The Destruction of Black Wall Street: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre represents the most devastating incident of racial violence in American history, destroying the nation’s wealthiest Black community in less than 24 hours through coordinated aerial bombardment and systematic ground attacks that killed up to 300 people and obliterated 35 city blocks. What began as false allegations against 19-year-old Dick Rowland on May 30, 1921, escalated into a calculated assault on Greenwood District—known as “Black Wall Street”—where 11,000 Black residents had built 191 businesses, professional practices, and institutions worth millions despite Jim Crow segregation. The massacre involved unprecedented tactics including aerial attacks dropping incendiary devices, machine gun fire, and the forced internment of 4,000-6,000 Black residents while their property was looted and burned. Despite causing $2.25 million in damage (equivalent to $30-40 million today), not a single white perpetrator was convicted, insurance claims totaling over $1.8 million were systematically denied, and the event was deliberately erased from history for decades until modern investigations uncovered mass graves and documented the true scope of destruction.

The Spark That Ignited Decades of Racial Resentment

On Memorial Day 1921, Dick Rowland entered an elevator operated by 17-year-old Sarah Page in Tulsa’s Drexel Building, likely tripping and grabbing her arm to steady himself, causing her to scream. This mundane incident became weaponized when the Tulsa Tribune published an inflammatory afternoon edition on May 31 with the headline “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator,” accompanied by an editorial many witnesses recalled as “To Lynch Negro Tonight”—though all copies of this editorial have mysteriously vanished from archives. The sensationalized reporting transformed an incident that Page herself refused to prosecute into the catalyst for mass violence.

The deeper tensions underlying this eruption had festered for years in Tulsa, where the Ku Klux Klan counted 3,200 members among the city’s 72,000 residents by late 1921, including police officers, judges, and eventually two mayors. Just nine months earlier, white mobs had lynched Roy Belton with police directing traffic at the scene, demonstrating law enforcement’s complicity in racial violence. Oklahoma’s 1910 constitutional amendment had systematically disenfranchised Black voters while comprehensive Jim Crow laws segregated every aspect of life from schools to telephone booths. These restrictions paradoxically created the conditions for Greenwood’s prosperity by forcing Black dollars to circulate within the community up to 50 times before leaving—creating what Booker T. Washington called “Negro Wall Street.”

Greenwood’s extraordinary success bred intense resentment among white Tulsans who saw Black prosperity as an affront to racial hierarchy. O.W. Gurley had transformed 40 acres purchased in 1906 into a thriving district where his net worth reached $500,000 to $1 million by 1921. J.B. Stradford built America’s largest Black-owned hotel with 54 rooms while the Williams family operated the 750-seat Dreamland Theatre. The district supported 15 physicians, multiple lawyers, two newspapers, a school, a hospital, a Black public library, and businesses generating wealth that challenged white supremacist ideology. This economic achievement, combined with Black World War I veterans’ willingness to defend their community with arms, created explosive conditions awaiting only a spark.

Twenty-Four Hours That Erased Forty Years of Progress

The timeline of destruction began at 7:30 PM on May 31 when hundreds of whites gathered at the courthouse where Rowland was held, forming what witnesses described as “the makings of a lynch mob.” By 9:30 PM, approximately 60 armed Black men arrived to help Sheriff McCullough defend Rowland, only to be turned away. A second contingent of about 75 armed Black men arrived around 10 PM. The critical moment came when an elderly white man attempted to disarm one of the Black veterans; a shot rang out, triggering what Sheriff McCullough said made “all hell break loose.” This single gunshot left an estimated ten white and two Black people dead on the street within moments. Minutes later, police began deputizing members of the lynch mob with instructions to “get a gun and get a nigger,” transforming law enforcement into participants rather than peacekeepers.

