Tulsa Race Massacre: A History from Beginning to End

In 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one of the most prosperous and well-established black areas in the United States. At a time when many black Americans faced discrimination and poverty, the around 10,000 mainly black residents in Greenwood were served by black-owned businesses, sent their children to schools with black teachers, and attended churches with black congregations served by black ministers. There was nothing quite like Greenwood anywhere else in America, and when this area had been visited by a prominent black rights activist a few years before, he coined it the “Black Wall Street.”

But on the dawn of June 1, 1921, this haven of black progress came under a brutal and unrelenting attack when several hundred armed white people launched an assault on Greenwood. Among them were members of the Tulsa Police Department, supported by aircraft and even a heavy machine gun. They murdered Greenwood’s inhabitants and systematically looted and burned its buildings. By afternoon, virtually nothing remained of Black Wall Street, and those of its residents who had survived the assault were arrested and confined in make-shift internment camps.

None of the people involved in this atrocity—the single worst example of racially motivated violence in America—ever faced charges. How could the Tulsa Race Massacre happen, and how could this appalling event be effectively erased from America’s history for 75 years? This is the horrifying true story of the Tulsa Race Massacre.