Black Wall Street.

Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1921. A wave of racial violence destroys an affluent African-American community, seen as a threat to white-dominated American capitalism.

TULSA, OKLAHOMA - JUNE 18: The Black Wall Street Massacre memorial is shown June 18, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Black Wall Street Massacre happened in 1921 and was one of the worst race riots in the history of the United States where more than 35 square blocks of a predominantly black neighborhood were destroyed in two days of rioting leaving between 150-300 people dead or more.

At the turn of the 20th century, African Americans founded and developed the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Built on what had formerly been Indian Territory, the community grew and flourished as a Black economic and cultural mecca—until May 31, 1921.

That's when a white mob began a rampage through some 35 square blocks, decimating the community known proudly as "Black Wall Street." Armed rioters, many deputized by local police, looted and burned down businesses, homes, schools, churches, a hospital, hotel, public library, newspaper offices and more. While the official death toll of the Tulsa race massacre was 36, historians estimate it may have been as high as 300. As many as 10,000 people were left homeless.

The incident stands as one most horrific acts of racial violence, and domestic terrorism, ever committed on American soil.

In May 2021, 100 years after the massacre, 107-year-old Viola Fletcher testified before Congress: “On May 31, of ‘21, I went to bed in my family’s home in Greenwood," she recounted. “The neighborhood I fell asleep in that night was rich, not just in terms of wealth, but in culture…and heritage. My family had a beautiful home. We had great neighbors. I had friends to play with. I felt safe. I had everything a child could need. I had a bright future.”

Then, she said, came the murderous rampage, still vivid in her mind 100 years later: “I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams."

North Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa (above), prior to the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, was a main thoroughfare of the Greenwood commercial district. Between segregation laws that prevented Black residents from shopping in white neighborhoods, and the desire to keep money circulating in their own community, Greenwood residents collectively funneled their cash into local Black businesses. Greenwood became a robust and self-sustaining community, which boasted barber shops and salons, clothing stores, jewelers, restaurants, taverns and pool halls, movie houses and grocers, as well as offices for doctors, dentists and lawyers.

At the time of the massacre, Greenwood was considered by many to be the wealthiest Black enclave in the nation.

The incident began on the morning of May 30, 1921, after a young Black man named Dick Rowland, who worked shining shoes, rode the elevator of Tulsa's Drexel building to use one of the few available segregated public restrooms downtown. After the female elevator operator screamed, Rowland fled the elevator and rumors quickly spread of an alleged sexual assault.

The next day, he was arrested, leading to an armed confrontation outside the courthouse between a growing white crowd and Black men hoping to defend Rowland from being lynched. As things became heated and shots were fired, the vastly outnumbered African Americans retreated to the Greenwood district. The white group followed, and as the night unfolded, violence exploded.

Throughout that night and into June 1, much of Greenwood became enveloped in billowing dark smoke, as members of the mob went from house to house and store to store, looting and then torching buildings. Fleeing residents were sometimes shot down in the streets. Many survivors report low-flying planes, some raining down bullets or inflammables.

Among the many buildings looted and torched by the white mob was the Mount Zion Baptist Church . An impressive brick structure that had opened its doors less than two months earlier. It was one of numerous houses of worship destroyed in the massacre.

The east corner of Greenwood Avenue and East Archer Street, the epicenter of "Black Wall Street,"

Still, for many Americans, the June 1, 1921 massacre and the history of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” neighborhood represented a gap in their knowledge of American history, at least until recently.

In fact, when a depiction of the massacre appeared in the opening scenes of 2019′s “Watchmen”, a popular fictional HBO series that debuted in October and drew from the real-life events of 1921, many viewers reported that they initially believed they were witnessing fictional events. Another fictional HBO show, “Lovecraft Country,” also drew from the real-life massacre for a 2020 episode, further stoking the national conversation about an event that had once been seemingly ignored by history.

Nine thousand people became homeless, Josie Pickens writes in Ebony. This “modern, majestic, sophisticated, and unapologetically black” community boasted of “banks, hotels, cafés, clothiers, movie theaters, and contemporary homes.” Not to mention luxuries, such as “indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system that superiorly educated black children.”

Undoubtedly, less fortunate white neighbors resented their upper-class lifestyle. As a result of a jealous desire “to put progressive, high-achieving African-Americans in their place,” a wave of domestic white terrorism caused black dispossession.

The creation of the powerful black community known as Black Wall Street was intentional. “In 1906, O.W. Gurley, a wealthy African-American from Arkansas, moved to Tulsa and purchased over 40 acres of land that he made sure was only sold to other African-Americans,” writes Christina Montford in the Atlanta Black Star.