The systematic assault began at dawn on June 1 with a train whistle at 5:00 AM that many interpreted as the signal for general attack. White rioters, some hastily deputized, pursued retreating Black defenders into Greenwood, looting hardware stores and pawnshops for additional weapons along the way. Attorney Buck Colbert Franklin documented the horror from his law office: “I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building.” Multiple eyewitnesses confirmed at least a dozen aircraft dropping what Franklin described as “burning turpentine balls” and crude incendiary bombs that ignited buildings from the top down. Franklin wrote that “the sidewalks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls… every burning building first caught from the top,” and believed city authorities conspired with attackers by disabling the fire department’s response.

The ground assault proceeded with military precision as thousands of armed whites systematically invaded Greenwood house by house. Dr. A.C. Jackson, a nationally renowned surgeon who had been endorsed by the Mayo Brothers as “the most able Negro surgeon in America,” was murdered despite surrendering with his hands raised—prompting even his killers to acknowledge “those boys have done it now.” Mount Zion Baptist Church and at least 11 other churches were destroyed based on false rumors of weapons caches. The Dreamland Theatre, Stradford Hotel, and every business along Greenwood Avenue was looted and burned. Firefighters who arrived to battle the flames were turned away at gunpoint by rioters. By 11:49 AM when Governor James Robertson declared martial law, and by noon when it was finally enforced, 1,256 homes had been destroyed along with 191 businesses, 12 churches, two schools, a hospital, and the district’s library.

AFTERMATH

• 1,256 homes destroyed
• 191 businesses burned
• 12 churches demolished
• 2 schools destroyed
• 1 hospital burned
• 1 library destroyed
• 35 city blocks in ruins
• 100-300 people killed (likely death toll)
• 10,000 Black residents displaced

The True Cost in Lives Remains Buried With the Victims

The official death toll of 36 (26 Black, 10 white) stands as perhaps the most egregious lie in a tragedy defined by deception. Maurice Willows, the Red Cross Director of Relief, wrote cryptically that deaths were “a matter of conjecture” with estimates ranging from 55 to 300, noting that “for obvious reasons this report cannot deal with this subject.” His relief statistics revealed a more devastating truth: 222 families had no father and 87 had no mother listed as “missing or dead.” The Red Cross treated over 800 people for injuries in the immediate aftermath, with segregated hospitals struggling to care for Black survivors suffering from gunshot wounds and burns after the Black hospital was burned down.

Contemporary reports varied wildly—newspapers reported anywhere from 75 to 175 deaths, while Walter Francis White of the NAACP estimated 150-200 Black deaths after visiting Tulsa. An undertaker claimed that 120 Black victims were interred in unmarked graves by teams of gravediggers. Major O.T. Johnson of the Salvation Army reported that 37 Black gravediggers buried 120 Black victims in individual graves without coffins, yet these burials never appeared in official tallies. Bodies were “hurriedly rushed to burial” according to the Red Cross, with many records destroyed or never created.

Modern investigations have slowly unveiled evidence supporting higher casualty figures. Recent archaeological excavations at Oaklawn Cemetery have discovered 66 burials with only four marked, including a confirmed mass grave containing 12 individuals with evidence of gunshot wounds. DNA analysis has identified victims including C.L. Daniel, a World War I veteran, and revealed death certificates listing gunshot wounds from June 1, 1921, that were filed years later—suggesting systematic concealment of casualties. The 2001 Oklahoma Commission concluded that 100 to 300 deaths represents the most credible estimate based on available evidence, while some survivors claim up to 4,000 people remained unaccounted for. The ongoing discovery of unmarked graves and the identification of victims through genetic genealogy continues to reveal the massacre’s true toll over a century later.

How Law Turned Accomplice to Theft

The systematic dispossession of Black property began even as buildings still burned through carefully orchestrated legal and extralegal mechanisms. During the massacre itself, up to 500 white men were deputized within 30 minutes, many drawn directly from the lynch mob, providing legal cover for systematic looting. Witnesses described white residents arriving with shopping bags and trucks to remove furniture and valuables before torching homes. Dr. R.T. Bridgewater lost 17 rental houses generating $425 monthly income and had his safe broken open and robbed.

