Something terrible happened here. And for decades, people didn’t talk about
it. “I was an adult before I ever heard about
it. It was something that was hidden.” “This entire historic community was obliterated.” “Bodies dumped in rivers bodies dumped in
mass graves. It was an absolute massacre.” This story isn’t one you’ll find in most
history books. And almost 100 years later, the facts of what
exactly happened that day...are still unraveling. “So we’re driving in what’s known as
Black Wall Street. It’s where one of the nation’s worst episodes
of racial violence took place.” In 1921 — a neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma
called the Greenwood District, was a bustling community of black-owned businesses. Tulsa locals know that period of Greenwood’s
history as a kind of Golden Age. “If you can imagine just like an old time
downtown, things like movie theaters, pharmacy's, hair salons, and so forth.” They called it, “Black Wall Street”. “It was a mecca, it was a huge success.” But Black Wall Street was also an anomaly. It thrived at a time when the KKK was incredibly
active in Oklahoma and the nation had just been through the “Red Summer of 1919”
— when white mobs murdered black people in dozens of incidents across the US. “There needed to be a sort of match or an
igniter tossed on these embers and that event was, that trigger event, was an incident that
involved two teenagers: Dick Rowland, 19-year-old black boy who shined shoes downtown. Sarah Page, 17-year-old white girl who ran
an elevator in a downtown building called the Drexel Building. He went to the building boarded the elevator. Something happened. Sarah Page began to scream. They both ran out of the elevator.” Now we don’t know exactly what happened
in this elevator — but a day later, Rowland was arrested and taken to the courthouse. The local newspaper ran an article claiming
Rowland had assaulted Page. Even though Page refused to press charges, the
article was essentially a call to action for whites. “A large white mob began to gather on the
lawn of the courthouse. Dick Rowland was in jail on the top floor. A number of black men, several dozen, marched
down to the courthouse to protect him. Some of them armed. There was a struggle between one of the black
men in the small group and one of the white men in a larger group. And things sort of went south from from that
point.” Hundreds of white people descended upon Black
Wall Street, armed. Black residents withdrew behind the railroad
tracks that marked off the Greenwood district. Some of them were armed, and fought back. But they were outnumbered by the white mob, which
shot their way through. The white mob murdered. They looted. And they set fire to Black Wall Street. “This was the strategy, if you will, of
how to deal with these successful black communities. The effects were disastrous.” For two days, the Greenwood district burned. Martial law was declared. And the National Guard was brought in. By the time the massacre ended, Greenwood
was in ruins. More than 1200 homes were destroyed, and 35
blocks, burned. The exact number of casualties is harder to
pin down. Some initially only reported that white people
died. Others, reported somewhere between 30 and
100 mostly black casualties. But estimates now put that number closer to
300. As for those that survived, thousands of them
lived in tents cities in the months that followed...and were left to pick up the pieces of rubble
they once called home. After the massacre, the cover up started. Records went missing from city files — including
the very article that started it all. It makes photos from this time all the more
important as part of the historical record. But back in 1921, these images served a very
different purpose. “So photo postcards like these were widely
distributed after the massacre. At the time they were a part of white supremacist
culture, and kept as souvenirs of racially charged crimes.” Now, they’re preserved to make sure this
part of Tulsa’s history isn’t forgotten — and they paint a clear picture of how
much destruction there was that day. On the postcards, it’s called “The Tulsa
Race Riot” — a name that, itself, sort of erases what really happened. “By calling it a riot,  it's a way of trying
to rewrite the history, assuming that there were both sides at fault and that was not
the case. I call it a massacre and I call it that, because that’s what
it was.” Greenwood eventually rebuilt. But nearly a century later, there’s a part
of this story that still haunts the city. No one actually knows where the victims’
bodies are. “We’ve got to find our people we've got
to put them at rest. If not we continue to be haunted by what was
done so many years ago.” Kavin Ross, a local writer, is one of many
in Tulsa, descended from people who lost everything in the massacre. “So in this cemetery there are only two
official victims of the Tulsa race massacre. How many victims do you think there are?” “After all these years, I think 300 is putting
it mild.” In 1997, the city finally put together a commission
to study the massacre, and help piece together what happened in 1921. They compiled records, and eyewitness accounts. “The bullets were just raining down over
us.” “They set our house on fire and went right
straight to the curtains and set the curtains on fire.” These accounts are especially important now
— because none of these survivors are alive anymore. And they also provided new information. Some mentioned trucks - like this one - loaded
with victims of the riot. One riot witness in particular came forth, testifying that he saw bodies being dumped in Oaklawn Cemetery. “This is it. This is the area.” Using the survivor accounts, records, and
eventually, radar —  the city was able to pinpoint three locations with anomalies
in the soil. Only one step was left, to excavate. But it was something the city, at the time,
wasn’t up for doing. For many Tulsans, it was a part of history
best forgotten, and not worth investigating. In some ways, today, that sentiment remains. “Kind of a waste of money." "Why do you think that?" "It’s over. It's done with." But there are clear signs of a city that’s
ready to come to terms with a dark chapter in its history. “Honestly that’s a lot of missing people,
people that probably had families.” “We owe it to the people who whose blood
has actually fertilized the grounds of this place.” “There was a tremendous amount of racism” “Injustice plus time does not equal justice.” Today, a new mayor is re-opening the investigation. “I think a pretty basic compact that a city
makes with its citizens is, if somebody murders you we will do everything we can to find out
what happened to you and give your family closure. Whether you were murdered yesterday or you
were murdered 98 years ago.” The city will be looking into the three areas
that the commission noted. That process — of  finding out what lies
beneath Tulsa — and DNA matching any remains with descendants, could take years. The investigation is just one part of a bigger
historical reckoning. But the reality is, it can't undo the crimes or the cover up
of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. “This story is the greatest conspiracy of
silence that I've ever seen in history.” “Thanks for watching. If you haven’t already heard, we’ve launched
a paid membership program called the Video Lab For a monthly fee, subscribers get access
to tons of special features. Becoming a member is the best way to support
our work, so head on over to Vox.com/join to sign up. See you there.”
