During the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, a devastating and violent riot destroyed the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, commonly referred to as Black Wall Street for its concentration of black-owned businesses and its prosperity. The victims of the massacre were hastily buried in unmarked graves, and then a quiet effort began to erase the memory of the atrocity.
Subsequent generations of people, including those born and raised in Oklahoma, never heard of the Tulsa race massacre. Beginning in the 1990s, a series of events finally began to force the shocking story back into the public eye.
READ MORE: Tulsa’s Black Wall Street flourished in the early 1900s
How the Tulsa Race Massacre Happened
The violence of the Tulsa race massacre was not unique at the time, but was part of a series of mob attacks carried out against black communities in the early 20’s.e century. Tulsa’s dark chapter unfolded when Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old black shoe shiner, was arrested for the attempted sexual assault of 17-year-old white elevator operator Sarah Page on May 31, 1921 .
With the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which numbered around 100,000 in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s, black residents of Greenwood were keenly aware of the violence of the white mob. To prevent Rowland from being lynched, armed black men, many of whom were World War I veterans, stood guard at the courthouse, where Rowland was being held. As tensions mounted, an angry mob of white men arrived, and the outnumbered Black Guards retreated to Greenwood. In the wee hours of June 1, crowds of white men descended on Greenwood, looting homes, torching businesses, and shooting African Americans.
During the massacre, at least 4,000 black residents were arrested by the Oklahoma National Guard and held in internment camps under martial law, while their homes and businesses were set on fire. According to oral accounts from survivors, dozens of victims of the massacre were then buried in anonymous graves, unbeknownst to detainees who waited days before being released and were unaware of where some of the victims were buried.
READ MORE: How ‘the birth of a nation’ revived the Ku Klux Klan
The consequences and the cover-up
The mob destroyed 35 square blocks, including the entire business district and 1,200 homes. Although the death toll remains unknown, it is reported that 300 people, mostly African-Americans, were killed in the massacre. While a handful of blacks have been charged with riot-related offenses, no white resident of Tulsa has been charged with murder or looting.
“It was a great story,” says Scott Ellsworth, professor at the University of Michigan and author of Death in a Promised Land: the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. Several newspapers immediately covered the devastation, including the Tulsa World, the New York Times and London time. And some White Tulsans bragged about the bloodshed and sold photographic postcards of the carnage. But a culture of silence quickly became the norm.
“Businessmen, politicians and the like realize pretty quickly that they had a huge PR problem with the massacre,” says Ellsworth.
Tulsa trying to maintain its place as the oil capital of the world, the riot had a terrible effect on the city and was subsequently not included in the history books or newspapers for decades, nor openly discussed in black and white communities. Some newspaper accounts of the time were even deleted before the editions were recorded on microfilm, according to Tulsa World. White residents did not want to admit that relatives or friends were involved in the massacre and black residents did not want to pass their pain on to their children, said Michelle Place, executive director of the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum.
“If you tell them how hard you worked, what you built and how we lost it, then that makes the kids fear it will happen again,” she says.
Rebuilding Greenwood and Preserving its History
The Black Wall Street Massacre Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pictured in June 2020.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
The residents of Greenwood have lost everything. Some fled, never to return, while others were relegated to living in tents and receiving help from the Red Cross, until they had the means and materials to rebuild. Although black residents filed $ 1.8 million in riot related claims, they were all dismissed. But the rebuilding began within months, and community gems like the Dreamland Theater reopened, along with shops and other buildings.
As the era of civil rights brought stark change to the nation, Greenwood began to decline. “All of these entrepreneurs started to age and their kids didn’t want to take over the beauty store, the grocery store or the movie theater. Many of them had been educated and turned professionals and moved from Greenwood to different parts of the country, ”says Place, who added that with desegregation, dollars that were once concentrated in Greenwood were spent elsewhere.
That, coupled with the urban renewal efforts that inserted an interstate highway through Greenwood, drastically changed the region.
Mass graves investigation
Tulsa City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper and local activist Kristi Williams at Oak Lawn Cemetery September 22, 2018 in Tulsa, where many believe there is a mass grave containing the victims of the massacre from 1921.
Shane Bevel for The Washington Post via Getty Images
After a series of overlapping events in the 1990s, including the Oklahoma City bombing that flooded the state with reporters, who then learned of the Tulsa race massacre for the 75e anniversary; and black city leaders who wanted to capture oral histories of aging survivors and seek reparations for the victims – Oklahoma lawmakers created a commission to investigate the massacre, says Ellsworth, who served as chief researcher for the commission. “Eventually, the story broke in the press in 1998 that we had potential mass grave locations,” he says.
The commission’s official report, Tulsa Race Riot, completed in February 2001, identified three potential sites for mass graves: Oaklawn Cemetery, Newblock Park, and Booker T. Washington Cemetery, later renamed Rolling Oaks Memorial Gardens. The commission’s team of forensic archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar at the sites and found anomalies consistent with mass graves. But contention within the commission, as well as various challenges related to the serious excavation, delayed the investigation for years, Ellsworth says.
But with the support of Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum, the search resumed in 2019. In October 2020, 12 coffins that appeared to belong to the time of the massacre were found at Oaklawn Cemetery. Ellsworth predicts that more will be revealed.
“I hope that in the spring we have an exhumation order,” said Ellsworth, who chairs the new physical investigation committee, one of several groups in Tulsa tasked with uncovering the truth.
