The 1921 Tulsa Massacre

Podcast Transcript

In 1921, one of the most prosperous Black communities in America was attacked, burned, and nearly 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 number of estimated dead was in the hundreds. Thousands of Black residents were left homeless, and hundreds of homes and businesses were burned. Yet for decades, the story was largely unknown.

Learn more about the Tulsa Massacre and its legacy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

When the Oklahoma Territory was opened to settlement in 1889, it brought tens of thousands of people, many of whom were former slaves or the descendants of slaves. More than 10,000 black migrants rushed to the region to claim their settlement.

One of the most prominent settlement points was in Tulsa, a small city in Northeastern Oklahoma. Tulsa was a quiet railroad stop in 1890, home to only 200 people. Steady growth from migration brought that population to nearly 20,000 in only 20 years.

In 1906, a Black entrepreneur named O.W. Gurley purchased a 40-acre plot in the northwestern part of 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 huge success.

After Oklahoma gained statehood in 1907, the first act of its legislature was a formal law segregating Black and White communities. Gurley’s purchase would transform into the Greenwood District of Tulsa, a segregated community for Black Oklahomans.

The Greenwood District benefited from the Oklahoma oil boom in the early 20th century. While some wealthy Black landowners struck oil, the true source of Greenwood’s economic success was the money that flowed into the city through the surrounding oil infrastructure.

Greenwood developed a vibrant, self-sustaining economy as it grew to a population of more than 11,000 by 1920. Greenwood attracted talented people from across the United States and drew the attention of prominent Black intellectuals.

According to the Oklahoma History Center, Greenwood attracted nationally renowned African American leaders and activists, including Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. In fact, Booker T. Washington gave Greenwood its nickname, “Black Wall Street.”

While Greenwood flourished, the social attitudes of many White Americans did not. The Ku Klux Klan re-emerged in 1915, setting the stage for the wave of race riots that swept across the nation in the summer of 1919.

According to the Washington Post, Red Summer was a reign of terror that engulfed at least 26 cities – including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Elaine, Ark., Charleston, S.C., Knoxville, and Houston. These attacks set the stage for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

While the nation’s cities were under siege, the Greenwood district of Tulsa seemed like the perfect enclave. The neighborhood boasted a modern healthcare system with 15 physicians for the community and a well-respected hospital.

Residents could count on skilled attorneys to help navigate the complex challenges of land acquisition from the federal government. The enclave had an excellent school system that produced a highly literate workforce, and its residents enjoyed a widely circulated newspaper.

Greenwood seemed too good to be true, until May 30, 1921.

On May 30, 1921, 19-year-old shoe shiner Dick Rowland needed to use the restroom in downtown Tulsa. Because of segregation, Rowland was unable to use the restroom in the office building where he worked and instead had to use the ‘colored’ restroom in an adjacent building.

When Rowland entered the adjacent building, he encountered 17-year-old elevator operator Sarah Page, a young white woman on duty. According to the police report, Rowland tripped as he entered the elevator and grabbed Page to steady himself. Page screamed, which led others in the building to call the police.

Police interviewed both Rowland and Page. Based on Page’s confirmation that there was no assault, officers decided not to pursue charges at that time. However, after word of the incident spread, police revisited the allegation and arrested Rowland the next day, May 31.

Anger grew in the Tulsa community following the arrest. The morning paper reported an assault in the elevator, and the headline read: To Lynch Negro Tonight.

Author Jewell Parker Rhodes disputes the notion that the incident between Rowland and Page was the primary 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 District.

On May 31st, the local police had deputized 500 white men who gathered for the lynching. The local police department armed the group of deputies and issued directives on how to handle the unrest.

By nightfall, the group grew to more than a thousand as they descended on the Tulsa County Courthouse, where Rowland was in custody. Fearing the worst, a group of more than 50 armed black men, many of them WWI veterans, came to the defense of Rowland and the police who tried to provide for his safety.

The city had become a powder keg.

Shortly after 10 pm on May 31, a shot was fired toward Rowland’s defenders, which was the spark that set things off. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Black defenders returned to Greenwood.

The crowd grew emboldened by an unlikely source: the Oklahoma National Guard. The role of the National Guard remains one of the most controversial aspects of the uprising. Authorities had called the National Guard to defend the armory rather than to support either side.

However, the National Guard ignored their instructions. Instead, they rounded up as many as 6,000 of the black residents of Greenwood and marched them to hastily built detention centers at the local fairgrounds. The interned were denied due process and held for as long as 8 days.

