Sarah J Conti
Barney Cleaver 1867-1932
The first African-American policeman in Tulsa, Cleaver had opened a detective agency in the building he owned, the Cleaver-Cherry Building. The firm, the Colored Detective Association, was said to be the first Black owned company in the country. In 1921 several Black men came to Tulsa’s jail house to protect a young man, Dick Rowland, from a white mob. Cleaver worked to diffuse the situation but these rising tensions lit the fuse initiating the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Like other prosperous Black Tulsans, Cleaver lost his home and property on Greenwood Street in the riot.
Harris’s Sparrow populations have declined by 1.8% per year between 1965 and 2009, resulting in a cumulative decline of 49% during that time. Additional surveys conducted since then indicate a cumulative decline of 63% from 1970–2014.