When Amerikkka Bombed Black Wall Street

The Tulsa race riot 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." The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district – at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".

Black Wall Street was a prospering African-American neighborhood In Tulsa, Oklahoma, that went up in flames 95 years ago. Incredibly, most Americans have never heard of the shameful events of June 1, 1921, when whites firebombed the neighborhood from the air and an estimated 300 African-Americans were murdered.

In the early 1900s, Tulsa, Oklahoma experienced a major oil boom, attracting thousands. Many African Americans migrated from southern states hoping to escape the harsh racial tensions while profiting off of the oil industry. Yet even in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jim Crow laws were at large, causing the town to be vastly segregated with most African Americans settling in the northern section of the town. From that segregation grew a black entrepreneurial mecca that would affectionately be called “Black Wall Street”. The town was established in 1906 by entrepreneur O.W. Gurley, and by 1921 there were over 11,000 residents and hundreds of prosperous businesses, all owned and operated by black Tulsans and patronized by both whites and blacks.

The best description of Black Wall Street, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be to compare it to a mini Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans could create a successful infrastructure. That’s what Black Wall Street was all about.

As for resources, there were Ph.D.s residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry, who owned the bus system. Black Wall Street was the most affluent American communites in the early 1900s. Although Oklahoma only had two airports, six residents of Black Wall Street owned private planes. During this time, a dollar circulated 36 to 100 times before ultimately leaving the community, sometimes taking a year for the currency to leave the black community. Several decades later, a dollar reportedly leaves many majority-Black communities in a matter of minutes.

One of the main goals of the community was to educate every child with only black men and women teachers, empowered with self-identity. A lot of White folks had come back from World War I and they were poor. When they looked over into the Black communities and realized that Black men who fought in the war had come home heroes, that helped trigger the destruction. It cost the Black community everything, and not a single dime of restitution.

The violent, terrorist attack, which is another Black Holocaust, utterly destroyed the region in a matter of hours. An estimated 300 African-Americans died, 800 were admitted to local hospitals, and 10,000 were left homeless. The riot destroyed the community, as 600 businesses were destroyed, including churches, restaurants, supermarkets, movie theaters, schools, libraries, law offices, private airplanes, post offices, banks, hospitals, and public transportation.

The Tulsa Black Holocaust of 1921 began after 19-year-old Dick Rowland was accused of assaulting 17-year-old Sarah Page in an elevator she operated. A local newspaper printed stories both about the fabricated rape and that a hanging had been allegedly planned for Rowland that night. Groups of White and Black people converged at the courthouse that night. According to witnesses, a gun was fired, which sparked the deadly riot.

Black Wall Street, the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious Whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering, a model community destroyed and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.

The night’s carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials and many other sympathizers.

A lot of them were buried in mass graves all around the city. Some were thrown into the river. As a matter of fact, at 21st Street and Yale Avenue, where there now stands a Sears parking lot, that corner used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the bodies into the shafts.

On the night of May 31,1921, mobs called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, a Black man who shined shoes, after hearing reports that on the previous day he had assaulted Sarah Page, a White woman, in the elevator she operated in a downtown building.

A local newspaper had printed a fabricated story that Rowland tried to rape Page. In an editorial, the same newspaper said a hanging was planned for that night. As groups of both Blacks and Whites converged on the Tulsa Courthouse, a White man in the crowd confronted an armed Black man, a war veteran, who had joined with other Blacks to protect Rowland.

This White man, asked the Black man, “What are you doing with this gun?” “I’m going to use it if I have to,” the Black man said, and (the White man) said, ‘No, you’re not. Give it to me", and he tried to take it. The gun went off, the White man was dead, the riot was on. Not simply a riot though; The American government bombed citizens of it's own country compelled with the agenda involving pure racist hate.