The 101st anniversary of Tulsa’s 1921 Race Massacre may not get the national and international attention of the 100th, but it is no less significant.
“The fight for justice is ongoing. That’s every day here,” said state Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa. “The 100th year, that wasn’t anything more significant other than the efforts that are ongoing. … I still think strides are being made. We’re a long way from where we need to be, but the effort is worthwhile.”
“One of the things we realized early in my time as mayor was that the the centennial was going to be an inflection point, not a finish line,” said Mayor G.T. Bynum.
Although this year’s anniversary has not attracted the national attention of last year’s, organizers have not let the date pass unnoticed.
The 2021 centennial culminated a tumultuous 15-month period that included the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd, the Tulsa visit of then-President Donald Trump, the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and increasingly bitter disagreements concerning activities surrounding the centennial itself.
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The centennial alone was an international event; an assortment of priorities, causes, motives and agendas hitched themselves to it, hoping to be pulled along. Disagreements at the end, though, led to the cancellation of an event that would have featured John Legend and Stacey Abrams.
Asked to reflect on the centennial and any lasting legacy, Goodwin, Bynum and several other Tulsans agreed that important goals and mileposts have been reached.
The degree to which they agreed varied, though.
Questions over use of funds
Greenwood Rising and the commemoration of the massacre were generally seen as successes. Other issues remain contentious, principally revolving around the priorities of various involved groups and a political and economic environment many view as still hostile to Black Tulsans.
“Yes and no,” former state Sen. Judy Eason McEntire replied when asked if the centennial had been successful.
“Yes, the (centennial) commission ... and those that were really (involved) were able to a) raise the funds and b) get the museum completed in time.
“The ‘no’ part is the fighting within our community over what the money raised was for,” she said.
Cancellation of the closing event, she said, was “just tragic. Because it should have been something we walked hand-in-hand together in our community and within the larger community.”
The centennial commission was created in 2017 by state Sen. Kevin Matthews to guide centennial activities. In particular, it was committed to raising money and building a long-delayed race massacre memorial and museum.
Many Black Tulsans, though, wanted the center to cover the entire history of Greenwood, not just what Greenwood Rising Interim Director Phil Armstrong calls “those 18 infamous hours” that ended with Greenwood’s destruction. Thus, the center covers the neighborhood’s entire history, with an emphasis on resilience and success.
As the centennial approached, the commission came under increasing pressure from some who said the money for the history center should instead be donated to three previously unidentified survivors and as reparations for more than a century of wrongs. There were also accusations of commercialization and exploitation that the those associated with the history center and the commission vehemently denied.
Political issues
Adding to the tension were the circumstances surrounding the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, and U.S. Sen. James Lankford’s initial support of a “commission” to examine presidential election returns.
A white Republican, Lankford had been active in the historically Black neighborhoods, helpful on several fronts, and served on the centennial commission.
Caught between white Republican voters convinced the election had been stolen and African Americans just as outraged at the accusation, Lankford and the commission found themselves in an untenable position that, according to Armstrong, nearly brought down the entire project.
“The thing I learned,” said Matthews, “is that you can have permanent values, but you don’t have permanent friends or enemies in the political realm, because the person that’s against you today may be supporting you on another issue tomorrow.”
His goal, he said, was to get Greenwood’s story told in a way that would bring people to the famous corner of Greenwood and Archer, and that would translate into economic opportunity.
“I came from the fire department,” Matthews said. “We run in when other people run out. I’ve never been afraid of criticism or not being liked.
“After all the controversy, internally and externally, Greenwood Rising is still open and was named one of the top 10 tourist destinations in America.”
Armstrong makes presentations about Greenwood Rising throughout the country, including at the American Alliance of Museums’ annual meeting earlier this month. But he also makes presentations in the Tulsa area.
“We have changed hearts and minds,” said Armstrong. “I get invitations, even to conservative groups, and when I finish there seems to be this sense of relief. They’re saying, ‘We thought this was just a way to make white people feel guilty for something that happened 100 years ago.’”
Guilt, in the legal sense, does remain a prime goal for some. Many believe the books will not balance until restitution is paid for the injustices of the massacre. In that vein is a pending lawsuit against the city of Tulsa and others on behalf of three centenarians many believe are the last massacre survivors, as well as descendants of Black property owners from 1921.
Looking for progress
Beyond that, there is concern about ongoing racial disparities, and for what the lawsuit says is continuing exploitation of the area.
“We had to honor survivors (and) descendants. We also had to commemorate the 100 years of the Race Massacre,” said Goodwin. “I think we did that. But beyond that, I think it’s imperative, I think it’s a must, that we see justice.
“When all the cameras have left, when all of the documentaries are done, we’re still left with a community that has been impacted and has been devastated,” she said.
McEntire has similar observations about north Tulsa and predominantly Black neighborhoods.
“Look at our community, and I’m speaking about the Black community, and economically it’s dead,” she said.
McEntire said racial interaction has increased and improved but she also wonders about the durability of the unity demonstrated during the centennial year.
“Once all of the planned activities were over and that time frame passed — yes, it’s fleeting, it’s gone back to the way it was,” she said. “Each of us live our individual lives and come together the next time there’s an issue that needs larger support.
“People are good about that, but they go back home to continue their own life.”
Armstrong, the Greenwood Rising director, sounds more optimistic. Despite concerns that teachers and administrators may shy away from subjects like race and racial violence because of legislation passed last year, Armstrong said Greenwood Rising continues to see many school groups and expects more when a new program is formally introduced this fall.
Bynum is adamant that progress is being made on several fronts, including economic development on the near-north side, and he reiterated his promise to continue looking for remains of Race Massacre victims.
“When I first started talking about the 1921 Race Massacre as a mayor around the country, most people I would tell about it had never heard about it before,” Bynum said. “That never happens anymore.”
Bynum came under intense criticism from all sides during the centennial year. He said he understands.
“I recognize that I am the CEO of an organization that waited 98 years to try to find (victims’) graves,” he said. “You inherit with that a lot of distrust that is well-deserved.”
“For the critics who say nothing is happening fast enough, I totally agree with that,” Bynum said. “That’s my frustration, too. There’s so much we want to get done, I think people are working as hard and as fast as they can, but this is something that will take years.
“The pace of change, because these are such long-standing, large issues is necessarily a longer-term pace than any of us would like, but that we need to be prepared for and committed to.”
Timeline: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Tulsa in 1921: 'Oil Capital of the World'

