The Tulsa Riot of 1921

Last week, we talked about the nation’s first race riot, but one of the worst race riots in the history of this nation happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.

Tulsa was a city in which African Americans thrived. The “Greenwood District,” located in Tulsa, was an area teeming with Black businesses. It was known across the nation as the “Black Wall Street,” because of its economic success.

Perhaps it was jealousy of this economic success on the part of whites which led to the Tulsa race riot of 1921. On May 31 of that year, 19-year old Dick Rowland, a Black shoe-shiner, was trying to get onto an elevator. Apparently, it hadn’t stopped even with the floor and when he tried to get on, he tripped and fell onto Sarah Page, 17, the white elevator operator. Sarah was taken aback and thought that Mr. Rowland was trying to assault her. She picked up her purse and began swinging at him, and he grabbed her arm to get her to stop, trying futilely to tell her that he had merely tripped and had not tried to harm her.

Mr. Rowland was arrested, in spite of his cries of innocence, by city police, and a story ran in the white newspaper the next day that a Black man had been arrested for sexually assaulting a white woman on the elevator in the Drexel Building. As the story circulated, whites got mad and made their way toward the Greenwood District; Blacks, equally as angry because of the falsehood of the story and knowing it meant certain danger for Mr. Rowland, came out into the streets to protect their community. Whites were calling for a lynching; Blacks were calling for justice and protection, but police did nothing to quell the angry white crowd.

By June 1, whites had invaded the Greenwood District and destroyed it. Hundreds of people were killed. Many to most of the Black businesses were destroyed. In an area covering 35 blocks, 1,256 homes belonging to Blacks were destroyed, as were churches and even the lone Black hospital. The Governor of Oklahoma finally declared martial law, and the National Guard rounded up BLACK PEOPLE and put them into the baseball stadium!

Many Black individuals and families, fearing for their lives, fled Tulsa that day, never to return.

No one was ever arrested or charged for the mass murders and the destruction of property that took place that day. The Greenwood District was effectually destroyed. The case against Dick Rowland was dismissed at the end of September that year; Ms. Page changed her story and sent a letter to the prosecutor saying she didn’t want to prosecute the case. (It seems that though Ms. Page had originally said Mr. Rowland had attacked her, that she never filed charges!) The police chief, John Gustafson, was eventually indicted, tried and convicted of failure to control the situation.