1921 mass violence in Oklahoma, U.S.
The Tulsa race massacre, also known as the Tulsa race riot or the Black Wall Street massacre, was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist massacre that took place between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials, attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street."
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were interned in large facilities, many of them for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead. The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 black and 13 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records. The commission gave several estimates ranging from 75 to 300 dead.
The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building. He was arrested and rumors that he was to be lynched were spread throughout the city, where a white man named Roy Belton had been lynched the previous year. Upon hearing reports that a mob of hundreds of white men had gathered around the jail where Rowland was being held, a group of 75 black men, some armed, arrived at the jail to protect Rowland. The sheriff persuaded the group to leave the jail, assuring them that he had the situation under control.
The most widely reported and corroborated inciting incident occurred as the group of black men left when an elderly white man approached O. B. Mann, a black man, and demanded that he hand over his pistol. Mann refused, and the old man attempted to disarm him. A gunshot went off, and then, according to the sheriff's reports, "all hell broke loose." The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men were greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood. At the end of the exchange of gunfire, 12 people were dead, 10 white and 2 black. Alternatively, another eyewitness account was that the shooting began "down the street from the Courthouse" when black business owners came to the defense of a lone black man being attacked by a group of around six white men. It is possible that the eyewitness did not recognize the fact that this incident was occurring as a part of a rolling gunfight that was already underway. As news of the violence spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. White rioters invaded Greenwood that night and the next morning, killing men and burning and looting stores and homes. Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law, ending the massacre.
About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and the cost of the property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $ million in 2023). By the end of 1922, most of the residents' homes had been rebuilt, but the city and real estate companies refused to compensate them. Many survivors left Tulsa, while residents who chose to stay in the city, regardless of race, largely kept silent about the terror, violence, and resulting losses for decades. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for years.
In 1996, 75 years after the massacre, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized the formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission's final report, published in 2001, states that the city had conspired with the racist mob; it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation to establish scholarships for the descendants of survivors, encourage the economic development of Greenwood, and develop a park in memory of the victims of the massacre in Tulsa. The park was dedicated in 2010. Schools in Oklahoma have been required to teach students about the massacre since 2002, and in 2020, the massacre officially became a part of the Oklahoma school curriculum.
Background.
In 1921, Oklahoma had a racially, socially, and politically tense atmosphere. The territory of northern Oklahoma had been established for the forced resettlement of Native Americans from the southeast, some of whom had owned slaves. The slaves were the first black inhabitants of Indian Territory, having been brought in by their native owners. Other areas had received many settlers from the South whose families had been slaveholders before the Civil War. Oklahoma was admitted as a state on November 16, 1907. The newly created state legislature, which had a large Democratic majority, passed racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws, as its first order of business. The 1907 Oklahoma Constitution did not call for strict segregation; delegates feared that U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt would veto the document if they included such restrictions. Still, the first law passed by the new legislature segregated all rail travel, and voter registration rules effectively disenfranchised non-whites. This meant that they were also barred from either serving on juries or serving in local public offices. These laws were enforced until they were ruled unconstitutional after the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Major cities passed laws that imposed additional restrictions.
On August 4, 1916, Tulsa passed an ordinance that mandated residential segregation by forbidding members of either race from residing on any block where three-quarters or more of the residents were members of the other race. Although the United States Supreme Court declared such an ordinance unconstitutional the following year, Tulsa and many other cities continued to establish and enforce segregation for the next three decades.
Many servicemen returned to Tulsa following the end of the First World War in 1918. As they tried to re-enter the labor force, social tensions and white supremacist sentiment increased in cities where job competition was fierce. An economic slump in Northeastern Oklahoma increased the level of unemployment. The Civil War, which ended in 1865, was still in living memory; civil rights for African Americans were lacking.
The Ku Klux Klan was resurgent (influenced by the popular 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation"). Since 1915, the Ku Klux Klan had been growing in urban chapters across the country. Its first significant appearance in Oklahoma occurred on August 12, 1921. By the end of 1921, 3,200 of Tulsa's 72,000 residents were Klan members, according to one estimate. In the early 20th century, lynchings were common in Oklahoma as part of a continuing effort to assert and maintain white supremacy. By 1921, at least 31 people, mostly men and boys, had been lynched in the newly formed state; 26 were black.