The Tulsa of 1921 was a humming, bustling place that reveled in the title “Oil Capital of the World.” It had earned the name by making itself into the financial, manufacturing and transportation hub of the great Mid-Continent oilfields surrounding it. From barely 1,000 inhabitants in 1898, it had grown to more than 72,000. Tulsa County’s population was about 110,000, making it the most densely populated and fastest-growing county in the state.
Tulsa's 1921 demographics

Most Tulsans were native-born and white. A surprisingly small number – fewer than 1,000 – identified themselves as American Indians. About 9,000 were black, with most of them living in the community centered on Greenwood Avenue northeast of downtown Tulsa. Most black Tulsans worked as laborers and domestics, but a substantial number were teachers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals.
Tulsa and Greenwood

Tulsa, like the rest of Oklahoma, was racially segregated. Greenwood had its own schools, its own post office substation, its own police station and its own branch library. It also had its own thriving commercial district, which Booker T. Washington had called the “Black Wall Street of America.”
Modern Tulsa began in 1882

Only two decades earlier, Tulsa had barely mustered the 1,000 inhabitants necessary for incorporation. Two decades before that, it did not exist at all. Tullasi – or “Old Town” – a Lochapoka Creek village established in the 1830s near present-day 18th Street and Cheyenne Avenue disappeared during the Civil War. In 1879, the first official use of the name “Tulsa” appeared on a U.S. Post Office operating out of the Perryman Ranch headquarters near present-day 41st Street and Trenton Avenue. Modern Tulsa, though, began in 1882, when a small tent city sprang up around Atlantic and Pacific Railroad where it met the Arkansas River.
Glenn Pool oil field

The discovery of the Glenn Pool oil field in 1905 fueled Tulsa's ambitions. Subsequent discoveries in the surrounding countryside transformed Tulsa from cow town to budding metropolis.
World War I creates petroleum demand

With World War I came a great surge in demand for petroleum products. As much as 20 percent of the oil powering the Allied armies passed through Tulsa's pipeline terminals, refineries and rail yards. Some $36 million in building permits were issued from 1917 to 1921, with such lasting landmarks as Central High School, the Exchange National Bank, First National Bank, Cosden, City Hall, Mayo, McFarlin, Sinclair, U.S. Post Office and Atlas Life buildings completed or started.
T.D Evans elected Tulsa mayor

Tulsa politics could be bumptious. The electorate was more or less evenly divided between Republican and Democrat, and with city elections held every two years, changes in administration were frequent. In 1920, real estate attorney and former municipal judge T.D. Evans, a Republican, was elected mayor on a single-plank platform: to push through a bond issue to pay for a reservoir on Spavinaw Creek, 90 miles away, and the pipeline to bring fresh water to Tulsa.
Mary Seaman

Three of the four city commissioners elected that year were also Republicans, as was City Auditor Mary Seaman, the first woman to hold municipal office in Tulsa. The recently hired police chief, John Gustafson, was a former railroad detective and private investigator whose appointment had been opposed by Tulsa County Sheriff Willard McCullough. A former cowboy with an elegant handlebar moustache, McCullough had served as Tulsa County sheriff off and on since statehood and had been returned to office in 1920 after the incumbent, Jim Woolley, failed to prevent the lynching of a suspected murderer.
Tulsa law enforcement

Crime and law enforcement were important issues in Tulsa. Less than two weeks before the massacre, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Katherine VanLeuven led an investigation of the Tulsa Police Department that revealed a poorly trained and sometimes corrupt force so ill-equipped it did not have a single reliable automobile. When officers need transportation to crime scenes, they were taken in private cars driven by volunteer citizens.
Race issues in Tulsa and Oklahoma

During the course of the investigation, a Southern Methodist minister named Harold Cooke touched on underlying racial tension. An open proponent of vigilantism and unabashed racist, Cooke complained bitterly of blacks and whites drinking and dancing together in road houses and speakeasies, and of black porters in cheap hotels acting as agents for white prostitutes.
In Tulsa, as in the rest of Oklahoma and throughout the United States, race was an important issue. Many states, including Oklahoma, tried to keep blacks from voting and restricted their activities, sometimes through so-called “Jim Crow” laws and sometimes through intimidation. Increasingly, blacks resisted discrimination. From Washington, D.C., to Chicago to the rural Arkansas delta, racial conflict degenerated into deadly armed violence.
Greenwood: Home to doctors, lawyers, teachers and exceptional schools

Though far from ideal, Tulsa was considered a better place than most for blacks. Besides the thriving business district, Greenwood attracted a relatively large number of doctors, lawyers and teachers. Its schools, though poorly funded, were exceptional. The Tulsa Star, a lively weekly newspaper edited by A.J. Smitherman, promoted independence and unity, and exhorted blacks to stand up for their rights.
Three weeks before the massacre, a middle-aged black couple was arrested in Tulsa for refusing to sit in the back of a street car. They were fined $10.
Drexel Building

