In 1921, the predominantly Black neighborhood
of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
was victim to one of the biggest massacres on U.S. soil.
More than 1,000
African-American homes and businesses
were looted and burned to the ground.
And for decades, the massacre went untold.
White businessmen who ran the city
realized that Tulsa had a huge PR problem,
and they were determined to bury the story.
Stop killing our people!
But on the heels of the re-ignition
of the Black Lives Matter movement,
there's been national attention
brought to the massacre through news outlets.
In 1921, a White mob burned Greenwood to ash.
As well as pop culture.
The story is now getting the attention it deserves.
But the massacre is only half of that story.
What happened after the massacre is just as important.
The real story here is a story
of the indomitable human spirit.
It's about these remarkable Black people who had vision.
They created something that was of national renown.
They watched it destroyed unjustly.
Most of them remained. They were resilient.
They rebuilt even in the face of great hostility.
In order to understand the massacre in Tulsa,
you have to understand the context around it.
So the national context
is something that sociologists and historians
often call the low point of race relations in America
because there was a proliferation of so-called race riots.
These were invasions of Black communities
all across the country.
1919 was dubbed Red Summer,
with riots in dozens of cities around America,
in what was mostly White on Black violence.
Greenwood, however, dodged those riots
and actually flourished because of the oil boom.
More than 10,000 people lived there.
People were coming in daily to this incredible boom town.
This oil city of Tulsa.
Jobs were plentiful.
Plenty of people had regular steady paychecks.
It was like a main street, really.
So you would have beauty salons and barbershops, laundries,
grocery stores, restaurants.
So this was kind of an everyman's paradise
owned by Black folks concentrated in a 35 square block area
that abuts downtown Tulsa.
During that era, a successful Black community
was met with White resentment
and Greenwood was no different.
The idea was gain economic power, gain wealth,
and then you will get respect
and with respect will come political power.
Well, just the opposite happened in Tulsa.
If you gain economic power,
you will court resentment and violence, ultimately.
White Americans can get very upset and jealous
when they see African-Americans who have things, cars,
nice homes, that they don't have.
There's no question that part of that jealousy
was part of the fuel
for what became the Tulsa race massacre.
But it really wasn't the spark that began it.
That spark was a Black boy accidentally touching
a White girl in an elevator.
Tulsa was a tinderbox, a powder keg
needing only some sort of igniter or catalyst.
That event involved two teenagers, Dick Roland,
19 years old, shoeshine boy who works downtown.
Sarah Page, 17 years old,
White girl who operates in the elevator
in downtown Drexel Building.
What we think happened is
is that Dick stepped onto the elevator,
he tripped, he reached his hand out,
he probably grabbed Sarah Page,
she screamed, and he ran out of the elevator.
Meanwhile, a clerk, a White clerk in a nearby store,
had concluded that this had been an interracial rape attempt
and he started to spread that story.
The next morning,
Dick Rowland was arrested and taken to the courthouse
and that could have been the end of things.
Had it not been for the intervention
of the Tulsa Tribune,
which the next day published an article entitled,
"Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator."
It was a false narrative that painted the portrait
of an attempted rape in broad daylight in a public space,
in downtown Tulsa.
After hearing rumors that Dick Roland
would be lynched,
several dozen Black World War I vets assembled
with weapons to confront the mob.
As you might imagine,
words were exchanged between the larger White group
and the smaller Black group.
White man tries to take a Black man's gun,
the gun discharges.
Chaos ensues.
The violence lasted roughly 16 hours.
Black men put up
a fearless defense of the Greenwood community,
but ultimately, the mob spills over
into the Greenwood district, burning, looting, shooting,
destroying everything in sight.
The destruction of Greenwood wasn't just bad,
it was total.
It's just like a wave that goes block by block.
Both movie theaters go up.
The library branch goes up.
The African-American hospital is burned.
22 churches are burned.
Grocery stores, restaurants, everything is leveled.
In terms of the number of people who died,
there are reasonable estimates that go as high as 300.
And Greenwood physically speaking is gone.
Property damage estimates range from 1.5
to $2 million, which translates to $25 million today.
But this isn't where the story ends.
The fact of the matter is,
is that Black Tolsons rebuilt Greenwood,
the community rebuild it.
And that rebuilding was an uphill battle.
With no help from the federal government
and the city of Tulsa actively trying
to prevent the rebuilding,
the Greenwood community began the long, slow
reconstruction of Greenwood.
The massacre in the Black community
became a point of pride.
The fact is that they fought back.
So this was a defiant community.
It was a proud community and they were determined to stay.
So the community we know
was rebuilt to a significant enough degree
to host this national conference
of these Black business leaders in 1925.
In other words, yes, you might kill us,
yes, you may burn us out,
but we shall not be moved.
We will persevere. We will go forward.
Greenwood did rise again from the ashes
and by the 1930s and 1940s, you can make an argument
that it was even grander than it was before.
While Greenwood was able to withstand
and rebuild after their neighborhood
was raised to the ground, it wasn't able to withstand
the second attack on the community,
which was much less obvious, but no less devious.
The first of those attacks ironically was integration.
And for many of us, that's counterintuitive
'cause we embrace integration as a positive value.
But when integration comes along,
Black dollars flow outside the community.
Why?
Because there are more goods and services
available to Black folks,
at better price points for Black folks,
and it undermines the financial foundation of the community.
The other factor
that destroyed Greenwood for a second time?
Urban renewal.
Urban renewal projects often have negative effects
on communities of color because those communities are often
unable to up against urban planning done by people
who don't take into consideration the thoughts and values
of communities of color.
One of those projects?
An eight-lane Interstate freeway
was plowed right through deep Greenwood,
through the heart of there.
It divided the community in such a way
that it's virtually impossible for the community
to come back together as a cohesive whole
like it was before the location of the highway.
And Greenwood wasn't the only city
destroyed by these freeways.
Chicago, Detroit, Durham, the Bronx, Los Angeles,
all suffered similar devastating effects from freeways
essentially ripping a hole
directly through Black communities during the '50s and '60s.
It's the old cliche,
if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
Certainly, I hope that's changing
with movements like the Black Lives Matter movement
and what we're seeing today.
But in the past, a lot of these communities of color
just didn't have a place at the table,
didn't have a voice,
and didn't have the number of White allies
that I hope that we have today.