What Was the Tulsa Massacre?

care of yourself, okay. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group of scientists and historians is on the verge of unearthing a chunk of the city's past that has been long buried, and one that some people may prefer to keep that way. It's the worst incident of anti black violence in American history.

Beginning on May thirty one, thousands of armed white Tulson's invaded the black section of that booming oil town, terrorizing its residents, looting their homes and businesses, and burning to the ground some thirty five square blocks of the city. Before the rampage was over, more than ten thousand black people were left houseless, and more than six thousand were interned in camps where they'd stay in some cases for months.

Back in June of twenty for the article this episode is based on how stuff Works spoke with Scott Ellsworth, a native Toulson and a professor of American history at the University of Michigan. Ellsworth is the author of two book Death in a Promised Land, one of the first books to take a comprehensive historical look at the Tulsa Race massacre. Ellsworth said, to this day, we don't know how many died. Reasonable estimates range from I would say

forty to as high as three hundred. In October of twenty scientists found a mass grave with about eleven coffins during four days of digging at the city owned Oakland Cemetery. A full excavation began on June one, around the events a hundredth anniversary, the Tulsa Race massacre of one did not, in a word often used to describe such events, erupt. Rather, the city reached what now seems an inevitable breaking point. In early Pulsa was a wash with cash from the

oil boom. The good times reached into the north section of the city, Greenwood, in which over ten thousand black residents thrived. That area, sometimes called the Black Wall, Street, contained a hundred nine businesses, including hotels, a feed store, a roller rink cleaners, mom and pop stores, and restaurants, plus offices for doctors, dentists, and lawyers. The area had at least five churches, to a library, a movie theater, and a hospital. Like the rest of the city at

the time, Greenwood had its problems. Alcohol, even under prohibition, was readily available. Illegal drugs were easy to find two as we're gambling and prostitution. The city as a whole, not just Greenwood, struggled with crime and punishment. Less than a year before, an angry white mob had lynched a black man accused of robbing and assaulting a white woman.

Across the United States, racial violence against black people was commonplace. Segregation, though technically against the law, was still a fact of life, and the fact that at least tens of thousands of black Americans had served alongside white servicemen in World War One didn't help, and in some cases was part of

rising tensions. Some white servicemen returning from the war resented that their jobs had been taken over by black people while they were gone, and some white people resented that many returning black servicemen were demanding more equitable pay and job opportunities. Ellsworth wrote in a two thousand one report commissioned by these state of Oklahoma, when the massacre was

still commonly referred to as a riot. Quote. During the weeks and months leading up to the riot, there were more than a few white Toulsons who not only feared that the color line was in danger of being slowly erased, but believed that this was already happening. Into that explosive situation, a black teenaged boy working as a shoeshiner had a brief run in with a white teenaged girl operating an elevator.

The two may have been friends, there were rumors that they were more, but a white clerk claimed that the boy had grabbed her and the fuse was lit. The boy was taken into custody. A group of more than two thousand angry white people gathered on the courthouse steps, some intent on lynching him, possibly promoted by an inflammatory editorial in a white newspaper. A small group of armed black war veterans and others squared off with them there,

and soon shots were fired. White people all over the city began their march on the Greenwood area to tamp down what many white people saw as an uprising. The terror went on for eighteen hours into June one. The atrocities too numerous to list. Families were murdered while praying while fleeing, and the Tulsa Police, despite their sworn duty to serve and protect, didn't assist. In fact, Tulsa police officers helped set some fires, and an all white unit

of the National Guard joined the white invaders. Other public officials provided guns and AMMO to the white men. The KKK got involved, a semi functioning machine gun was used on Black Pulson's airplanes dropped turpentine balls, destroying more buildings. Despite being largely outnumbered, Black Pulson's fought to protect their homes and businesses and most all of Greenwood, but in the end, scores of black people and some white people too,

were killed and Greenwood was left in ruins. The exact numbers of injured and dead, even after what's to be uncovered in three suspected mass graves, may never be known. It's still unclear looking back exactly what happened between Dick Roland, the black shoeshiner, and Sarah Age, the white elevator operator, to spark the massacre, but this is known. She refused to bring charges. Roland survived the massacre and was vindicated. For years, Tulsa refused to acknowledge in any meaningful way

what happened. In no one was ever charged or prosecuted for the crimes that occurred during those eighteen or so hours. Even those who grew up there, Ellsworth included, were not

taught that part of the city's history. The Tulsa Race massacre became a terrible and closely held secret that began to change with some earlier work and then Ellsworth's death in a Promised Land in When members of the national media descended on Oklahoma City after the bombing of the Federal Building, they were informed of this other episode of

domestic terrorism in the state's history. More news accounts and more books on the massacre followed, and in ty nineteen, the HBO superhero series Watchman, inspired in part by the events in Tulsa, enlightened many more to the story. Ellsworth has a new book out that centers on Tulsa's decades long cover up, titled The Groundbreaking An American City and

Its Search for Justice. It was released in May, and, as alluded to before, in the process of all of this, the terminology used to describe the event has changed for many years. When it was mentioned, it was called the Tulsa race riot, a term that muddies and lessons what happened.

Carlos Hill, the chair of the African American Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma, told the publication The Tulsa World in quote, 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. That is not a race riot. This was a massacre. Referring to it

as a race riot is a euphemism. Tulsa's failure to come to grips with its deadly past clearly has left scars of its own. Ellsworth said, the city was robbed of its honesty. You have entire generations growing up in Tulsa who have never heard of this. You have people growing up with a false reality, of false vision of

the land they were on. I mean, imagine if today, right now, that you had young people growing up in Manhattan who had never heard of nine eleven, that there were no books to talk about nine eleven, that it's as if it didn't exist. The Race Massacre was a gigantic myth in the history of Tulsa. It was deliberately buried for a long time. The full excavation will mark another step in the long road to understanding and perhaps

one day, recovery. Ellsworth said, I know that this has been a process that has been going on for a while now. It's caused people to kind of re evaluate how they look the past, how they look at their town and what's going on. I think that's been a liberating process for some people. It's been a very difficult one for others. Today's episode is based on the article what was the Tulsa Race Massacre and Why does it still Haunt the City? On House to Forks dot com,

written by John Donovan. To learn more about the events surrounding the massacre, check out the episode that we did on one of my other shows, American Shadows. The episode is called Divided Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with House to Forks dot com and is produced by Tyler Client. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,