On Monday, May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland got onto an elevator on the third floor of the Drexel Building at 319 S. Main St. For some reason, he came into contact with Sarah Page, the white elevator operator, and Page cried out. Her cry was heard by a store clerk, who called police.
The Drexel Building, at 319 S. Main St., was four stories tall. Renberg’s Department Store occupied the first two floors, with offices and small businesses upstairs.
The building was probably quiet that morning. It was Memorial Day and most downtown stores, including Renberg’s, were closed. Rain dampened the holiday activities, including a parade.
Although Dick Rowland seems to have been fairly well known, his true identity is a bit of a mystery. He is generally identified as the son of Dave and Alice “Ollie” Rowland, who operated a boarding house in the Piro Building on East Archer Street. Some sources, though, say his name was actually John or Johnny Rowland, and that he was the adopted son or even grandson of Dave Rowland. Damie Rowland, Dave and Alice’s daughter, said in a 1972 interview that she had taken in young Johnny while living in Vinita and that he had been born in Arkansas. The 1920 Census listing for the Rowland household includes an adopted son named John who had been born in Texas.
Adding to the uncertainty is a slight age discrepancy. The Census recorded John Rowland’s age as 16 in 1920. Dick Rowland’s age, when he was arrested a year later, was given as 19.
Almost nothing is known of Sarah Page. Originally described as a 17-year-old orphan working her way through business college, it later developed that she may have been as young as 15 and had come to Tulsa from Kansas City while waiting for a divorce to be finalized.
Some, including Damie Rowland, have fostered the notion that Page and Rowland were romantically involved. Though possibly true, the story cannot be verified through contemporary accounts.
People who knew Rowland said the elevator did not stop level with the third-floor threshold, causing him to trip as he entered the car and fall against Page. Police later said that whatever happened, it was almost certainly not intentional. In any case, Page’s cry caught the attention of a Renberg’s employee, who apparently summoned police. Rowland fled, but Page and the clerk, if not actually naming the man she said attacked her, supplied enough of a description that authorities had no difficulty locating him.
“Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator”

Rowland’s arrest the next morning was reported in a front-page story in that afternoon’s Tulsa Tribune. Headlined “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” the somewhat sensational account reported, accurately if perhaps imprudently, that Rowland was to be charged with attempted assault. It said Rowland scratched Page and tore her clothes.
This, in the parlance of the day, was tantamount to an accusation of attempted rape. The mere suggestion of attempted assault, when it involved a white woman, had in the past triggered gruesome lynchings from Duluth, Minn., to the Florida swamps.
Tulsa Tribune

Some sources say the Tribune also published an editorial, under the headline “To Lynch Negro Tonight.” This is possible, but does not seem likely. For one, the Tribune actually editorialized against lynching, both before and after the massacre. A call for vigilante justice would have been almost inconceivably inconsistent.
Also, no such editorial has ever been found. This in itself does not prove one didn’t exist. The only known copies of the May 31, 1921, Tribune were an early “state” edition – essentially a reprint of the previous day’s last edition, and therefore of no use – and a microfilm image of a file copy, made in the 1940s. The front page arrest story had been torn from this paper and part of the back page – the editorial page – was missing. This has led to speculation that the inflammatory editorial was torn out along with the arrest story.
Again, this is possible but not probable.
A surviving “state” edition of June 1, 1921 – the state edition being a virtual reprint of the previous day’s last edition – shows the arrest story on the front page. The space where the missing editorial would have been is a piece on European disarmament.
The editorials could have been switched, but a more likely explanation is that confusion arose over an editorial that appeared on the front page of the June 1 Tribune. This editorial condemned lynching but included the phrase “a story starts that a negro in the county jail was to be lynched.”
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, the Tribune’s three loudest critics – the rival Tulsa World, the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch and the NAACP – never mentioned an editorial in their attacks on the newspaper.
NAACP and The Black Dispatch

The NAACP’s Walter White blamed the Tribune’s use of the word “assault.” The Black Dispatch reprinted the May 31 arrest story under the headline “The False Story which set Tulsa on Fire.” The World, on June 1, tweaked the Tribune for its “colored account” of the elevator incident.
Page, who seems to have fled the city on June 1, subsequently wrote to the county attorney, asking that the charges against Rowland be dropped. The case was dismissed at the end of September.
Just how much the Tribune story actually contributed to what followed has been debated since the day it appeared. Police Chief John Gustafson and police commissioner J.M. Adkison minimized its importance, and word of Rowland’s arrest almost certainly would have gotten around anyway. But others – including, according to one report, Gov. J.B.A. Robertson – thought the story was the root cause of the massacre.
'We are going to lynch that negro'

At 4 p.m., an anonymous caller told Police Commissioner J.M. Adkison, “We are going to lynch that negro, that black devil who assaulted that girl.” Adkison and Police Chief John Gustafson arranged to move Rowland from the city jail to the more secure county lockup on the top floor of the courthouse at Sixth Street and Boulder Avenue.
Whites, attracted by the rumors, began gathering at the courthouse until they numbered an estimated 2,000.
Adkison and Gustafson wanted Sheriff Willard McCullough to take Rowland out of town, but McCullough refused. He reasoned that Rowland was safer in the jail than in a car on an open road somewhere. In this, McCullough was no doubt correct, but there is some indication that Adkison and Gustafson thought spiriting Rowland out of town would disperse the crowd. This was, in fact, a tactic that had worked elsewhere.
McCullough, though, was not about to make the same mistake his friend and rival Jim Woolley had the previous year, when Woolley had allowed a mob to take murder suspect Roy Belton from the jail. The lynching that ensued essentially ended Woolley’s career in elective office and led to McCullough’s election as sheriff in November 1920.
Rather than risk trying to sneak Rowland out of town, McCullough put him in a cell, ordered the only elevator to the jail disabled and had six of his deputies barricade themselves inside with the prisoner. McCullough, Deputy Barney Cleaver and County Commissioner Ira Short remained behind, with McCullough and Cleaver, a black man with a long career in Tulsa law enforcement, trying to disperse the crowd outside.
Interestingly, no police seem to have been in evidence at the courthouse. Some sources say bad relations between the sheriff’s and police departments contributed to the failure to control the situation before it got out of hand.
Rising tension