The thousands of Black residents forcibly held in internment camps at the Convention Hall and fairgrounds for up to eight days could only gain release if a white employer vouched for them—creating a system of economic bondage that prevented property owners from protecting their remaining assets. These detainees were held ostensibly “for their own protection” but effectively as prisoners while their property was vulnerable to seizure.

Insurance companies denied virtually all of the 1,400+ claims filed for over $4 million in losses by invoking “riot exclusion” clauses—a betrayal exemplified by Loula Williams who paid $865 in premiums only to receive $566 back after her claim for the destroyed Dreamland Theatre was rejected. This industry-wide denial of coverage, enabled by deliberately mislabeling the massacre as a “riot,” stripped survivors of the primary mechanism for rebuilding their destroyed businesses and homes.

The City of Tulsa immediately passed Fire Ordinance No. 2156 requiring expensive fire-resistant construction that effectively priced out Black property owners from rebuilding. The ordinance deputized the all-white Tulsa Real Estate Exchange—including KKK member W. Tate Brady—to appraise destroyed properties with the transparent goal of converting Greenwood into an industrial district. Buck Colbert Franklin, one of the few Black attorneys whose office survived, successfully challenged this ordinance before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, but not before months of delay forced survivors to live in Red Cross tents through the Oklahoma winter while their land sat vacant and vulnerable to seizure. One Tulsa editorial even insisted that “the old ‘Niggertown’ must never be allowed in Tulsa again,” revealing the open hostility to rebuilding the Black district.

A Conspiracy of Silence Shattered by Shovels

The immediate legal aftermath added insult to injury. An all-white grand jury convened by Governor Robertson absurdly concluded that Black citizens were responsible for the violence, accusing them of instigating a “Negro uprising” while declining to prosecute a single white participant for murder, arson, or looting. While over 85 individuals (mostly Black) were indicted for charges related to the “riot,” not a single person was ever convicted for any of the murders, assaults, arson, or looting that occurred. When over 150 civil lawsuits sought compensation, courts dismissed nearly all claims.

The suppression of evidence transformed a massacre witnessed by thousands into a historical void. The Tulsa Tribune removed its inflammatory May 31 editorial from all bound volumes while police and fire department records conveniently vanished. Death certificates were altered or destroyed, military reports disappeared, and city commission records went missing for over 35 years. Oklahoma history textbooks omitted any mention of the massacre until 2000, creating generations of Oklahomans—Black and white—who never learned about their state’s darkest chapter. Even within Greenwood, survivors often remained silent from fear that speaking out might trigger renewed violence. For 75 years, this “conspiracy of silence” succeeded in erasing one of American history’s worst acts of racial terrorism from public memory.

Modern efforts to uncover the truth began with the 1997-2001 Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot, which documented government complicity at all levels and confirmed the massacre was “not uncontrolled mob violence, but coordinated, military-style attack.” The commission’s recommendation for direct reparations was rejected by the state legislature, but its work legitimized survivor accounts previously dismissed as exaggeration. The 2019 initiation of archaeological investigations using ground-penetrating radar has located multiple mass graves, with excavations discovering 66 unmarked burials and identifying victims through DNA analysis including C.L. Daniel and George Melvin Gillispie.

Resilience, Rebuilding, and Repeated Trauma

Against all odds, the resilient community of Greenwood began to rebuild from the ashes. Without insurance payouts or public funds, Black Tulsans pooled their resources, labor, and faith to restore their neighborhood. The American Red Cross provided critical humanitarian aid—supplying food, medical care, and temporary shelter for months. Director Maurice Willows noted that the survivors “had all the characteristics of prisoners of war… abandoned by their home country.”

Many spent the winter of 1921-22 living in canvas tents while carpenters and volunteers worked to construct new homes and shops. Progress was slow but determined. By 1925, the district had rebuilt sufficiently to host the National Negro Business League conference, and by the late 1940s, Greenwood again boasted over 200 Black-owned businesses. This rebirth demonstrated extraordinary fortitude, though Black Wall Street would never fully recover the level of wealth it had before 1921—the generational loss was too severe.

