Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a series by historian Russell Cobb we’re calling “Nasty Newspapers.” It’s named that because a century ago, the magnates who owned Tulsa newspapers had a certain propensity for publishing smears and propaganda as they jockeyed for control over power, the oil patch and city infrastructure. But this story didn’t end in the 1920s: you can hear its echoes in the “America First” propaganda and civil liberties infringements happening today. The first installment of Nasty Newspapers can be read here.
Joe Sring worked the night shift at the Katy Flyer Restaurant, serving bleary passengers from the Katy Depot down the street. Bullets often flew around North Main St., so Sring probably didn’t think much about the white man packing a revolver on his hip at the lunch counter on March 23, 1918.
The armed man watched Sring move about the restaurant. His name was S.L. Miller and he was part of the Tulsa Council of Defense, a paramilitary group mustered by a self-appointed “Committee of 100” that had come to rule Tulsa.1 Miller surveilled people the Committee considered foreign agitators from Germany and anarchists. There weren’t many of those around, so the Council looked for others they deemed unpatriotic. Tulsans who didn’t buy war bonds, Blacks demanding racial equality, union sympathizers demanding higher pay in the oilfields, Mennonite farmers: all were now under suspicion.
Joe Sring thought the good citizens of Tulsa had lost their minds. “Those boys over there are getting what they deserve,” Sring reportedly said. “They don’t know what they are fighting for.”
Miller had heard enough. “What do you mean?” he said to Sring. “I’ve got a boy in the draft.”
“They ought to get blowed up,” Sring said.
That, at least, was Miller’s account of Sring’s last words. No one will ever know what Sring actually said because Miller fired three or four shots into Sring’s body at point-blank range.
Sring’s body fell onto the lunch counter of the Katy Restaurant, and Miller walked outside into a breezy evening, where he handed another police officer his weapon and three shell casings.