Sheriff McCullough said Barney Cleaver, one of his black deputies, was the first to inform him of the threats on Rowland’s life. Cleaver, the sheriff said, had telephoned to tell him of a call, apparently similar to the one to Adkison, received at a north side motion picture theater.
This call was taken very seriously. Although Tulsa did not have a history of racial violence – the 1920 lynching victim, Roy Belton, was white – it did have more than its share of vigilantism. During World War I, citizens had been harassed and beaten in the name of patriotism, often under color of the local Council of Defense or the Home Guard, a local militia organized to replace National Guard units called into active duty.
Mary Jones Parrish, a young black woman who would record her recollections and those of others in a little book called “Events of the Tulsa Disaster,” said she went outside on the night of May 31 to find “that some of our group were going to give added protection to (Rowland).”
At least two earlier contingents of concerned blacks had already visited the courthouse. McCullough and Cleaver assured them that Rowland was in good hands and persuaded them to return to Greenwood.
The intent of the white crowd is difficult to gauge. Not surprisingly, officials later described the white crowd, at least initially, as more curious than hostile. Without radio, much less television, the only way to see what was happening was to go in person.
But the crowd was not completely docile, either. McCullough was hooted down, the World reported, when he tried to disperse the whites. Shortly before the shooting started, a band of irate whites presented themselves at the National Guard Armory, about a mile east of the courthouse, demanding weapons and threatening to break in when they were denied.
Oklahoma National Guard

In any event, McCullough said the only effort to get at Rowland occurred at 8:20 p.m., when three unidentified white men entered the courthouse.
“I … told them there had been some talk of a lynching and that they might as well get out for no one was going to get the negro,” McCullough said. “They went out and got into an auto on Boulder street and talked loudly and gesticulated and soon a crowd gathered.”
It was at that point, McCullough said, that he ordered his men to run the building’s lone elevator to the top floor, disable it and barricade themselves inside the jail.
Over the next hour and a half, McCullough received several telephone calls from concerned black leaders as well as from Maj. James A. Bell of the local Oklahoma National Guard. McCullough assured all of them the situation was under control.
Gustafson was more concerned. But, instead of trying to break up the crowd at the courthouse, he focused his attention on the armed blacks. Eventually, he asked Bell for help “to clear the streets of negroes,” but Bell told him only the governor could call the local guardsmen into service.
'All hell broke loose'

At about 10 p.m., a former county investigator named E.S. MacQueen confronted a black man, sometimes identified as Johnny Cole, in front of the courthouse. As MacQueen and Cole wrestled over the latter’s gun, it discharged. As more than one person observed, “All hell broke loose.”
The crowd scattered. McCullough, who had been trying to talk to the crowd, ran for cover in a nearby hotel. Walter Daggs, an oil company manager who lived near the courthouse was shot and killed, apparently by a stray bullet. Sixteen-year-old Homer Cline was killed as he left the bank where he worked. A.B. Stick, gunned down outside the Hotel Tulsa, was reported certain to die but somehow survived.
Some sources say a black man was killed at the courthouse, others say not. The World said an unidentified black man was chased down in an alley and killed – then said no black fatalities had been reported. News of fatalities and injuries was often fragmentary, second-hand and contradictory. Cleo Shumate, a white tool dresser, was reported to have been shot about 8 p.m., well before the massacre began.
Denied weapons at the National Guard armory, whites – including some police – broke into Bardon’s Sporting Goods at 510 S. Main St., across the street from the courthouse, and began taking guns, ammunition and just about everything else in sight. Police involvement may be partially explained by the fact that Bardon’s seems to have sold ammunition to the department on a regular basis.
Looting, all of it by rampaging whites, was reported throughout downtown, as shots whizzed haphazardly. Gustafson called in his entire force – around 65 men – and Adkison began commissioning “special deputies” – perhaps as many as 400 of them. Oklahoma National Guard Adjutant Gen. Charles Barrett told Col. L.J.F. Rooney, senior office in Tulsa, to make his troops available to local authorities, even though it would be hours before they could be officially called to duty.
The first few Guardsmen to arrive at police headquarters found the street choked with men in uniform – American Legion members, assembled in formation. Although no doubt well-intentioned, their presence initially added to the general chaos. With “much promiscuous shooting,” the World reported, the ex-soldiers marched through the business district. Fortunately, the newspaper said, “no one was hurt.”
According to the World, shooting continued for two hours “over the city and centered in the north part of the business district,” until the last of the blacks had retreated into Greenwood.
Seeking National Guard assistance

The shots at the courthouse touched off two hours of fighting and general chaos in downtown Tulsa, culminating in the return of Rowland’s intended protectors to the Greenwood area shortly after midnight. The handful of National Guardsmen available, along with some volunteers, tried to get between the combatants along the Frisco Railroad tracks and Detroit Avenue. Although the fighting never completely stopped, it did die down during the early morning hours, causing many to believe the massacre was playing itself out.
Col. L.J.F. Rooney, the senior officer among the Tulsa National Guard units, wanted to establish an armed perimeter around Greenwood but gave up the idea as impractical.
“We didn’t have enough men,” Rooney said. “It would have taken at least 1,000 men to restore any degree of order and to put an effective guard line about the negro district would have required that many more.”
At about 1:30 a.m., Maj. Byron Kirkpatrick of the Oklahoma National Guard finally secured the necessary signatures for the telegram formally asking Gov. J.B.A. Robertson for National Guard assistance.
Guardsmen come under fire from both sides

Kirkpatrick’s primary obstacle had been getting to Sheriff McCullough, who was still barricaded in the top floor of the courthouse, threatening to shoot anybody who showed himself in the stairwell leading to the jail. A Tulsa World reporter finally persuaded McCullough to let him in with the telegram.
Three National Guard units were based in Tulsa – a rifle company, a supply company and a sanitary (or medical) unit. An artillery unit had been authorized and was in the process of forming but had not been equipped. On the night of May 31 and morning of June 1, the Tulsa units had perhaps 35 men under arms. This did not include the medical unit, which was employed primarily in caring for wounded and injured blacks.
Besides the guardsmen, Rooney had at his disposal, at least in theory, several hundred ex-servicemen, most of them members of American Legion posts in Tulsa, Cleveland, Okla., Broken Arrow and Bristow. Rooney put these men under the command of Major Charles Daley, a Tulsa police inspector and staff officer to Adjutant Gen. Charles Barrett.
Restoring order along the Frisco tracks was not the only concern of the authorities. Rumors persisted throughout the night that hundreds of blacks were descending on Tulsa, reinforcing the notion of a “Negro uprising” and causing Rooney to stretch his men even thinner. Squads were sent to guard the city power plant and water works, while the police, ex-servicemen and the special deputies roamed the city in “auto patrols,” rounding up blacks living in servant quarters outside Greenwood and looking for the supposed invaders.
Rooney and about 30 men and officers established themselves along Detroit Avenue, on a rise called Standpipe Hill, where gunfire had been exchanged between adjoining white and black neighborhoods. The Guardsmen came under fire from both sides and an ex-serviceman named Wheeler, who had volunteered to join the Guard unit, was seriously wounded by a white gunman.
At dawn

