Tulsa race massacre

Based on Tulsa race massacre

The Burning of Black Wall Street

On the morning of June 1, 1921, airplanes flew over a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were not there to deliver mail or survey the land. According to eyewitness accounts, people in those planes dropped incendiary devices onto homes and businesses below. By noon, more than 35 square blocks lay in smoldering ruins.

This was the Tulsa race massacre—one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. In less than 24 hours, a thriving community was destroyed, as many as 300 people were killed, and 10,000 Black residents were left homeless. The neighborhood they called Greenwood, and which the rest of the country knew as "Black Wall Street," was gone.

For decades afterward, almost no one talked about it.

What Made Greenwood Special

To understand what was lost, you first need to understand what Greenwood was. The district had been organized in 1906, inspired by Booker T. Washington's philosophy of Black economic self-sufficiency. Washington had visited the area in 1905 and encouraged residents to build their own institutions rather than wait for acceptance from white society. They took his advice to heart.

By 1921, Greenwood had become something remarkable: a self-contained economy where Black dollars circulated within the community multiple times before leaving it. The district boasted two movie theaters, a dozen churches, two newspapers, and numerous nightclubs. Black doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy served their neighbors. There were grocers and hotels and restaurants.

The prosperity was real. So was the pride.

This success didn't happen in a vacuum. Oklahoma was oil country, and the booming petroleum industry created opportunities for everyone willing to work. Black Oklahomans participated in this wealth, and Greenwood became proof that given half a chance, a marginalized community could flourish. The name "Black Wall Street" wasn't hyperbole—it was a statement of fact about the concentration of Black wealth and business acumen in those 35 blocks.

The Spark

The massacre began, as such things often do, with a misunderstanding that powerful forces chose to exploit.

On May 30, 1921—Memorial Day—a 19-year-old Black shoeshiner named Dick Rowland entered the Drexel Building in downtown Tulsa. He was going to use the restroom. In the rigidly segregated city, the only "colored" restroom available to him was on the top floor. To get there, he had to ride the elevator, which was operated by a 21-year-old white woman named Sarah Page.

What happened next is still debated. A clerk in a first-floor clothing store heard what sounded like a scream. He saw a young Black man rushing from the building. When he found Page at the elevator, she appeared distraught.

The clerk assumed the worst. He called the police.

The most commonly accepted explanation is far more mundane than assault: Rowland tripped getting onto the elevator and grabbed Page's arm to steady himself. She screamed in surprise. That may have been all there was to it.

When police actually questioned Page, she apparently told them Rowland had grabbed her arm and nothing more. She declined to press charges. The authorities determined that whatever had occurred was "less than an assault" and conducted what one report called a "low-key investigation."

But the truth didn't matter. Not in 1921 Oklahoma.

A Powder Keg

To understand why an alleged elevator incident could trigger mass murder, you need to understand Oklahoma in 1921.

The state had been admitted to the Union only 14 years earlier, in 1907. The very first law passed by its new legislature segregated all rail travel. Voter registration rules effectively stripped Black citizens of the vote, which meant they couldn't serve on juries or hold local office. These laws would remain in force until the Voting Rights Act of 1965—more than 40 years later.

Tulsa itself had passed a residential segregation ordinance in 1916, forbidding members of either race from living on any block where three-quarters of the residents were of the other race. When the Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional the following year, Tulsa simply ignored the ruling and kept enforcing segregation anyway.

World War I had ended three years before, and returning veterans—both Black and white—were competing for scarce jobs during an economic downturn. Black soldiers who had fought for their country came home expecting to be treated as full citizens. White soldiers came home to find their social position threatened.

The Ku Klux Klan was resurgent nationally, energized by the wildly popular 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, which portrayed Klansmen as heroic defenders of white civilization. By the end of 1921, an estimated 3,200 Tulsa residents—nearly 5% of the city's population—would be Klan members.

Lynching was common. At least 31 people had been lynched in Oklahoma since statehood, 26 of them Black. Just the previous year, in 1920, a white mob had lynched a white murder suspect named Roy Belton in Tulsa itself. If white Tulsans would lynch a white man, what chance did a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman have?

Dick Rowland knew exactly what chance he had. He fled to his mother's house in Greenwood.

The Tribune and the Mob

On the afternoon of May 31, the Tulsa Tribune published a story with the headline "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator." The paper was known for sensationalist journalism.

According to some witnesses, the same edition included an editorial titled "To Lynch Negro Tonight." Whether this editorial actually existed has never been definitively proven—all original copies of that issue have apparently been destroyed, and the relevant page is missing from microfilm archives. A 1997 commission offered a reward for a copy of the editorial. No one ever claimed it.

But Tulsa's Chief of Detectives James Patton was unequivocal about what caused what came next. "If the facts in the story as told the police had only been printed," he said, "I do not think there would have been any riot whatsoever."

By 4 p.m., white Tulsans were gathering at the county courthouse. By sunset—around 7:30—several hundred had assembled with the makings of a lynch mob.

The newly elected sheriff, Willard McCullough, was determined to prevent another lynching on his watch. He positioned armed deputies on the courthouse roof. He disabled the building's elevator. He barricaded his remaining men at the top of the stairs with orders to shoot any intruders on sight. When three white men entered the courthouse demanding Rowland be turned over to them, McCullough refused.

He went outside and tried to convince the crowd to disperse. They shouted him down.

The Greenwood Decision

A few blocks away, Black residents of Greenwood gathered at Gurley's Hotel to discuss what to do. They knew about the Belton lynching. They knew what happened to Black men accused of crimes against white women. They knew Dick Rowland would likely die if the mob got him.

