INCMI - Tulsa Massacre

Rarely mentioned in textbooks, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of racial violence in American history. 2021 marks 100 years since the once-prosperous Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as “Black Wall Street,” was destroyed in a two-day explosion of violence by a mob of white residents. Hundreds of Black-owned businesses and homes were burned to the ground, killing an estimated 100-300 Black residents, and leaving an estimated 10,000 Black residents homeless.
Here are five facts about the Tulsa Race Massacre that you didn’t learn in history class.
Many Black Oklahomans arrived as slaves through the Trail of Tears.
Starting in 1830 after the passage of the Indian Removal Act, tens of thousands of Native Americans were violently forced to leave their homelands in the Southeastern United States to relocate out West. Commonly known as the Trail of Tears, the Five Civilized Tribes were not the only ones forced across the country. Black slaves were also kept by Native Americans and forced to relocate through the Trail of Tears before settling in Oklahoma.
On July 19, 1866, the Cherokee Nation signed a Reconstruction treaty with the United States that freed all slaves and granted them Cherokee citizenship. The treaty also set aside a large tract of land for them to settle, giving each Freedmen household 160 acres.
The land ownership granted by the 1866 treaty resulted in great economic success for former slaves and their descendants. Oklahoma quickly became the state with the most independently ran Black towns, with Black families traveling to Tulsa’s Greenwood district to spend their money and largely contribute to its financial boom.The start of the Tulsa Race Massacre can be attributed to yellow journalism.
On May 31, 1921, 19-year-old Black shoe shiner Dick Rowland, an employee at a Greenwood Main Street shine parlor, entered an elevator operated by white 17-year-old Sarah Page in the nearby Drexel Building. A white clerk at a nearby clothing store heard what he thought was a scream and, thinking a young woman had been assaulted, contacted the authorities. The 2001 Oklahoma Commission Report notes that Rowland most likely tripped as he got onto the elevator, and as he tried to catch his fall, he grabbed onto Page’s arm who then screamed.
A brief investigation took place shortly after, and Page told police that Rowland had merely grabbed her arm and that she would not press charges. Later that afternoon, however, the white-owned newspaper Tulsa Tribune published a false account of the story with heavily sensationalized language. The article headlined “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator” stated that Rowland “attacked her, scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes.” The next morning Rowland was taken into police custody.
Black men from the town quickly gathered at the Tulsa County Courthouse after Rowland’s arrest to protect him from being lynched. Multiple Black men were armed at the scene and violent confrontations with white men and white police officers quickly erupted. Chief of Detectives James Patton attributed the cause of the riots entirely to the newspaper’s account and stated, “If the facts in the story as told by the police had only been printed I do not think there would have been any riot whatsoever.
Read More Here : www.pbs.org/wnet/tulsa-the-fi...