At dawn, a force of “citizens, police and members of the national guard,” numbering perhaps 1,500, moved into Greenwood from the south and west, under orders to take into protective custody unarmed blacks and to subdue any who resisted. To people in Greenwood, it looked more like an invading army.
“It then dawned upon us that the enemy had organized in the night and was invading our district, the same as the Germans invaded France and Belgium,” wrote Mary Jones Parrish, a Greenwood resident who recorded her experience and those of some of her neighbors in a pamphlet called “Events of the Tulsa Disaster.”
Authorities, still operating on the premise of a “Negro uprising,” maintained they wanted to get control of Greenwood, not destroy it. They failed on both counts.
Most Greenwood residents surrendered peacefully or fled northward. Many were hidden by employers or other acquaintances and sometimes even total strangers. The few who stayed behind to fight were overwhelmed.
The National Guard reported engaging in several short skirmishes as it moved down from Standpipe Hill – the hill just west of the present Oklahoma State University-Tulsa campus – and one longer battle in which about 50 blacks “fought like tigers.” The last organized resistance came from gunmen in the Mount Zion Baptist Church tower. When they refused to come out, the new church, valued at $80,000, was set on fire.
'And the invasion of the negro district began'

Along the Frisco tracks, Maj. Charles Daley and about 25 men were trying to hold back an angry horde of perhaps 1,000. Daley said he repeatedly sent for help from the police, but was told they were “busy elsewhere.”
“Finally the crowd broke away from Daley,” reported The Tulsa Tribune, “and the invasion of the negro district began.”
Greenwood's destruction

As Tulsa’s black population was rounded up and taken to detention centers at the Convention Hall (present-day Brady Theater), McNulty Park (10th Street and Elgin Avenue) and later the fairgrounds (Admiral Boulevard and Lewis Avenue), looters and vandals descended on the Greenwood district, setting fires and stealing and destroying residents’ possessions.
Some of those involved were the very people who were supposed to bring order to the chaos. Among them were the “special deputies” appointed during the night by Adkison. So was the Home Guard, a militia organized during World War I to replace National Guard units called to active duty. During the war, the Home Guard singled out and terrorized those it deemed insufficiently supportive of the war effort. It also took action against those it considered immoral. Although officially disbanded in 1919, members of the Home Guard apparently put on their old uniforms and waded into the fray on the morning of June 1, 1921.
'They joined in with the hoodlums in shooting at good citizens’ homes'

“Most people, like myself, stayed in their homes, expecting momentarily to be given protection by the Home Guards or State Troops,” E.A. Loupe told Mary Jones Parrish. “Instead of protection by the Home Guards, they joined in with the hoodlums in shooting at good citizens’ homes.”
Complaints of khaki clothes

Col. L.J.F. Rooney, the senior National Guard officer in Tulsa, complained that “there were many men in the negro district wearing khaki clothes (i.e. uniforms) who were not members of the national guard.”
'Even women with shopping bags would come in'

Tulsa police also seem to have been involved in the mayhem. More than one witness identified officers, usually out of uniform, among the arsonists. V.B. Bostic, a black deputy sheriff, was rousted from his home by a white traffic officer named Pittman, who then joined in setting fire to Bostic’s house. I.J. Buck, a white Greenwood property owner, said a policeman turned him aside when Buck tried to save one of his buildings.
“He said: ‘You ain’t got no business building buildings for negroes,’ ” Buck testified in court.
“After the homes vacated,” said one Greenwood resident, “one bunch of whites would come in and loot. Even women with shopping bags would come in, open drawers, take every kind of finery from clothing to silverware and jewelry. Men were carrying out the furniture, cursing as they do so, saying, ‘These damned Negroes have better things than lots of white people.’ ”
Fire soon consumed Greenwood’s main business district and more than 1,100 homes. Only a few houses, one or two churches on the perimeter of the community and Booker T. Washington High School survived.
“Nothing,” the Tulsa World’s Tom Latta wrote the next day, “that the mind is capable of conceiving permits a word of defense or excuse for the murderous vandalism” inflicted on Greenwood.
Dr. A.C. Jackson

The most prominent Tulsan killed in the massacre was Dr. A.C. Jackson, a 40-year-old surgeon living at 523 N. Detroit Ave. According to Jackson’s white neighbor, former police commissioner and retired judge John Oliphant, Jackson had raised his hands to surrender to a group of whites when two of them shot Jackson dead in what Oliphant called “cold-blooded murder.”
Born in Memphis and raised in Guthrie, where his father was a law officer, Jackson graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, practiced for awhile in Tulsa and Claremore, then trained as a surgeon in Memphis. His work was such that he attracted the attention of the Mayo Brothers, and in 1919 he returned to Tulsa as a specialist in “chronic diseases and surgery for women.”
Jackson lived on what was one of the most exclusive blocks in all of Greenwood. His neighbors included Booker T. Washington High School principal E.W. Woods, Tulsa Star publisher A.J. Smitherman and physician R.T. Bridgewater. Why Jackson, one of the gentlest of men, would have been singled out is not known. Perhaps he was mistaken for the more outspoken Smitherman or Bridgewater. Perhaps he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The massacre had all but died down, Oliphant said, when Jackson “came walking toward me with his hands in the air. ‘Here am I. I want to go with you,’ he said. A body of about seven men, all armed, intercepted him and two young fellows fired on him. He fell to the ground and one of the men fired again.”
Jackson’s killers were never identified.
Oklahoma Gov. J.B.A. Robertson declares martial law

