Greenwood was an African American oasis in the midst of Jim Crow. It was nicknamed “the Black Wall Street.” Problems remained in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, community, including racism and economic tensions. An innocent mishap in 1921 was wrongly labeled as an assault of a black man on a white woman. That was like lighting a match in a keg of gasoline in those days. The result was a race riot. President Harding gave a speech at a black university denouncing the massacre. The Greenwood community eventually rebounded.
The Black Wall Street
African Americans first came to Oklahoma when it was still Indian territory, mostly as slaves of Native Americans. In the late 19th Century, African Americans came to the state during the land rush and took advantage of the oil boom. Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
O.W. Gurley, a wealthy black landowner, founded Greenwood on the northeast side of Tulsa. Gurley came to Oklahoma years before, holding several government positions, including in the Cleveland Administration (the first president who had two separate terms).
Greenwood became a successful African American community. It became a thriving center of black business and culture with eleven thousand people, with 15 doctors, a dozen tailors, seven attorneys, a jeweler, a garment factory, and a skating rink among its more than 150 businesses.
White-led Tulsa denied Greenwood residents a role in the city government. Greenwood became a self-reliant community. The African intellectual and activist W.E.B. DuBois saw it as a prime example of the “new hope and power” black people had to succeed in a racist society.
Greenwood was nicknamed the “Black Wall Street” after the successful New York City business district. Things looked bright for the community as 1921 began.
Problems in the Air
There were social and economic tensions in Tulsa that provided a dangerous opportunity for a burst of violence. A spark could lead to a dangerous blaze.
Crime was high. People were taking the law into their own hands. A mob in August 1920 seized a white teenager accused of murder from his prison cell and lynched (illegally hanged) him.
Tulsa was a heavily segregated (racially separate) city. White people suffering from economic slump in the spring of 1921 looked on with displeasure at the success of Greenwood. Blacks were willing to work for less. Whites looked with hungry eyes at the land black people owned.
Any allegation that a black person committed a crime against a white person, especially a black man harming a white woman, would be especially likely to cause trouble. False allegations of rape led to many lynchings in the Jim Crow South. Oklahoma was not free from such violence.
The Spark
Dick Rowland was a teenage African American shoe shiner. Sarah Page was a twenty-one-year-old elevator operator in the Drexel Building in Tulsa. It was May 30, 1921.
He entered the elevator, and then she screamed. We do not know exactly what happened. Rowland apparently tripped, stepped on Page’s foot, or grabbed hold of her arm while trying to stop falling. She screamed, and he fled. A white clerk reported an attempted assault.
The police arrested Rowland the next day. The police and prosecutors did not think he was guilty. Sarah Page later refused to press charges. Nonetheless, the local paper reported the “crime” as an attempted rape and demanded justice. Hundreds of whites gathered outside the Tulsa County Courthouse demanding that Rowland be handed over. The sheriff refused.
It was about eight p.m. on May 31st.
The Tulsa Race Massacre
After the reports of the dangerous situation came to Greenwood, about twenty-five armed African Americans, many WWI veterans, came to offer assistance. The sheriff sent them away.
The white mob tried to break into the National Guard armory but were stopped. At about 10 PM, a larger group of Greenwood residents offered their assistance. They were turned down.
As the black residents left the courthouse, a white man tried to disarm a black veteran. A shot was fired. The outnumbered blacks retreated as more shots were fired.
The riot had begun. An unarmed African American was murdered in a downtown movie theater. Fires were set outside the Greenwood business district. In the morning, the looting and violence became more organized, sometimes with the assistance of local police.
Law enforcement disarmed African American residents, denying them a chance to defend themselves, their homes, and their businesses. Thousands were detained.
The white mob destroyed over a thousand black homes and businesses and murdered hundreds of people. Greenwood was in ruins with property damage of $27 million in today’s dollars.
The Aftermath
Dick Rowland was indicted a few days later. All charges were dropped a few months later. Rowland left Tulsa. He moved to Kansas City and later lived on the West Coast during WWII.
No members of the white mobs were prosecuted. The only person who served jail time was an African American. He served thirty days for illegally having a concealed weapon.
The city government made it hard for Greenwood to rebuild. Strict fire laws made it too costly for many former residents to return. Thousands lived in tents during the winter of 1921-22.
African Americans fought a new law rezoning the residential area to a commercial one. The Greenwood district in 1942 had 242 Black-owned and Black-operated business establishments.
President Harding gave a speech at the all-African American Lincoln University (“the Black Princeton) a few days after the massacre. He honored African American WWI vets and spoke of the importance of education to good citizenship. Harding contrasted their efforts to the “unhappy and distressing spectacle” that occurred in Tulsa.
Many wanted to forget, though African American residents could not. The one hundredth anniversary provided a chance to re-examine the events and educate the country.
By then, integration, urban renewal, and other changes led to a decline of the original Greenwood African American community. We can still keep their memory and history alive.