They were divided about tactics.

Young men—many of them World War I veterans who had faced German machine guns in France—began gathering weapons. They had been trained for combat. They had risked their lives for their country. They were not inclined to stand by while a mob murdered one of their own.

Older, more established men worried about the consequences. They had built something in Greenwood. They knew that any confrontation with white Tulsans would end badly for the Black community, regardless of who fired first.

Around 9 p.m., approximately 25 armed Black men arrived at the courthouse and offered to help the sheriff protect Rowland. McCullough declined their assistance, assuring them the situation was under control.

They left. But the crowd of white men had grown to nearly 2,000. And they had seen Black men with guns.

The Shot

Around 10 p.m., a second group of about 75 armed Black men returned to the courthouse. By now, the white crowd was attempting to break into the National Guard armory to steal weapons. The tension was unbearable.

The most widely corroborated account of what happened next comes from Sheriff McCullough's reports. As the group of Black men was leaving the courthouse, an elderly white man approached O.B. Mann, a Black man, and demanded he surrender his pistol.

Mann refused.

The white man tried to take it by force.

A shot rang out.

"All hell broke loose," the sheriff reported.

The two groups exchanged gunfire until midnight, when the vastly outnumbered Black men were forced to retreat to Greenwood. When the shooting stopped, 12 people were dead: 10 white, 2 Black.

But the violence was just beginning.

The Invasion

Throughout the night and into the morning of June 1, white mobs invaded Greenwood. Some had been deputized by city officials and given weapons. They were not there to restore order. They were there to destroy.

They killed Black men in the streets. They broke into homes and businesses, looted what they wanted, and set fire to the rest. They shot at fleeing residents. According to multiple eyewitness accounts, they dropped incendiary devices from airplanes—though this detail remains disputed by some historians.

What is not disputed is the outcome.

More than 35 square blocks burned. Over 800 people were hospitalized. As many as 6,000 Black residents were rounded up and interned—held in detention for days without charge. The official death toll was recorded as 36, but later investigations suggested the true number was far higher, with estimates ranging up to 300.

Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard finally declared martial law. The massacre ended—not because the mobs were satisfied, but because the state finally intervened.

Dick Rowland was eventually released without charge. Sarah Page declined to prosecute. The case for which Greenwood burned was never filed.

The Aftermath

The destruction was almost total. Property damage exceeded $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property—equivalent to nearly $40 million today. Ten thousand Black Tulsans were homeless.

What happened next tells you everything about how seriously the city took accountability.

No one was ever convicted of murder, arson, or any other crime related to the massacre. The city and real estate companies refused to compensate residents for their losses. Insurance claims were denied. Some white Tulsans used the destruction as an opportunity to try to seize Greenwood land for commercial development.

And yet, remarkably, the residents of Greenwood rebuilt. By the end of 1922, most homes had been reconstructed. Black Wall Street rose from the ashes through the sheer determination of its people, without help from the government that had failed to protect them.

Many survivors, though, simply left Tulsa. Who could blame them?

The Forgetting

For decades, the Tulsa race massacre essentially disappeared from history.

It wasn't taught in Oklahoma schools. It wasn't mentioned in local histories. It wasn't discussed in polite company. The city didn't commemorate it. The state didn't acknowledge it. The nation didn't remember it.

This wasn't accidental. Official records were hidden or destroyed. The missing page from the Tribune's microfilm archive is just one example. Survivors were discouraged from talking about what they had witnessed. A collective decision was made—by those in power—that this particular history was better left buried.

It worked. For generations, most Americans had never heard of Black Wall Street or what happened to it.

The Reckoning

In 1997, 76 years after the massacre, the Oklahoma state legislature finally authorized a commission to study what had happened. The commission's 2001 report recommended reparations for survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation creating scholarships for descendants and funding a memorial park, which was dedicated in 2010.

In 2002, Oklahoma schools were required to begin teaching students about the massacre. In 2020, it officially became part of the state curriculum.

These steps came too late for most survivors. By 2001, only a handful remained alive. By 2021—the centennial of the massacre—the youngest survivors were in their 100s.

In 2021, three centenarian survivors—Viola Fletcher (107), Hughes Van Ellis (100), and Lessie Benningfield Randle (106)—testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. They asked for justice. As of this writing, they have received none.

What It Means

The Tulsa race massacre was not an isolated incident. It was part of a pattern of white mob violence against prosperous Black communities that occurred throughout the early 20th century. Similar attacks destroyed thriving Black neighborhoods in Rosewood, Florida (1923), and Wilmington, North Carolina (1898). The message was consistent: Black success would not be tolerated.

The massacre also demonstrates how fragile progress can be. A community can spend decades building wealth, creating institutions, and proving its worth—and lose everything in a single night of violence. The perpetrators faced no consequences. The victims received no compensation. The history was erased.

And yet Greenwood was rebuilt. The people who survived the fire returned and started over. They refused to let the destruction be the end of their story.

That resilience is part of the legacy too.

The Tulsa race massacre reveals an uncomfortable truth about American history: the country's progress toward racial equality has never been linear. There have been periods of advancement followed by violent backlash. Reconstruction was followed by Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Movement was followed by mass incarceration. Every step forward has been contested.

Understanding this pattern doesn't mean accepting it as inevitable. It means recognizing that progress requires constant vigilance, that rights won can be rights lost, and that the forces of reaction are always waiting for their moment.

The residents of Greenwood knew all of this. They built anyway. They rebuilt anyway. They kept going anyway.

That's the part of the story worth remembering most.