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podcast transcript
In 1921, one of America’s most prosperous black communities was attacked, burned, and virtually erased from memory.
The Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, also known as Black Wall Street, became the site of one of the worst acts of violence in American history.
The estimated death toll reached hundreds. Thousands of black residents were left homeless and hundreds of homes and businesses burned. But for decades this story was little known.
Learn more about the Tulsa Massacre and its legacy in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
When settlement was permitted in the Oklahoma Territory in 1889, tens of thousands of people moved here, many of them former slaves or descendants of slaves. More than 10,000 black immigrants flocked to the area looking for a place to settle.
One of the most notable settlements was Tulsa, a small city in northeastern Oklahoma. Tulsa was a quiet railroad stop in 1890 with only 200 residents. Steady growth due to immigration brought its population to nearly 20,000 in just 20 years.
In 1906, a black entrepreneur named OW Gurley purchased 40 acres in northwest Tulsa. He planned to build a settlement that would sponsor and encourage the growth of black-owned businesses in the city. Gurley’s plan was a great success.
After Oklahoma gained statehood in 1907, the first action taken by the Oklahoma Legislature was a formal law segregating black and white communities. Gurley’s purchase will transform Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a segregated community of Black Oklahomans.
The Greenwood District benefited from the Oklahoma oil boom of the early 20th century. While some wealthy black landowners drilled for oil, the real source of Greenwood’s economic success was the money that flowed into the city through the surrounding oil infrastructure.
Greenwood developed a vibrant, self-reliant economy, with a population growing to over 11,000 by 1920. Greenwood attracted talent from across the United States and attracted the attention of prominent black intellectuals.
According to the Oklahoma History Center, Greenwood attracted nationally prominent African American leaders and activists, including Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. In fact, Booker T. Washington nicknamed Greenwood “Black Wall Street.”
Greenwood prospered, but the social attitudes of many white Americans did not. The Ku Klux Klan reemerged in 1915, setting off a wave of race riots that swept the country in the summer of 1919.
According to the Washington Post, Red Summer was a reign of terror that swept through at least 26 cities, including Washington D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Elaine, Arkansas, Charleston, South Carolina, Knoxville, and Houston. These attacks set the stage for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
While the nation’s cities were under siege, Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood seemed like the perfect home. The neighborhood boasted a modern health care system with 15 doctors and a respected hospital serving the community.
Residents can rely on skilled attorneys to help them navigate complex issues related to federal land acquisition. The area had an excellent school system that produced a literate workforce, and residents enjoyed widely distributed newspapers.
For Greenwood, it seemed too good to be true by May 30, 1921.
On May 30, 1921, 19-year-old shoe shiner Dick Rowland needed to use a bathroom in downtown Tulsa. Due to racial segregation, Rowland was unable to use the restrooms in the office building where he worked, and instead had to use the ‘colored’ restrooms in an adjacent building.
When Rowland entered the building next door, he met 17-year-old elevator operator Sarah Page, a young white woman, on duty. According to the police report, Rowland fell while riding an elevator and grabbed Page to steady himself. Page screamed, which prompted other people in the building to call the police.
Police interviewed both Rowland and Page. Police decided not to press charges at the time, based on Page’s confirmation that there had been no assault. However, as news of the incident spread, police reexamined the charges and arrested Roland the next day, May 31.
Following the arrest, anger grew in the Tulsa community. The morning newspaper reported the assault in the elevator and the headline read: Lynch black people tonight.
Author Jewell Parker Rhodes disputes the notion that the incident between Rowland and Page was the main catalyst for the massacre. Instead, she argues that the real cause was the simmering resentment felt by Tulsa’s white community toward the prosperity of the Greenwood neighborhood.
On May 31, local police deputized 500 white men who had gathered for a lynching. Local police departments armed their deputies and issued instructions on how to deal with the unrest.
By nightfall, their numbers had grown to more than 1,000 as the group descended on the Tulsa County Courthouse where Rowland was being held. Fearing the worst, a group of more than 50 armed black men, many of them World War I veterans, came to the defense of Roland and the police trying to protect his safety.
The city has become a powder keg.
Shortly after 10 p.m. on May 31, shots were fired at Roland’s defenders, which sparked the incident. Desperately outnumbered, the black defenders returned to Greenwood.
The crowd was further emboldened by an unexpected source: the Oklahoma National Guard. The role of the National Guard remains one of the most controversial aspects of the uprising. The authorities called in the National Guard to defend the armory rather than assist either side.
But the National Guard ignored their instructions. Instead, they rallied up to 6,000 black residents of Greenwood and marched to hastily build a detention center at the local fairgrounds. Those detained were denied due process and detained for up to eight days.