By mid-morning on June 1, the violence and destruction were beginning to subside. Tulsa-based National Guardsmen, soon reinforced by units from Oklahoma City, Bartlesville and other communities, began securing the Greenwood area. At 11:15 a.m., Gov. J.B.A. Robertson declared martial law with Adj. Gen. Charles Barrett in command. Some looting continued through the afternoon, until by evening about 30 whites had been arrested for “pillaging.”
According to some accounts, the Oklahoma City units, which included a machine gun company, were involved in the final attack on Mount Zion Baptist Church. This is not mentioned in any of the officers’ action reports and seems unlikely since those troops did not arrive until 9:30 a.m., by which time the church was already on fire.
A lawyer and former newspaper publisher who had served in the Oklahoma House and Senate, Barrett had limited military experience but was a fair administrator. He issued a number of field orders, some of which have since been misinterpreted.
For instance, Barrett temporarily banned all funerals in downtown churches. Over time, this was seen as an attempt to keep blacks from burying their dead. In fact, it had almost no effect on black funerals, since those would not have been held in the downtown white churches, anyway. The purpose of the ban was to keep grieving white families from coming into contact with blacks still staying in some downtown churches.
Barrett also ordered a moratorium on property transfers in Greenwood. This was to head off speculation and forced sales.
Martial law was eased on June 2 and lifted altogether at 5 p.m. on June 3.
Detainees subject to harassment and humiliation

By mid-day on June 1, Greenwood had been emptied of all but a handful of its inhabitants. A few found refuge in downtown churches or the homes of white employers, acquaintances and even strangers. Fewer still somehow rode out the massacre in their own homes. The majority by far had either fled the city or been taken into what was described as protective custody.
Forced to march for blocks through white neighborhoods with their hands in the air while their homes and possessions burned behind them, the detainees were subject to harassment and humiliation. Some were robbed of whatever valuables they had managed to stuff in their pockets.
They were taken first to Convention Hall, now the Brady Theater. It soon proved inadequate, and McNulty Park, the local minor league baseball stadium at 10th Street and Elgin Avenue, was put into service. Finally, in the afternoon, the detainees were transported to the fairgrounds at Admiral Boulevard and Lewis Avenue.
Through the afternoon and into the next day, National Guard patrols went out into the countryside to pick up Greenwood residents. Some had gotten as far as Claremore and Bartlesville. A few made it all the way to Kansas City. A good many simply kept going and never looked back.
Detainees were given food, water and medical attention that first day. The black hospital had been burned, so a makeshift clinic for injured blacks was set up at the National Guard Armory. Maj. Paul Brown, a Tulsa physician and commanding officer of the sanitary detachment, then commandeered beds in white hospitals for the most serious cases.
Fairgrounds camp houses up to 5,000

Many detainees were released within hours, while others remained at the fairgrounds camp for weeks. Generally, detainees were held until a white person vouched for them, at which point they were given a card to wear on their clothes. Those without cards were subject to arrest.
Those with nowhere else to go were allowed to stay at the fairgrounds camp, regardless of whether or not they had been released. At its height, the camp housed about 5,000.
Those who remained were required to pay for their meals, either out of their own pockets or by working at various tasks, including cleaning up the debris in Greenwood. For this, they were paid standard laborers’ wages. It was by no means an easy existence, but some whites soon complained that blacks were being “spoiled” at the fairgrounds and by the attention given them by the Red Cross and other charitable organizations.
Although the destruction of Greenwood was generally condemned by black and white Tulsans alike, overall blame was quickly assigned to the blacks who had gone to the courthouse to protect Dick Rowland.
True death toll will probably never be known

The true death toll will probably never be known. Thirty-seven death certificates were issued for massacre-related fatalities, but most experts believe the total was higher – perhaps much higher. Hundreds and perhaps thousands were injured.
Property damage in Greenwood was put at $1.5 million to $2 million at a time when a good house could be built for less than $1,000. According to the Red Cross, 1,256 homes were burned and another 215 looted but not destroyed.
37 death certificates

Of the 37 death certificates, 25 were for black males and 12 for white males. Nine black victims, burned beyond recognition, were not identified.
Two other deaths are sometimes included in the confirmed total: a still-born black infant found during the massacre and a white male shot several days later when he drove through a checkpoint on the outskirts of town.
The number of dead and injured has been the subject of controversy from the very start. Early on, the Tulsa World reported 100 dead, then scaled its estimate back to 30, saying some bodies had been counted twice and others thought dead were only injured.
Unsuccessful search

Maj. Charles Daley, the National Guard officer who had been installed in the Tulsa Police Department as a sort of inspector general, contributed to the confusion by saying he expected the toll to reach 175. After inspecting the burned area with another National Guard officer, however, Daley said no additional bodies were found and the number of dead was much lower than previously thought.
There was indeed much confusion. Some people reported dead weren't, and some reported “slightly injured” were in fact dead. A few of the dead were either misidentified or had been living under assumed names. According to the Red Cross, many people and especially whites were reluctant to seek medical attention for even major injuries.
Stories abound of bodies “stacked like cordwood,” loaded on trucks, dumped in the Arkansas River, thrown down mine shafts and burned in the city incinerator. Some, on examination, are more plausible than others; none, at this late date, can be proved or disproved.
On June 3, 1921, just two days after the massacre, the Tulsa World reported that 13 black victims of the massacre were buried in Oaklawn cemetery “in separate graves and in plain caskets,” a description that suggests a suspicion of something otherwise even then.
In 1999 and 2000, a commission authorized by the Oklahoma Legislature and the Oklahoma Geological Survey probed for mass burial sites at several locations in Tulsa, including Newblock Park, Oaklawn Cemetery and the former Booker T. Washington Cemetery.
Their search was unsuccessful.
Conspiracy and cover-up?