Gurley provided an opportunity for those migrating “from the harsh oppression of Mississippi.” The average income of black families in the area exceeded “what minimum wage is today.” As a result of segregation, a “dollar circulated 36 to 100 times” and remained in Greenwood “almost a year before leaving.” Even more impressive, at that time, the “state of Oklahoma had only two airports,” yet “six black families owned their own planes.”

These African-Americans’ economic status could not save them from the racial hostility of their day. Greenwood survivors recount disturbing details about what really happened that night. Eyewitnesses claim “the area was bombed with kerosene and/or nitroglycerin,” causing the inferno to rage more aggressively. Official accounts state that private planes “were on reconnaissance missions, they were surveying the area to see what happened.”

Despite all of the economic damage, Hannibal Johnson, author of Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District, explains that neither the survivors nor their families ever received the reparations suggested by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.

The commission recommended reparations for “people who lost property” and proposed “the establishment of a scholarship fund—that did happen, for a limited time.” The commission also proposed initiatives for the economic revitalization of the Greenwood community. Despite the tragic events, these grand ideas never manifested into a tangible reality.

Underlying Causes of the Massacre.

In “The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: Toward an Integrative Theory of Collective Violence,” the sociologist Chris M. Messer explores the underlying causes of the massacre. As a result of mass migrations to the area, driven in part by increased job opportunities, Tulsa became the city with the most African-Americans in the state. With a boom in the black population and their demands for equality, “perceptions of discrimination and shared experience among African-Americans…allowed for little time for adaptation among whites.”

Tulsa’s rapid change in racial demographics made the city ripe for a riot motivated by white animosity against black economic progress. Whites of the era equated improvements in “wages and working conditions” as communistic threats. In essence, whites were resentful that blacks no longer passively accepted second-class citizenship in their own homeland.

Another structural factor that played a vital role in the Tulsa race riot was segregation. Ironically, black businesses benefited from self-sufficiency, which held both benefits and drawbacks for entrepreneurship. “Through maintenance of the legal separation of race in sociality, business, education, and residential areas, the structure of segregation encouraged initiative, but also placed parameters by restricting African-American opportunities,” Messer writes.

In other words, since it was against the law for blacks to shop at white-owned stores, black businesses flourished. However, even though black businesses profited from how segregation reduced competition for black patrons, segregation also limited blacks’ mobility and opportunities to achieve outside their community.

According to Messer, the police force also contributed to the riot. Due to their ineffective leadership, they allowed mobs to gather at the courthouse for hours before seeking additional assistance.

Furthermore, they actively participated in the riot by deputizing whites without discretion, arming them with guns to multiply the police force overnight. The police disregarded due process, arresting blacks and interning them in detention camps; meanwhile, no whites were arrested during the riot.

Both politicians and the media falsely framed the Tulsa riot as an uprising started by lawless blacks. Tulsa newspapers regularly referred to the Greenwood district as “Little Africa” and “n—–town.” African-Americans in the district were labeled “bad n—–s” who drank booze, took dope, and ran around with guns. Perhaps as a result of government officials’ stereotyping rhetoric and the media’s biased reporting, whites and blacks interpreted the racial violence differently.

Generally, white politicians and residents perceived the black community “as predisposed to crime and in need of social control,” Messer explains. In other words, due to assumptions of black criminality, whites justified deadly violence on Black Wall Street, because blacks needed to be subjugated.

The Tulsa World newspaper inflamed the tensions between blacks and whites by suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan could “restore order in the community.” Since the KKK asserted white superiority with terroristic acts, such as lynchings, the mere suggestion from a mainstream newspaper that the KKK should intervene demonstrates how white supremacy was not only legitimized but also promoted with legal impunity.

In the early 1900s, there was a rise in Black Nationalist organizations that refused to cower in the face of KKK violence or submit to societal subordination.

Whites responded to black pride and demands for equality with “social control, including segregation, lynchings, and pogroms,” Messer writes. In “Mass Media and Governmental Framing of Riots: The Case of Tulsa, 1921,” Messer and his colleague Patricia A. Bell offer further detail about how the media framed the riot, igniting tensions.

In essence, blacks’ desire for socioeconomic progress and assertion of their rights was seen as a grave threat to white hegemony. Portraying all blacks as criminals served the black inferiority narrative, maintained Jim Crow segregation, and promoted the violent enforcement of racist ideology.

For instance, the racial framing of blacks as criminals legitimized whites’ congregation “at the courthouse and the subsequent destruction of the Greenwood area.” Consequently, it’s no surprise that blacks perceived the riot started by whites “as a massacre of their community.”

The massacre of Black Wall Street primarily occurred due to whites “generalized perception that African-Americans were ‘out of line’” and needed to be put “back in their place.”

Historians say the history of “Black Wall Street” and the massacre that occurred there (much like the Juneteenth holiday) have generally not been taught in U.S. schools over the past century, even in Oklahoma, where the racist incident was only added to statewide school curriculums in February 2020.