Chief of Detectives James Patton attributed the cause of the riots entirely to the newspapers 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.. I never made much money, she said. according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch. In April 2002 a private religious charity, the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, paid a total of $28,000 to the survivors, a little more than $200 each, using funds raised from private donations. In the Tulsa City Commission report issued two weeks after the massacre, Mayor T.D Evens unequivocally stated, Let this blame for this Negro uprising go right where it belongs, on those armed negroes who started this trouble and who instigated it.. Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa. Tulsa police officers arrested Dick Rowland, a Black 19-year-old, May 31, 1921 for allegedly assaulting a white girl, the report said, but there was little evidential proof. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Greenwood Rising, a history centre honouring Black Wall Street, memorializing the victims of the massacre, and telling its story, was established in 2021 by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, founded in 2015. A. Cargill. Dreisen Heath, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who authored the report, said law enforcements involvement in the massacre illustrates the demands of racial justice movements a century later. On May 30, 1921, a 19-year-old Black shoeshiner entered an elevator at the Drexel Building in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. A year before the massacre, an association of medical professionals, visiting Tulsa for a conference, lined up for a panoramic photo in front of Williams Dreamland Theatre. People searching through rubble after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1921. S. MacQueen, a bailiff and failed candidate for sheriff, grabbed a tall Black mans .45-caliber Army-issue handgun, leading to this exchange: N, where are you going with that pistol?. When a confrontation between an armed African American man, there to protect Rowland, and a white protester resulted in the death of the latter, the white mob was incensed, and the Tulsa massacre was thus ignited. Within an hour, rumors of a lynching moved newly elected Tulsa County sheriff Willard M. McCullough to place city police on alert. A Negro was a Negro on that day and was forced to march with his hands up for blocks. The massacre left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsa's prosperous Black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the "Black Wall Street." More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. So as Gurley opened a boarding house, grocery stores and sold land to other Black people, they secured their own houses and opened businesses. The Greenwood district, a comparably prosperous black community spanning thirty-five city blocks, was set afire and destroyed by white rioters. Directed by Emmy-winning director Jonathan Silvers and reported byThe Washington PostsDeNeen L. Brown,the new documentaryTulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten on PBS(check local listings),pbs.org/tulsamassacre and the PBS Video app, examines this deadly assault on humanity on the 100th anniversary of the crime and chronicles present-day public efforts to memorialize the Tulsa Race Massacre and other racial violence around the country. Quraysh Ali Lansana, an Oklahoma native and the acting director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation at Oklahoma State University, Tulsa, is helping organize an exhibition about the historic Black Wall Street neighborhood, its destruction and its rebirth, for Tulsas Philbrook Museum of Art with Tri-City Collective. His arrest sparked the Tulsa Race Massacre. With rumors still flying of a possible lynching, a group of around 75 armed Black men returned to the courthouse shortly after 10 pm, where they were met by some 1,500 white men, some of whom also carried weapons. Haberler . Minutes later, a White female clerk at a nearby store heard the 17-year-old White elevator operator, Sarah Page, scream and saw a young Black man running from the building. Commonly known as the Trail of Tears, the Five Civilized Tribes, On July 19, 1866, the Cherokee Nation signed a Reconstruction, 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. what happened directly following the 1921 tulsa massacre? A. Robertson dispatched the National Guard and declared martial law. A disguised light-skinned African-American Tulsan overheard an ad hoc meeting of city officials plan a Greenwood invasion that night. Two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores and many other Black-owned businesses were among the buildings destroyed or damaged by fire. Oklahoma Historical Society via Gateway to History website. By 1942, over 200 Black businesses were operating in Greenwood. I had everything a child could need, Viola Ford Fletcher, 107, told the committee. what happened directly following the 1921 tulsa massacre? We were made to feel that our struggle was unworthy of justice and that we were less valued than whites, that we weren't fully American., Fletcher served white families for most of her life as a domestic worker. According to the, some in the mob were instructed to get a gun and get a n. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the US, occurred in a broader context of racist violence and oppression stemming from slavery, which continues to . This lawsuit seeks to remedy the ongoing nuisance caused by the 1921 massacre and to obtain benefits unjustly received by the Defendants. ThoughtCo. Shortly after the massacre there was a brief official inquiry, but documents related to the massacre disappeared soon afterward. This upheaval resulted in the uncontested mob outnumbering the remaining Black people by 20 to 1, the report said. No one in the white mob was prosecuted or otherwise punished for the massacre, the report said. Rumors of what had occurred on the Drexel Buildings elevator quickly spread through Tulsas White community. In the immediate aftermath of the Massacre, approximately 6,000 Black Tulsans were forcefully detained in internment camps guarded by armed men and forced to work for free as virtual slaves for the City of Tulsa. In 2018, Radio Diaries in New York City received a $350,000 grant from NEH to support several episodes of its historical radio program and podcast, one of which, Surviving the Tulsa Race Riot, told the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre through the life and memories of Olivia Hooker, who was just six years old in 1921. The next day the Tulsa Tribune printed a story saying that Rowland had tried to rape Page, with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. By late afternoon, several hundred angry White residents had gathered at the courthouse demanding that Rowland be handed over to them. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Two of the last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Viola Fletcher, 108, and Hughes Van Ellis, 102 became citizens of Ghana in a ceremony Tuesday. The looting, though hurried, was methodical, with mobsters taking furniture, Victrolas, and pianos. In what some historians have called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, residents and businesses of Tulsas predominantly Black Greenwood District were attacked on the ground and from the air by mobs of Whites angered by the financial prosperity of the residents of what was then known as the Black Wall Street. In less than 18 hours, at least 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed, with hundreds of people killed. Kept safely under guard in the jail during the riot, he left Tulsa the next morning and reportedly never returned. However, no legislative action was ever taken on the recommendation, and the commission had no power to force legislation. Scholars began to delve deeper into the story of the riot in the 1970s, after its 50th anniversary had passed. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921, Oklahoma Historical Society - Tulsa Race Massacre, PBS LearningMedia - A History of Trauma, Violence and Suppression - Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten, Tulsa race massacre of 1921 - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Tulsa race massacre of 1921 - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. Later that afternoon at the Black-owned Williams Dreamland Theatre, sixteen-year-old Bill Williams watched as a neighbor jumped on stage and announced: Were not going to let this happen. Johnson said the inability of Black people to accumulate wealth and transfer it intergenerationally is the root cause. https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre. By the time peace was restored, as many as 6,000 black Greenwood residents had been interned at three local detention centers, and thousands more had fled the town. The elevator operator was seventeen-year-old Sarah Page, a white girl. Also in August 1920, in Oklahoma City, an eighteen-year-old Black youth, Claude Chandler, was lynched by a mob that featured the future mayor of Oklahoma City, O. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. This time, the police, fearing a lynching, moved Rowland from the regular jail to the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse for safekeeping. Sheriff McCullough, hunkered down in the County Court House, kept Dick Rowland safe as the mobs fury was aimed at a Negro revolt in Greenwood. Even by low estimates, the Tulsa Race Massacre stood as one of the deadliest riots in U.S. history, behind only the New York Draft Riots of 1863, which killed at least 119 people. Premieres Monday, May 31 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org and the PBS Video app A portrait of lawyer Buck Colbert Franklin, taken some years before he moved to Tulsa, where he opened a practice shortly before the 1921 massacre. Published May 27, 2021 Units of the Oklahoma National Guard participated in the mass arrests of all or nearly all of Greenwoods residents.. Later articles in 1936 and 1946 titled Fifteen Years Ago Today and Twenty-five Years Ago Today made no mention of the rioting. The police were called, and the next morning they arrested Rowland. The Tulsa. In early September 2020, survivors of the 1921 massacre and their descendants, in Oklahoma state court against the City of Tulsa and other defendants. READ MORE: 'Black Wall Street' Before, During and After the Tulsa Race Massacre: PHOTOS. The National Guard, local law enforcement, and deputized white citizens canvassed Greenwood to disarm, arrest and move Black people to nearby internment camps, dragging some out of their homes. As the white mob reached nearly a thousand, a new contingent of 50 or more Black men, feeling anxious, arrived to protect Rowland, but they, too, were persuaded to leave at about 10:30 p.m. Then, as they walked awayaccording to Scott Ellsworths interview with seventy-eight-year-old survivor Robert FairchildE. The exhibition will feature 33 Oklahoma-based artists. The massacre left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsas prosperous Black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the Black Wall Street. More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. Thousands of African-American families moved in and helped found 30 Black towns, including Boley, Clearview, Tatum, Lima, and Langston, where McCabe himself helped found Langston College in 1897. Despite the oil boom, Tulsa suffered from a stalling economy that had resulted in widespread unemployment, especially among the White population. At the time, Greenwood was very likely the most prosperous Black community in the country, and Tulsa, the Magic City, was one of Americas fastest-growing cities, an oil boomtown, following the 1905 discovery of the Glenn Pool Oil Reserve 15 miles south of town. The elevator operator, a 17-year-old White girl named Sarah Page, was the only other person on the elevator. Scott Ellsworth, Tulsa Race Riot, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Damaged Greenwood district church following the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1921. The name Greenwood still evokes the possibilities and history of Black entrepreneurship, but talk of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre reminds the world of the centuries-long struggle of Black people against white mob violence and its greenlighting from white authorities. In many cases, Tulsa Fire Department crews who showed to fight the fires were turned away at gunpoint. The Bloomberg Philanthropies gave Tulsa $1 million for an expansive public art project called the Greenwood Art Project.