It sounds like you’re referring to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. It was one of the most devastating episodes of racial violence in U.S. history. In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was a thriving African American community known as “Black Wall Street,” a violent mob of white residents attacked the area, destroying homes, businesses, and killing an estimated 300 people. The incident began on May 31, 1921, and lasted for around 24 hours. The exact number of casualties remains uncertain, and many details were suppressed or overlooked for decades. The Tulsa race massacre had long-lasting effects on the African American community in Tulsa and highlighted the systemic racism and violence prevalent in the United States at the time.
The Tulsa race massacre of 1921 was one of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. It occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, beginning on May 31, 1921, and lasting for two days. The massacre left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood, known as “Black Wall Street.” More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. Despite its severity and destructiveness, the Tulsa race massacre was barely mentioned in history books until the late 1990s, when a state commission was formed to document the incident.
On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young African American shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting a white elevator operator named Sarah Page in the elevator of a building in downtown Tulsa. The next day the Tulsa Tribune printed a story saying that Rowland had tried to rape Page, with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. That evening mobs of both African Americans and whites descended on the courthouse where Rowland was being held. When a confrontation between an armed African American man, there to protect Rowland, and a white protester resulted in the death of the latter, the white mob was incensed, and the Tulsa massacre was thus ignited.
Tulsa race massacre
The Tulsa race massacre (also called the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre) of 1921 took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”