Tragically, Greenwood faced a second devastating blow during the 1960s-1970s when urban renewal projects, including highway construction through North Tulsa, displaced many Black residents again. As one descendant observed, “Our community lost, through no fault of its own, twice.” This persistent discrimination and displacement compounded the original trauma across generations.

Recent legal efforts have failed to secure justice despite compelling evidence. The 2024 dismissal of the last three survivors’ lawsuit—brought by Viola Fletcher (110) and Lessie Benningfield Randle (109)—marked the final collapse of legal remedies when Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that continuing harm from the massacre fell outside public nuisance statutes. Viola Fletcher, who was 7 years old during the massacre, testified that she “still see[s] Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street… still smell[s] smoke and see[s] fire”—a testament to trauma that spans a century.

The Department of Justice’s 2024 report confirmed the coordinated nature of attacks involving up to 10,000 white Tulsans but concluded no prosecutions were possible due to statutes of limitations. These failures have shifted focus to archaeological evidence and genetic genealogy as the primary means of documenting the massacre’s scope, with excavations planned through 2025 and community DNA collection efforts attempting to identify more victims.

Conclusion: The Price of Buried Truth Compounds Across Generations

The Tulsa Race Massacre stands as both a singular atrocity and a template for understanding American racial violence—distinguished not just by its scale but by the completeness of its erasure from history. The destruction of Greenwood eliminated generational wealth that would be worth hundreds of millions today, but the deeper wound lies in the century-long denial that compounded economic devastation with psychological trauma. The recent discoveries of mass graves containing victims with gunshot wounds validates what survivors always knew but were never believed, while the identification of individuals like C.L. Daniel returns names to those intended to remain nameless.

The failure of every institution—insurance companies denying claims, courts dismissing lawsuits, textbooks omitting history, archives destroying records—reveals how structural racism operates not through individual prejudice alone but through systems designed to protect white supremacy even decades after the violence ends. The massacre not only stole hundreds of lives but also erased generations of accumulated Black wealth, with effects still felt in Tulsa’s racial disparities today.

Modern Tulsa’s stark inequalities in wealth, health, and opportunity represent not historical legacy but ongoing harm from dispossession never remedied and trauma never acknowledged. The massacre’s most profound lesson may be that buried truth does not disappear but metastasizes, poisoning communities across generations until finally unearthed—literally, in Tulsa’s case—by those brave enough to dig for justice in unmarked graves and forgotten archives. Through remembrance and continued pursuit of justice, Tulsa and the nation are finally confronting the truths of 1921, ensuring that the lessons of Greenwood’s tragedy and resilience are not forgotten.

Dick Rowland’s Fate: The Tragic Irony

Charges Immediately Dropped

• All charges against Rowland were dropped within hours or days after the massacre ended
• Sarah Page refused to press charges and reportedly provided a written statement declining to prosecute
• Police concluded Rowland had most likely stumbled into Page or accidentally stepped on her foot
• The charges of “attempting to ravish, rape, and carnally know” Sarah Page filed on June 6, 1921, were dismissed

During the Massacre Ironically, Dick Rowland was arguably the safest person in Tulsa during the massacre. Sheriff Willard McCullough and six deputies protected him on the top floor of the courthouse throughout the violence, successfully preventing the lynch mob from reaching him.

Immediate Aftermath

• Rowland was released from custody shortly after the massacre ended
• He left Tulsa immediately (either the morning of June 1 or shortly after)
• Some reports suggest Sheriff McCullough personally escorted him to Kansas City for his safety
• He reportedly never returned to Tulsa permanently

Later Life (Conflicting Reports) The details of Rowland’s later life remain murky with several conflicting accounts:

• Oregon Theory: Most commonly believed that he moved to Oregon during World War II to work in the shipyards
• Death: Various reports place his death between the 1960s and 1979:
  • Possibly killed in a wharf explosion in Oregon in the 1960s (though his name doesn’t appear on casualty lists)
  • A relative claimed he died around 1967-1979
  • Some sources say he died in the Pacific Northwest

A Possible Reunion In the early 1970s, a relative claimed that Rowland and Sarah Page had actually been romantically involved and briefly reunited in Kansas City before going their separate ways—though this remains unverified.

