What happened in 1921 was not an isolated event, it's part of a continuum.
There had been a number
of racial conflicts in the United States, each one of those was unique in its own way but they also
followed a similar theme.
There were a lot of white folks who did not want to acknowledge that
Black Americans were Americans.
What happened in Tulsa, the nearly 18 hours of continuous
violence targeted at the Greenwood community ...
It is domestic terrorism.
Everyone in the community was impacted, everyone in the community had been terrorised.
W. E. B. Du Bois actually called African Americans to close ranks.
The boys were suggesting that Black
people should temporarily cease agitating for political and social equality but instead fight
on behalf of US interests abroad in World War I.
The hope in doing so was that it would create white goodwill.
The Greenwood district in Tulsa was begun in 1906 by a fellow named O.W. Gurley.
He was a wealthy businessman who had migrated to Oklahoma prior to statehood.
In the Greenwood district, you could find all manner of small businesses coupled with
a concentration of service providers like doctors, lawyers, accountants, dentists, etc.
Booker T. Washington is actually credited with labeling the community 'the Negro Wall Street of America'.
There were other Black Wall Street communities ... Durham, North Carolina comes to mind.
These communities were seen as examples of Black industriousness in the face of
these incredibly racist policies, practices and procedures all throughout the country.
There is the elevator incident between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page that sets in motion
and allegation of sexual assault.
We know that Sarah Page ultimately was not willing to press
charges against Dick Rowland.
There's one theory that the elevator jostle, he bumps into Sarah Page
that startles her and she flees the elevator.
After Rowland was arrested, the Tulsa Tribune came with a story.
It says 'Nab Negro for Attack on Girl in Elevator'.
A group of angry whites began to
surround the county courthouse where Dick Rowland is being held and so as it appears
that a lynching is going to occur, Black men went downtown armed to offer assistance to
local authorities because they feared that Dick Rowland would be lynched.
So all of these Black guys
going through downtown with guns, kind of got the white folks upset.
A white man tried to disarm
one of the Black men and the gun went off.
When the gun went off, everything literally did turn into a riot.
Whites began to fire upon the black men.
The local authorities, the sheriff in particular,
begins to deputize white men who just momentarily had been calling for the lynching of Dick Rowland.
And so these men are empowered to arrest, detain, even kill Black people who they perceived
to be in rebellion.
People were running everywhere, gun fire, hand-to-hand combat and the Black men
then began what you would call a retreat through the white downtown that lasted a couple of hours.
At 5am, groups of whites had organized themselves on the southern and western border
of the Greenwood district and systematically go building to building to remove Black people.
The mob removed fine furnishings, grand pianos, clothing, money, safes from the homes of Black people.
And so in many ways, it prevented Black people from passing down the wealth that had been accrued
up until that point.
If Black people resisted in the process, they were often shot.
The police had commandeered six airplanes.
These were planes built to be used by the Americans in World War I.
The official story was that these planes were being used for reconnaissance purposes.
Mary Parrish was a young Black woman who talks about it in terms of looking up and seeing these
planes and thinking this is what the Germans did to the Belgians in World War I.
They're sending planes at us.
These are aerial weapons.
When the dust settled, we believe that somewhere
between 100 and 300 people, most of them Black, were killed.
Property damage ...
At the time depending on how you translate to present value, conservatively it's at least 25 million.
Nobody was held accountable for the devastation in Tulsa. Nobody.
But you know that was a case
all over the place with these kinds of incidents.
The insurance companies that owed Black residents
for the damages that they suffered during the massacre, they never paid claims that were filed.
There really wasn't anybody in power and authority who was willing to do anything about it either to
hold people accountable for the destruction or to provide recompense or reparations for the
Black community.
The rebuilding began almost immediately even though the city authorities
tried to prevent that.
We fast forward 20 years to 1941.
The Greenwood district has rebuilt
itself and not only has it rebuilt itself, it is bigger, there are more Black people
who reside in the Greenwood district, there are more businesses ...
I think the story of resilience,
the story of rebuilding is the story that the community most wants the world to know.