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HISTORY
The Tulsa Race Massacre Was Almost Erased From History
It wasn’t included in history books or newspapers for decades.
A destructive and deadly riot obliterated Tulsa’s Greenwood area, known as Black Wall Street, because of its concentration of Black-owned businesses and prosperity, during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. The victims were promptly buried in unmarked graves, and a silent movement to eradicate the memory of the massacre began.
The Tulsa Race Massacre was one in a string of mob attacks against Black neighborhoods in the early twentieth century, although it was not unusual at the time. Tulsa’s dark chapter began on May 31, 1921, when Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, was arrested for the alleged sexual harassment of Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator.
With the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, which by the mid-1920s had an estimated 100,000 supporters in Oklahoma, Black Greenwood citizens became painfully aware of white gang activity. Armed Black men, many of whom were World War I veterans, stood to watch at the courtroom where Rowland was being held to prevent him from being lynched.
A furious mob of white men then arrived as tensions increased, and the outnumbered Black guards fled to Greenwood. On the morning of…
