The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses. The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district. The massacre began during the Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white elevator operator.
About Tulsa race massacre in brief
The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district. The massacre began during the Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white elevator operator. After the arrest, rumors spread through the city that Rowland was to be lynched. Upon hearing reports that a mob of hundreds of white men had gathered around the jail, a group of 75 black men, some of whom were armed, arrived at the jail. A member of the mob allegedly attempted to disarm one of the black men. A shot was fired, and then according to the reports of the sheriff, “all hell broke loose.” At the end of the firefight, 12 people were killed: 10 white and 2 black. As news of these deaths spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. White rioters rampaged through the black neighborhood that night and morning killing men and burning and looting stores and homes. Around noon on June 1,. the Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law, effectively ending the massacre. About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and property damage amounted to more than USD 1. 5 million in real estate and USD 750,000 in personal property. Many survivors left Tulsa, while black and white residents who stayed in the city kept silent about the terror, violence, and resulting losses for decades.
In 1996, 75 years after the massacre, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission’s final report, published in 2001, states that the city had conspired with the mob of white citizens against black citizens; it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation to establish scholarships for descendants of survivors, encourage economic development of Greenwood, and develop a memorial park to the massacre victims in Tulsa. The park was dedicated in 2010. In 2020, the massacre became a part of theOklahoma school curriculum. The last male survivor of the Tulsa race Massacre, R&B and jazz saxophonist Hal Singer, died on August 18, 2020, at age 100. In 1921, Oklahoma had a racially, socially, and politically tense atmosphere. Civil rights for African Americans were lacking, and the Ku Klux Klan was resurgent (primarily through the wildly popular movie The Birth of a Nation, which was released in 1916. The newly created state legislature passed racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws. That meant they were also barred from serving on juries or serving in local office. These laws were enforced until the passage of federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Still, the first law passed by the new legislature passed by S. S. Roosevelt would not call for strict segregation.
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This page is based on the article Tulsa race massacre published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
