What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre?

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 is the worst incident of interracial violence in U.S. history, yet it wasn't discussed for decades, and historians are still unearthing its details. Learn why, and what we do know about it, in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group
of scientists and historians is on the verge of unearthing
a chunk of the city's past that has long been buried,
and one that some people may prefer to keep that way.
It's a potential mass grave from the worst single incident

(00:23):
of interracial violence in American history. Beginning May thirty one,
thousands of armed white Toulson's invaded the black section of
the booming oil town, terrorizing its residents, looting their homes
and businesses, and burning to the ground some thirty five
square blocks of the city. Before the rampage was over,
more than ten thousand Black people were left homeless, and

(00:46):
more than six thousand were interned in camps, where they'd stay,
in some cases for months. We spoke with Scott Ellsworth,
a native Tulson and a professor of African American history
at the University of Michigan. Ellsworth is the author of
the nine and eighty two book Death in a Promised Land,
one of the first books to take a comprehensive and
historical look at the Tulsa race massacre, previously mystically called

(01:08):
the Tulsa Race Riot of ninety one. He said, to
this day, we don't know how many died. Reasonable estimates
range from I would say forty too as high as
three hundred. When the unmarked but suspected mass grave in
a Tulsa cemetery is excavated in July, it may provide
a few answers to exactly what happened over those two days.

(01:30):
In it will be for many a literal reopening of
a wound that's festered within the city for nearly a century.
The Tulsa Race Massacre of nine one did not, in
a word often used to describe such events, erupt. The
city simply reached what now seems an inevitable breaking point.

(01:50):
In early Tulsa was a wash with cash from the
oil boom. The good fortune reached into the north section
of the city, mostly populated by Black Americans. That area,
later to be known as the Black Wall Street, contained
a hundred ninety one businesses, including hotels, a feed store,
a roller, ink cleaners, mom and pop stores, and restaurants,

(02:11):
plus offices for doctors, dentists, and lawyers. The area had
at least five churches too, a library, a movie theater,
and a hospital. Like the rest of the city at
that time, the black area also known as Greenwood had
its problems. Alcohol, even under prohibition, was readily available. Illegal
drugs were easy to find too, as we're gambling and prostitution.

(02:32):
The whole city, not just Greenwood, struggled with crime and
with lawless punishment. Less than a year before, a white
teenager accused of murder was taken from his jail cell
and lynched by a white mob. The police did little
to protect him, and racial violence against black people was commonplace,
even though thousands of black Americans had just returned from

(02:53):
fighting in World War One. Jim Crow laws and pervasive
racist attitudes meant that a quality remained nothing more than
a dream for black Americans, and many white Americans wanted
to keep it that way. Ellsworth wrote in a two
thousand one report commissioned by the state of Oklahoma on
the then called riot that quote. During the weeks and
months leading up to the riot, there were more than

(03:14):
a few white Toulson's who not only feared the color
line was in danger of being slowly erased, but believed
that this was already happening. So into that explosive milieu,
a black teenaged boy working as a shoeshiner had a
brief run in with a white teenaged girl operating an elevator,
and the fuse was lit. The boy was taken into custody.

(03:38):
A group of more than two thousand angry white people,
some intent on lynching him, possibly prompted by an inflammatory
editorial in a white run newspaper, gathered on the courthouse steps.
Some armed black war veterans and others squared off with
them there, and soon shots were fired. White people from
all over the city began their march on the Greenwood
area to tamp down what many white people saw as

(04:00):
an uprising. There are stories of black citizens being murdered
in their homes, interrupted in their evening prayers. The terror
went on for eighteen hours into June one. Despite their
sworn duty to serve and protect, neither Tulsa Police nor
any other government agency assisted the black population. Instead, Tulsa
police officers helped set some fires, and an all white

(04:22):
unit of the National Guard joined the invaders. Other public
officials provided guns and AMMO to white men. The KKK
got involved. A semi functioning machine gun was used on
Black Tulson's, and some reports indicate that airplanes dropped homemade
fire starters. Despite being largely outnumbered, Black Toulson's fought to
protect their homes and businesses, and most of all, Greenwood,

(04:46):
but in the end, scores of black people and some
white people were killed and Greenwood was left in ruins.
The exact numbers of injured and dead, even after what's
to be uncovered in three suspected mass graves, may never
be known. It's still unclear exactly what happened between the
black shoeshine boy Dick Rowland and the white elevator girl

(05:06):
Sarah Page to spark the massacre, though one thing is known.
She refused to bring charges. Roland was vindicated. For years,
Tulsa refused to acknowledge in any meaningful way what had
happened in ninety one. Nobody has ever been charged or
prosecuted for the crimes that occurred during those eighteen or

(05:27):
so hours. Even those who grew up there, Ellsworth included,
were not taught that part of the city's history. The
Tulsa race massacre became a terrible and closely held secret
that began to change with Ellsworth's death in a Promised
Land and some earlier work. Then in nine when members
of the national media descended on Oklahoma City after the

(05:49):
bombing of the federal building, they were informed of this
other more terrible episode of domestic terrorism in the state's history.
More news accounts and more books of the massacre followed,
and in twenty nineteen, the HBO comic book superhero series Watchman,
inspired in part by Tulsa, enlightened many more to the story.
But Tulsa's failed efforts to come to grips with its

(06:11):
deadly past has left scars. Ellsworth said, the city was
robbed of its honesty. You have entire generations growing up
in Tulsa who have never heard of this. You have
people growing up with a false reality, a false vision
of the land they were on. I mean, imagine if today,
right now, that you had young people growing up in
Manhattan who had never heard of nine eleven, that there

(06:32):
were no books to talk about nine eleven. That it's
as if it didn't exist. The Race massacre was a
gigantic myth in the history of Tulsa. It was deliberately
buried for a long time. With the unearthing of one
of at least three suspected mass graves in Tulsa. Next
month will mark another step in the long road to
understanding and perhaps one day, recovery. Ellsworth said, I know

(06:57):
that this has been a process that has been going
on for a while now. It's caused people to kind
of re evaluate how they look at the past, how
they look at their town, and what's going on. I
think that's been a liberating process for some people. It's
been a very difficult one for others. Today's episode was

(07:17):
written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For
more on this and lots of other topics, visit how
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