A siege of Greenwood began in earnest in the early hours of June 1, as the mob started looting and burning the city’s business district. By dawn on June 1, the mob of more than 10,000 had surrounded Greenwood.

According to the Tulsa Historical Society, the violence only accelerated: White men had hauled a machine gun to the top of a grain elevator. At 5:08 a.m., a signal pierced the air. In response to the signal, the machine gunners began firing into Greenwood.

As machine gun fire rained down from the high point of the city, the rioters went from house to house, breaking into all of the homes, looting them, and setting them ablaze. The entire town became engulfed in fire.

According to the Oklahoma Commission, the violence destroyed more than a dozen churches, 31 restaurants, five hotels, four drug stores, and eight doctors’ offices in addition to more than 1,000 homes.

Despite overnight reports, the Governor waited almost 12 hours to order martial law. The continued troop buildup in the region did little to calm the mayhem and even less to stop the destruction. The National Guard compelled detainees to clear the wreckage of their own community, threatening those who resisted with vagrancy charges.

Much of their work focused on cleaning up the city’s incredible destruction. This was no ordinary fire. Reports from survivors bring chilling details of the later stages of the burning, suggesting at least six bi-planes dropped homemade firebombs, turning Greenwood’s nightmare into horror from above.

One chilling account from Greenwood resident B.C. Franklin, recorded in the Smithsonian’s archives, illustrates the devastation caused by the planes. He wrote: “I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted, and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building. Down East Archer, I saw the old Mid-Way hotel on fire, burning from its top, and then another and another and another building began to burn from their top,”

The planes played a crucial role in the massacre. The Greenwood residents largely lived in brick homes, and they were able to hold off the rioters from their 2nd-floor windows. The planes eliminated that advantage as pilots dropped firebombs to destroy the roofs of the houses.

By the afternoon of June 1st, the fire had reduced the 35 blocks of the Greenwood District to ash. The death toll is difficult to ascertain; the official Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Records noted 36 deaths, 26 Black and 10 White. This accounting is widely considered a gross undercount; the Oklahoma Historical Society puts the number at 300.

The continued search for mass graves, such as one unearthed in July of 2024, indicates the total is much higher than the official estimate.

As the smoke cleared and authorities released the Greenwood residents from internment, the survivors began to grapple with the staggering aftermath. Legal proceedings failed to hold the white rioters accountable for the destruction they had caused.

The Grand Jury charged with overseeing the legal process was quite clear who they blamed: The crowd assembled about the courthouse being purely spectators and curiosity seekers…There was no mob spirit among the whites, no talk of lynching and no arms. The assembly was quiet until the arrival of armed negroes, which precipitated and was the direct cause of the riot.

The actions of the Grand Jury prompted the state’s solicitor to grant immunity to those whites who rioted or murdered. Insurance companies claimed exemptions for policies covering riots caused by residents.

Tulsa leadership proposed rezoning the Greenwood area as industrial and bulldozing it to make way for future development. The residents of Greenwood refused to yield; they retained attorney B.C. Franklin, who fought the city every step of the way.

While the struggle played out in the courts, the residents lived in tents on their property until they could afford to rebuild. Many gathered bricks from the rubble and used what they could to reconstruct their homes.

The community received support from around the country and was able to “rise like a phoenix” within five years of the destruction. The progress was so impressive that the Atlantic Magazine quoted a local historian who noted in 1930: “Everything was more prosperous than before.”

The Tulsa Massacre left deep, enduring scars on the community. While some observers at the time described a successful rebuilding effort, later research tells a different story: those who remained in Tulsa faced a long-term decline in job quality and opportunity compared to those who moved away.

Perhaps even more devastatingly, city and state leaders erased the event from the historical record and cast blame directly on the residents of Greenwood.

Finally, in 1997, the Oklahoma Legislature created the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission interviewed survivors, examined documents, studied death toll estimates, and produced a major report in 2001.

The report concluded that government officials had failed to protect Black citizens and recommended compensation to survivors. These recommendations included direct payments to survivors and descendants, a scholarship fund, economic development in Greenwood, and a memorial.

The Tulsa Massacre was not just 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 units, and airplanes dropping bombs, it was something much, much greater.

Homes were burned, lives were lost, and justice was denied, but thankfully, at least, the story of the people of Greenwood was not lost to history.