A grand jury convened the second week of June said the armed blacks at the courthouse were the direct cause of the riot, but said indirect causes were more to blame. Among the indirect causes cited were agitation for social equality and lax law enforcement. Eighty-eight indictments were issued, mostly for black men, but few seem to have been served. A few people arrested during and after the massacre were convicted of or pleaded guilty to minor crimes such as possession of stolen property.
Immediately after the massacre, a group of white businessmen proposed moving the black neighborhood further to the northeast and converting the Greenwood area to a warehouse district. This effort ultimately failed when the business group could not raise the necessary capital. In September, Tulsa County’s three district judges ruled the city had illegally extended its fire code in an attempt to thwart blacks from rebuilding. Their decision effectively ended the real estate group’s scheme.
The group’s efforts, though, helped feed suspicions of conspiracy and cover-up. Some have suggested the entire incident, including the encounter between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page, had been staged to provide an excuse to lay waste to Greenwood. They point to the actions – or inaction – of authorities during the buildup to the massacre and failure to protect Greenwood property on the morning of June 1.
There were also claims that the blacks who went to the courthouse wanted a fight. According to later testimony and notes found in the papers of Gov. J.B.A. Robertson, hotel owner John Stradford had exhorted the men at the Tulsa Star office with the promise to “send and get the Muskogee crowd” – that is, reinforcements from the nearby city of Muskogee. The African Blood Brotherhood, an arm of the Communist Party based in New York, claimed to have had a chapter in Tulsa organizing armed resistance to racial oppression.
Stradford and Smitherman were arrested after the massacre, posted bail and left Oklahoma forever. Stradford settled in Chicago, where his family became prominent. Smitherman opened a newspaper in Buffalo, N.Y.
In July, a jury found Police Chief John Gustafson guilty of dereliction of duty and removed him from office. He resumed his career as a private investigator.
Ku Klux Klan rally

In September, a large Ku Klux Klan rally was held at Convention Hall. It was the Klan’s first public appearance in Tulsa, although many people believed it had a hand in the massacre.
The original Klan, organized during Reconstruction, had been broken up in the 1870s, but a new organization was formed in Atlanta in 1915. This Klan promoted a broader agenda than its predecessor, based not only on racism and white Angle-Saxon Protestantism but vigilante enforcement of its own moral code.
In April 1922, more than 1,700 Klan members marched through downtown Tulsa while an airplane carrying an electrically lighted cross flew overhead. In that spring’s city elections, Klan candidates swept every office, and did the same when county elections came around in the fall. In August 1923, Gov. J.C. Walton declared martial law in Tulsa County because of Klan activity.
Most insurance claims denied

Most insurance claims stemming from the massacre were denied because policies typically excluded such damage. Scores of lawsuits were filed as a result. One by white property owner William Redfearn alleged the massacre had in fact been a police action. Redfearn produced a number of witnesses who said police actively participated in the destruction of Greenwood.
Refearn’s suit was dismissed, as were all others. Few property owners were ever reimbursed for their losses.
Greenwood families lived in tents and makeshift shacks in their old neighborhood for much of the next year, but eventually the neighborhood did rebuild, reaching its peak during World War II.
Few landmarks associated with massacre remain

Few landmarks associated with the massacre still stand. The most visible is the former Convention Hall, now Brady Theater, at 105 W. Brady St. Most of the area destroyed in the massacre is occupied by campuses of Oklahoma State University and Langston University.
The old Tulsa County Courthouse, where Dick Rowland was held and the shooting began, was demolished in 1960 to make way for a 32-story bank building. The police station, the Hotel Tulsa and Magee’s and Bardon’s Sporting Goods stores are long gone. The armory where National Guardsmen faced down angry whites has for decades been a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall.
Statute of limitations runs out

Mount Zion Baptist Church rebuilt, slowly and painfully, over a period of many years. For a while, it had to meet in the church basement, the only part of the building still usable. A freeway runs where the fairgrounds and Dr. A.C. Jackson’s house once stood and cuts the old Greenwood in two. The formerly bustling business district was reduced to a single block.
In 1997, the Oklahoma Legislature authorized a special commission to investigate the Tulsa Race Massacre. The commission’s report, issued in 2001, recommended reparations for living black survivors of the massacre. The recommendation was never acted upon.
In 2003, a federal lawsuit was filed against the state of Oklahoma, city of Tulsa and the Tulsa Police Department on behalf of about 200 survivors and descendants of blacks living in Greenwood at the time of the massacre. In 2004, the courts dismissed the suit, ruling the statute of limitations had run out.
Original indictment of participants dismissed in 2007

In 2007, Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris formally dismissed the original indictment against alleged massacre participants.
For many Tulsans, the massacre remains a sensitive and controversial issue. For some, it is merely something that happened long ago with little relevance today. For others, however, it remains a symbol of oppression and prejudice that speaks to modern race relations.
'Before They Die' documentary premieres in October 2008

Pictured are Tulsa race massacre survivors Alice Presley (left), Hazel Jones, Juanita Booker, and Booker's daughter Jacqueline Booker-Achong.
They, along with other survivors of the 1921 massacre, attended a documentary premiere 'Before They Die' about the Tulsa race massacre at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center on Oct. 19, 2008.
"I have realized that many of our attitudes have changed among all peoples and I hope we will become united, not divided," said 91-year-old survivor Jewel Smitherman Rogers, of Perris, California.
Documentary shows survivors' struggle for reparations from 1921 massacre

Pictured are Tulsa race massacre survivors Wes Young (left), Otis Clark, and Julius Scott during a reception for the film documentary premiere 'Before They Die.'
The documentary premiered in Tulsa on Oct. 19, 2008, but would also be shown in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and several other cities to raise awareness and also to raise money for the survivors.
"They didn't compensate anyone," said survivor Julius Scott, 87, of Tulsa. "They compensated the Japanese, they compensated the Native Americans, but they didn't compensate us."
Click here for the most recent story about remaining survivors' fight for justice.
October 2008: Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor apologizes

Mayor Kathy Taylor declared before a documentary premiere on Oct. 19, 2008, to be "Journey to Healing Day" and said she had a response to a person at a recent event who asked why "nobody ever apologized."
"Let me as mayor say to the survivors of the 1921 race riot, we are sorry," Taylor said.
Alfre Woodard, an actress from Tulsa, said she admired the mayor's apology.
"It was such a bold and visionary statement that costs nothing, but is invaluable," she said. "It frees us all in this city and it free us all to move forward."
'I hope we get there very soon.'

