Tulsa’s Black Wall Street + Riots: Wtf happened in 1921

On May 30, 1921, a black teenager named Dick Rowland got on an elevator in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before he got off, the elevator operator, Sarah Page, a white woman, screamed. He dipped. The police arrested him the next morning. His arrest made front page of the Tulsa Tribune.

That same evening, a gang of white folks gathered round the courthouse, demanding that the sheriff give them Rowland. (The caucasity 🤧) The sheriff refused. That same night, about 25 armed black men—many of whom were WWI vets—went to help guard Rowland. The sheriff made em leave.

Hearing rumors of a possible lynching, about 75 armed black men went back to the courthouse, where they were met by over 1,500 armed white folks. Somebody fired a shot and all hell broke loose. Black folks were outnumbered so they dipped back to the black side of town called Greenwood.

Later that night, “groups of white Tulsans—some of whom were deputized and given weapons by city officials—committed numerous acts of violence against blacks, including shooting an unarmed man in a movie theater.” The next day, on June 1, thousands of white Tulsans pulled up to Greenwood, looting and burning more than 1,200 black homes and black-owned businesses: churches, newspaper publishers, a school, a library, a hospital, hotels, stores, etc.

No wonder they called it Black Wall Street.

Firefighters watched, claiming the rioters threatened em. By the time the National Guard arrived and the governor declared martial law, the riot had ended. The police concluded that Rowland “most likely stumbled into Page or stepped on her foot” and dropped all charges against him. He got out, left Tulsa, and never returned. And as black Tulsans worked to rebuild, Oklahoma’s new KKK branch grew.

For decades, there were no memorials to commemorate May 31-June 1, 1921. More than 300 people died tho. The local newspaper took it off the front pages in their archives. Black folks tried making it law that schools had to teach it, but it was rejected. They really wanted us to forget. 

That’s why we gotta Krak Teet about it.

P.S.: Oklahoma has a nice-sized Gullah community known as The Black Seminoles. The Black Seminoles are Gullah folk who escaped from plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. They went to Florida then after the Indian Removal Act, they were forced to faraway Indian reservations in places like Oklahoma. #WeAllCousins

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