Tulsa race massacre

Overview

Between May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma — some of whom had been armed and deputized by city officials — attacked Black residents and their homes and businesses in the Greenwood District, known as "Black Wall Street" for its concentration of Black-owned businesses and professionals. The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 deaths; a 2001 state commission identified 39 confirmed dead (26 Black, 13 white) based on contemporary records, while noting other estimates ranging up to around 300. More than 800 people were hospitalized, and as many as 6,000 Black residents were interned, some for several days.

Trigger and escalation

The violence followed the arrest of 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, after a 21-year-old white elevator operator, Sarah Page, reportedly screamed during an encounter with him in the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921. Police investigated and found the incident did not amount to assault, but rumors of a lynching spread after a Tulsa Tribune article. Several hundred white residents gathered outside the county courthouse that evening, and a group of armed Black men, many World War I veterans, arrived to help the sheriff defend Rowland. Accounts differ on the precise trigger, but a struggle over a firearm led to a shot being fired, followed by an exchange of gunfire that left 12 people dead — 10 white and two Black. A rolling gunfight and mob violence followed, with white rioters invading Greenwood overnight and into the next morning, burning and looting homes and businesses and shooting residents. Numerous eyewitnesses, including attorney Buck Colbert Franklin in a rediscovered 2015 manuscript, described airplanes used by white assailants to fire on and drop incendiary material over the neighborhood, though a later analysis for the state commission found no physical evidence of explosive damage.

Response and aftermath

Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard, under Adjutant General Charles F. Barrett, declared martial law and suppressed the remaining violence. About 10,000 Black residents were left homeless; property losses were estimated at more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property. By the end of 1922 most homes had been rebuilt, largely without compensation from the city or insurers, and many survivors left Tulsa permanently.

Later reckoning

The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for decades. In 1997 the Oklahoma legislature authorized a commission to study the event; its 2001 final report could not establish that the city had conspired with the mob but recommended reparations for survivors and descendants. The state subsequently created descendant scholarships and a memorial park, dedicated in 2010. Oklahoma schools have been required to teach the massacre since 2002, with it becoming a formal part of the state curriculum in 2020.