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Tulsa race massacre
Part of racism in the United States
Buildings burning during the Tulsa race riot
Location
Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
Coordinates
36°09′34″N 95°59′11″W
Coordinates: 36°09′34″N 95°59′11″W
Date
May 31 – June 1, 1921
Target
Black citizens
Weapons
Guns, incendiary devices, explosives, airplanes[1]:196
Deaths
36 (1921 findings)
Total unknown according to Red Cross[2]
100–300 (2001 Oklahoma Commission Report) [3]
Non-fatal injuries
Over 800
Perpetrators
White mob, the police, the United States National Guard[1]:193, 196
The Tulsa race riot, sometimes referred to as the Tulsa massacre,[4][5][6][7] Tulsa pogrom,[8][9][10] or Tulsa race massacre, took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a mob of white citizens attacked black residents and businesses of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[1] This is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States.[11] The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the United States.
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days.[12] The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate.
The riot began over Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the 17-year-old white elevator operator of the nearby Drexel Building. After he was taken into custody, some blacks worried that Rowland was at risk of being lynched. To reduce the likelihood of lynching, a group of armed black men rushed to the police station where the suspect was held. There, the armed black men found assembled a crowd of white men and women. A confrontation developed between the groups, shots were fired, and twelve people were killed, ten white and two black.[13] As news of these deaths spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of white people rampaged through the black neighborhood that night and the next day, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property ($31 million in 2018).
Some black people said that policemen had joined the mob; others said that National Guardsmen fired a machine gun into the black group and a plane dropped sticks of dynamite.[14] In an eyewitness account discovered in 2015, Greenwood attorney Buck Colbert Franklin described watching a dozen or more planes, which had been dispatched by the city police force, drop burning balls of turpentine on Greenwood's rooftops.[15]
Many survivors left Tulsa. Black and white residents who stayed in the city were silent for decades about the terror, violence, and losses of this event. The riot was largely omitted from local, state, as well as national, histories: "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place."[16]
In 1996, seventy-five years after the riot, with the number of survivors declining, a bi-partisan group in the state legislature authorized formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Members were appointed to investigate events, interview survivors, hear testimony from the public, and prepare a report of events. There was an effort toward public education about these events through the process. The Commission's final report, published in 2001, said that the city had conspired with the mob of white citizens against black citizens; it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants.[1] The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, encourage economic development of Greenwood, and develop a memorial park in Tulsa to the riot victims. The park was dedicated in 2010.