The siege of Greenwood began in earnest in the early hours of June 1, as rioters began looting and burning the city’s commercial districts. By dawn on June 1, a mob of more than 10,000 people had surrounded Greenwood.
The violence accelerated, according to the Tulsa Historical Society. The white men dragged the machine guns to the top of the granary. At 5:08 a.m., a signal rang in the air. In response to the signal, the machine gunners began firing at Greenwood.
As machine gun fire rained down from high above the city, the mob went from house to house, breaking into every house, looting and setting fire to them. The entire village was engulfed in fire.
The violence destroyed more than a dozen churches, 31 restaurants, five hotels, four pharmacies, eight doctors’ offices and more than 1,000 homes, according to the Oklahoma Commission.
Despite reports throughout the night, the governor waited nearly 12 hours before ordering martial law. Continued troop build-ups in the region did little to quell the chaos, much less stop the destruction. The National Guard forced prisoners to clear the rubble of their communities and threatened those who resisted with vagrancy charges.
Much of their work focused on cleaning up the city’s massive destruction. This was no ordinary fire. Survivors’ reports provide gruesome details about the later stages of the fire, and say at least six biplanes dropped homemade Molotov cocktails, turning Greenwood’s nightmare from above.
One chilling account from Greenwood resident B.C. Franklin, recorded in the Smithsonian archives, shows the destruction caused by the plane. He wrote: “You could see planes circling in the air. They were growing in number, buzzing, buzzing, dropping low. You could hear hail falling on top of office buildings. Below East Archer, the old Mid-Way Hotel was on fire and burning at the top, and another building was starting to burn at the top.”
Airplanes played a decisive role in the massacre. Most of Greenwood’s residents lived in brick homes and had second-story windows to keep out the rioters. The plane eliminated this advantage as the pilot dropped Molotov cocktails to destroy the roofs of houses.
On the afternoon of June 1, a fire reduced 35 blocks of the Greenwood district to ash. The death toll is difficult to confirm. The official Oklahoma Vital Records Bureau recorded 36 deaths: 26 black and 10 white. This accounting is widely considered a gross understatement. The Oklahoma Historical Society puts the number at 300.
As a result of continued searches of mass graves, including the cemetery excavated in July 2024, the size of the overall grave was found to be much higher than the official estimate.
As the smoke cleared and authorities released Greenwood residents from the camp, survivors began to grapple with the devastating aftermath. Legal proceedings failed to hold white rioters accountable for the destruction they caused.
The grand jury, charged with overseeing the legal proceedings, was very clear about who it condemned. Crowds gathered around the courthouse, purely onlookers and curiosity seekers. There was no mob spirit among the whites, no talk of lynchings, and no weapons. The meeting was quiet until armed blacks arrived, which directly led to the riot.
The grand jury’s actions allowed state attorneys to grant immunity to white people who rioted or killed. Insurance companies claimed exemptions from policies covering riots caused by residents.
Tulsa leaders have proposed rezoning the Greenwood neighborhood to industrial and demolishing it to make way for future development. Greenwood residents refused to yield. They hired a Franklin, B.C. attorney who fought the city every step of the way.
While the fight played out in court, residents lived in tents on their property until they could afford to rebuild. Many people gathered bricks from the rubble and rebuilt their homes using whatever was available.
With support from all over the country, this community was able to ‘rise like a phoenix’ five years after its destruction. The progress was so impressive that Atlantic Magazine quoted a local historian in 1930 who said: “Everything is more prosperous than before.”
The Tulsa Massacre left deep and lasting scars on the community. Although some observers at the time described successful reconstruction efforts, later studies tell a different story. Those who remained in Tulsa experienced long-term declines in job quality and opportunity compared to those who moved elsewhere.
Perhaps even more shocking is that city and state leaders removed the incident from the historical record and placed the blame directly on Greenwood residents.
Finally, in 1997, the Oklahoma Legislature created the Oklahoma Commission to Study the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. The committee interviewed survivors, reviewed documents, studied death toll estimates, and wrote a major report in 2001.
The report concluded that government officials failed to protect black citizens and recommended compensation for survivors. These recommendations included direct payments to survivors and descendants, scholarships, Greenwood economic development, memorials, and more.
The Tulsa Massacre was not simply a moment of violence, but an attempt to destroy a community, its wealth, and its memory. It also wasn’t a riot. With machine guns, National Guard troops, and planes dropping bombs, it was a much bigger deal.
Homes were burned, lives were lost and justice was denied. But fortunately, the story of the Greenwood people has not been lost to history.