Lifelong Tulsa resident here. I drive by that cemetery at least four times a day. I will say that, growing up, it was something that was never discussed until the state's centennial in 2007, at which point it was relegated from deepest, darkest secret status to extremely inconsequential footnote status. To Tulsa's credit, however, the past few years have seen a pretty significant shift in how the city has approached it - probably beginning with the verbiage. Before, it was pretty universally called the "Tulsa Race Riot." Now, I hardly ever hear anything but "Tulsa Race Massacre", which, I think, is much more accurate. Tulsa also built a really nice park commemorating it, and is in the process of doing more to install signage and other identifiers in the Greenwood District.
Anyway. Don't want to give the impression that everything is just fine here, because it's not (Tulsa is still a very demographically segregated city and, uh, I hate to bring up Betty Shelby, but there you go), but I do at least think the city is making a conscious effort to be more cognizant about what was an extraordinary blight on the city's history.
My sisters girlfriend grew up in Tulsa. She is 21. She said they still skirt the issue in their school system.
Tulsan here. The remnants of that neighborhood are still plainly visible. It's eery, stairs that lead nowhere, driveways without homes, the skeletons of foundations. I took some pics list time I was in the area https://imgur.com/a/d6VIgai/
The Tulsa Riot was one of the worst instances of lynching in American History. An entire town literally wiped off the map.
What's really messed up is that one of the main people involved in the lynchings still has his name plastered all over popular areas of Tulsa. His name was Tate Brady and he was a member of the KKK. That's where the name for the Brady Theater comes (where many well known bands still perform to this day). A couple years ago the Brady Arts District renamed itself to the Tulsa Arts District because people became more aware of Tate Brady's past. My cousin, Lee Roy Chapman, brought a lot of that to light. https://youtu.be/2Qru7d5qBpU
I’m from Oklahoma lived in and very near Tulsa for 20 years now. Everyone that lives here is so surprised to learn this which is ridiculous. This place is still crazy segregated. I could tell you the exact streets in north Tulsa where POC are taken to buy housing. It’s what the old white folks around here call “the bad part of Tulsa”.
They act like the ENTIRE STATE wasn’t taken from my tribesmen and GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE to white people. The state as a whole was literally founded on racism.
I used to teach American History in North Tulsa to a predominately black student body. Like everyone else here is saying, the school district (and really the entire state) has pretty much ignored it completely, but there has been some effort recently to try and teach it. A lot of this push came in the late 2000's, and really focused on trying to document the accounts of survivors as much as possible, since a lot they were nearing 90-100 years old by that time. One hurdle that remains from having solid lessons in schools on the race riots is how new it is to the curriculum. Essentially the state/districts only started giving a shit in the last decade or two, so you don't have a ton of great lessons or curriculum to build on. And the teachers themselves were never taught this in school growing up, so it's difficult to structure a solid curriculum on it. I ultimately focused on survivor account like this clip from Voices of Oklahoma http://m.voicesofoklahoma.com/interview/clark-otis/, and sat with my students to map out what the sites from the riots look like now. Then at the end of the year we had a field trip through the Greenwood District and visited the museum that focuses on Black Wall Street.
One thing that I focused on for my students was what happened after. There was a legal attempt to seize the land and keep the black community from rebuilding, but the courts stepped in and stopped that. They ended up rebuilding, but toward the 60's and 70's is when Greenwood (Black Wall Street) started to disappear as an economic area. The final nail ended up being urban renewal projects. I-244 goes through what used to be Greenwood, prominent sites were torn down and built into parking lots, and a large portion was redeveloped into a baseball park. And the historically African American school (Booker T. Washington) was recently made into a "magnet" school that students have to apply to get into. It's in a black neighborhood, and is one of the top schools in the country, but doesn't serve the local population, only an insanely small fraction of local residents attend. One of my students' parent put it best by saying "this was where I went to school, my grandparents went to school, it's OUR school, but they won't let us send our kids there anymore." The one thing a lot of the local community wanted to stress was that even after this massive race riot and lynching, the community still rebuilt itself, but local policies are what ended it permanently.
Just Like the town of Rosewood in Florida.
Also r/MealTimeVideos