At the same time, black veterans pushed to have their civil rights enforced, believing that they had earned full citizenship as the result of their military service. In what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919, industrial cities across the Midwest and Northeast experienced severe race riots in which whites attacked black communities, sometimes with the assistance of local authorities.
As a booming oil city, Tulsa also supported a large number of affluent, educated, and professional African American residents. Greenwood was a district in Tulsa that was organized in 1906 following Booker T. Washington's 1905 tour of Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Oklahoma. It was a namesake of the Greenwood District, which Washington had established as his own district in Tuskegee, Alabama, five years earlier. Greenwood became so prosperous that it came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). Most black people lived together in the district. Black Americans had created their own businesses and services in this enclave, including several grocers, two newspapers, two movie theaters, nightclubs, and numerous churches. Black professionals, including doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy, served the community. During his trip to Tulsa in 1905, Washington encouraged the cooperation, economic independence, and excellence being demonstrated there. Greenwood residents selected their own leaders and raised capital there to support economic growth. In the surrounding areas of northeastern Oklahoma, they also enjoyed relative prosperity and participated in the oil boom.
Monday, May 30 (Memorial Day).
Encounter in the elevator.
On May 30, 1921, 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner who was employed at a Main Street shine parlor, entered the only elevator in the nearby Drexel Building at 319 South Main Street in order to use the top-floor "colored" restroom, which his employer had arranged for use by his black employees. There, he encountered Sarah Page, the 21-year-old white elevator operator who was on duty. Whether—and to what extent—Rowland and Page knew each other has long been a matter of speculation. The two likely knew each other at least by sight because Rowland would have regularly ridden in Page's elevator on his way to and from the restroom. A clerk at Renberg's, a clothing store on the first floor of the Drexel, heard what sounded like a woman's scream and saw a young black man rushing from the building. The clerk went to the elevator and found Page in a distraught state. Thinking that she had been sexually assaulted, he summoned the authorities. Apart from the clerk's interpretation that Rowland had attempted to rape Page, many explanations have been given for the incident, with the most common explanation being that Rowland tripped as he got onto the elevator, and as he tried to catch his fall, he grabbed onto the arm of Page, who then screamed. Others suggested that Rowland and Page had a lover's quarrel.
The 2001 Oklahoma Commission Final Report notes that it was unusual for both Rowland and Page to be working downtown on Memorial Day when most stores and businesses were closed. But it has been speculated that Rowland was there because the shine parlor where he worked may have been open to draw in some of the parade traffic. While Page had been required to work in order to transport Drexel Building employees and their families to choice parade viewing spots on the building's upper floors.
Brief investigation.
Although the police questioned Page, no written account of her statement has been found, but apparently, she told the police that Rowland had grabbed her arm and nothing more, and would not press charges. The police determined that what happened between the two individuals was less than an assault. They conducted a low-key investigation rather than launching a man-hunt for her alleged assailant.
Regardless of whether or not assault had occurred, Rowland had reason to be fearful, as African American men accused of raping white women were often prime targets for lynch mobs. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Rowland fled to his mother's house in the Greenwood neighborhood.
Tuesday, May 31.
Arrest of Rowland.
On the morning after the incident, Henry Carmichael, a white detective, and Henry C. Pack, a black patrolman, located Rowland on Greenwood Avenue and detained him. Rowland was initially taken to the Tulsa city jail at the corner of First Street and Main Street. Late that day, Police Commissioner J. M. Adkison said he had received an anonymous telephone call threatening Rowland's life. He ordered Rowland transferred to the more secure jail on the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse.
Rowland was well-known among attorneys and other legal professionals within the city, many of whom knew him through his work as a shoeshiner. Some witnesses later recounted hearing several attorneys defend Rowland in their conversations with one another. One of the men said, "Why, I know that boy, and have known him a good while. That's not in him."
Newspaper coverage.
The "Tulsa Tribune", owned, published, and edited by Richard Lloyd Jones, and one of two white-owned papers that were published in Tulsa, broke the story in that afternoon's edition with the headline: "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator", describing the alleged incident. According to some witnesses, the same edition of the "Tribune" included an editorial warning of a potential lynching of Rowland, titled "To Lynch Negro Tonight". The paper was