The Ultimate Irony The person whose alleged assault sparked one of America’s deadliest racial massacres:

• Was never convicted of any crime
• Was protected throughout the violence
• Left town freely
• Lived for another 40-50 years

Meanwhile, the Black community of Greenwood—completely innocent of any wrongdoing—lost everything: their lives, homes, businesses, and generational wealth. Not a single white perpetrator was convicted for the murders, arson, and looting, while dozens of Black residents were arrested and charged for defending their community.

Dick Rowland’s story exemplifies the massacre’s fundamental injustice: a false accusation against one Black teenager was used as a pretext to destroy an entire prosperous Black community, yet the accused himself walked free while thousands of innocent Black Tulsans lost everything.

Government and Official Sources

Oklahoma Historical Society – Tulsa Race Massacre Encyclopedia Entry
Oklahoma Historical Society – The Tulsa Race Massacre
Oklahoma Historical Society – The Tulsa Race Massacre
Oklahoma Historical Society – The Tulsa Race Massacre
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights – 100th Anniversary
U.S. Department of Justice – Review and Evaluation Results
National Endowment for the Humanities – 1921 Tulsa Massacre
ShareAmerica – Remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre

City of Tulsa Sources

City of Tulsa – Archaeological DNA Updates
City of Tulsa – C.L. Daniel Identification
City of Tulsa – 1921 Graves Investigation

Museums and Libraries

Museum of Tulsa History – 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Tulsa Library – 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Tulsa Library – Black Wall Street

Encyclopedia and Reference Sources

Encyclopedia Britannica – Tulsa Race Massacre Facts
Encyclopedia Britannica – Tulsa Race Massacre History
Wikipedia – Tulsa Race Massacre
Wikipedia – Dick Rowland
Wikipedia – Roy Belton
Wikipedia – Greenwood District, Tulsa
Wikipedia – Tulsa Reparations Coalition

News Media Sources

HISTORY – How the Tulsa Race Massacre Was Covered Up
HISTORY – Tulsa Race Massacre Facts
HISTORY – Tulsa Race Massacre Begins
NPR – DNA Sequencing from Mass Graves
NPR – 21 More Unmarked Graves Discovered
NPR – How Tulsa Shaped Today’s Black CEOs
Axios – First Victim Identified Memorial
CNBC – Black Wall Street Cover-up
PBS – Walk Along Black Wall Street
PBS – Supreme Court Dismisses Survivors’ Lawsuit
NBC News – Oklahoma Supreme Court Tosses Lawsuit

Local News Sources

Tulsa World – Lynchings Before Massacre
Tulsa World – No Prosecutions After Massacre
Public Radio Tulsa – Supreme Court Reparations Decision
Voices of Oklahoma – 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Advocacy and Justice Organizations

Justice for Greenwood – The Making of Greenwood
Justice for Greenwood – Denial of Insurance Claims
Justice for Greenwood – The Land Grab
Justice for Greenwood – Internment
Black Wall Street – Buck Colbert Franklin
Color of Change – Insurance Companies Campaign
Equal Justice Initiative – DOJ Findings

Academic and Research Sources

American Historical Association – B.C. Franklin and the Tulsa Massacre
Brookings – True Costs of the Tulsa Race Massacre
Assumption University – White, Tulsa Race Riot
Science News – Mass Grave Archaeology
UCSB – Tulsa Race Massacre Talk

Other Sources

The Archive – Horrifying History of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
The Writer Fred – J.B. Stradford
Free Press – How Media Fueled the Massacre
State Court Report – Supreme Court Rejects Reparations
LegalClarity – Legal Aftermath of Tulsa Race Riot