared the events of the dreaded night with a large crowd.

In the early 2000s, she was also involved in bringing a suit against the State of Oklahoma and the City of Tulsa for reparations related to the Tulsa Race Massacre. In part, the suit claimed that protections, privileges, and immunities that Greenwood residents had under the 14th Amendment were violated.

Wilhemina did not receive justice for enduring the Massacre, but she was recognized for surviving it.   In 2001, she and 117 others, who were alive at the time of the Massacre, received an Oklahoma Medal of Distinction as “a small step in recognition of the harm done to the residents of the Greenwood community on May 31 and June 1, 1921.” In 2003, the Nonagenarian Appreciation Society, an organization celebrating those 90 or older, honored her for her longevity and community contributions. Wilhemina passed away on December 18, 2003, at 96.

Wilhemina’s Guess Howell’s list of contributions to the Greenwood community is long and rich. Like her parents and extended family members who worked in and served the district, she was committed to community involvement and service throughout her lifetime. Ultimately, Wilhelmina accomplished her greatest goal: to live a life that would have made her grandfather, W.E., who escaped a lynch mob, proud.

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[1] Eddie Faye Gates, “Wilhelmina Guess Howell,” They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1997), 113.

[2] Quoted in Victor Luckerson, Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street: One Hundred Years in the Neighborhood That Refused to Be Erased (New York: Random House, 2023).

[3] Gates, “Wilhelmina Guess Howell,” 113.

[4] Gates, “Wilhelmina Guess Howell,” 113; and Don Thompson and Eddie Faye Gates, North Tulsa Oral History Project includes interviews with Wilhelmina Guess Howell, Lloyd H. Williams, Jr., and Eunice Jackson. 5327.1820. The Eddie Faye Gates Tulsa Race Massacre Collection, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, https://collections.gilcrease.org/object/53271820.

[5] Gates, “Wilhelmina Guess Howell,” 114.

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Citation: “Wilhelmina Guess Howell,” in Brandy Thomas Wells, Ed. Women of Black Wall Street, 2025 (2021), https://blackwallstreetwomen.com/wilhelmina-guess-howell/ (Access date).

Student Authors: Kaily Cullom, Bethany Duncan, Ashton Staggs, Nathan Sellers, Luke Wigton, Tyler Patrick, Tyler Sockey, and Katherine Wardell.

Student Editor: Brett Smith, WBWS Intern, Fall 2024.

Any use of images on the website must be attributed to the original site/copyright holder.

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Sources:

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“News around The City,” Tulsa Start (Tulsa, Oklahoma), 14 September 1914.

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