The opening of the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park adjoining ONEOK Field, the city’s new minor league baseball stadium, is expected to bring new life to Greenwood. It is also expected to bring greater attention to a painful but important chapter in Tulsa’s history, and to one of its most distinguished sons.
At the 2008 dedication to the park named in his honor, John Hope Franklin, in one of his last public appearances before his death, said, “Someday we’ll have the joy and pleasure of complete reconciliation. We’re moving in that direction. I hope we get there very soon.”
February 2017: Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission announced

Tulsa may get an unusual amount of attention in 2021, the 100th anniversary of the city’s deadly race massacre. It’s not exactly cause for celebration, but city leaders would like something constructive to show the rest of the world.
“We can’t rewrite the past, but we can build a brighter and more prosperous future,” state Sen. Kevin Matthews, D-Tulsa, said Friday at the formal announcement of a Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission.
U.S. Sen. James Lankford and Mayor G.T. Bynum joined Matthews and other state and local leaders at the press conference announcement at the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce.
June 2018: Tulsa Public Schools teachers learn why race massacre is more accurate term

“What people in the community and historians are trying to raise up is what happened in Tulsa is a deliberate, coordinated, systematic assault on a community that resulted in that community being completely destroyed, and there are estimates that as many as 300 people were killed. That is not a race riot,” said Karlos Hill, the chair of the African American studies department at the University of Oklahoma and a scholar who has studied violence against blacks in America. “This was a massacre.”
“Referring to it as a race riot is a euphemism. It doesn’t really get to what actually happened, which I argue was an attempted expulsion of the black community from Tulsa,” Hill said.
“I think blacks and whites have a different relationship to this history. There’s just no way around. It’s more common for African-Americans to refer to the race riot as a massacre than as a race riot because most of the victims of it were African-Americans. African-Americans were the main target of the violence.”
May 2019: Oklahoma state budget bill includes $1.5 million for Tulsa race massacre centennial

Click here to read more on the state budget in this May 2019 article.
May 2019: Mayor G.T. Bynum sets 1921 Tulsa race massacre graves investigation into motion

Mayor G.T. Bynum knows well that a thorough re-examination of the sites of possible mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre won’t be easy and won’t be without controversy.
But as he explained, the city of Tulsa has some work to do to address the “well-earned lack of trust” many African Americans feel toward the city because of its unwillingness to get to the bottom of the issue.
“For me, as someone who loves this city, it was unimaginable that in a city in the United States of America people could potentially be living around a mass grave and not be trying to find out if it truly was there or not,” Bynum said.
May 2019: $9 million renovation and expansion of Greenwood Cultural Center announced

Plans for a $9 million renovation and expansion of the Greenwood Cultural Center to coincide with the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre were unveiled Thursday night at the center.
The project, a collaboration of the Race Massacre Centennial Commission, the John Hope Franklin Center of Reconciliation and the Greenwood Cultural Center, includes a reconfiguration of the existing facility and the addition of a museum, administrative offices and a gift shop.
Preliminary drawings show the four-story museum just south of the Greenwood Cultural Center, with the offices and shop along Greenwood Avenue. The offices and shop would be built in a style similar to those on Greenwood south of the Inner Dispersal Loop.
May 2019: Tulsa Regional Chamber to release 1921 minutes

Saying it is committed to making amends for a dark chapter in the city’s history, the Tulsa Regional Chamber will release its minutes related to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
“We at the Tulsa Regional Chamber are committed to an inclusive Tulsa. We are committed to equitable economic outcomes for all Tulsans, no matter their zip code, skin color, sexual orientation or religious affiliation,” Tulsa Regional Chamber President and CEO Mike Neal said in a statement. “We must also acknowledge that throughout our organization’s 115-year history, that commitment has not always been the case.”
June 2019: 'Signs of gentrification': Greenwood community worries residents being pushed out, history disrespected

Many residents of the near-downtown district can see neighboring Tulsa Arts and Blue Dome districts flourish around it with upscale restaurants and entertainment venues while the Greenwood District, particularly Black Wall Street, struggles to regain the prominence it enjoyed before and after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
September 2019: New book, 'Tulsa 1921,' is product of years of research into Tulsa Race Massacre

For the last 20 years, not a day has gone by that Tulsa World writer Randy Krehbiel has not thought about the events of May 31-June 1, 1921 — what is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.
“I don’t want to say it was an obsession,” Krehbiel said. “But even when I wasn’t actively writing or researching something about the massacre, I would be thinking about where I could find this bit of information, some new angle to take, trying to figure who is being honest and who isn’t.”
The result of these two decades of rumination, research and writing has culminated in “Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre,” published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
October 2019: Mass graves search begins

The search for unknown burial sites from Tulsa’s 1921 Race Massacre has been attempted in multiple phases.
The exact locations of the burials, and the manner in which they were done, remains something of a mystery. Speculation has lingered for nearly a century about the number of people killed in the fighting, and whether all of their bodies were accounted for. Many believe they have not been.
Click here to read the most recent story.
Why the Tulsa World uses "race massacre" now instead of "race riot"

"One word (riot or massacre?) can be important. It can start a conversation," wrote Tulsa World managing editor Mike Strain in June 2018.
"In our newsroom, we have begun using the term massacre. We also will use the term riot, but it often will be in the context of explaining that the events of 1921 had commonly been known as the Tulsa race riot.
"We made that decision because both terms are accurate, and they better reflect our entire community’s view of what happened. It’s not my place to say who is right or wrong, but it is my job to consider everyone’s opinions and be part of our conversations here to make the best decisions we can."
Tulsa Race Massacre / The Tulsa World Library
