1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: Home

             The Greenwood District of Tulsa. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.                        

Tulsa's Black Wall Street/ Greenwood District 

The African American section of Tulsa contained 191 businesses prior to the race massacre of 1921, which included 15 doctors, a chiropractor, 2 dentists, and 3 lawyers. The residents also had access to a library, 2 schools, a hospital, and Tulsa Public Health Service.

The Red Cross reported that 1, 256 houses were burned, 215 houses were looted but not burned, and the total number of buildings not burned but looted and robbed were 314.  The Tulsa Real Estate Exchange estimated $1.5 million worth of damages and one-third of that in the black business district.  The Exchange claimed personal property loss at $750, 000 between June 14, 1921 and June 6, 1922. $1.8 Million of claims were flied against the City of Tulsa and disallowed.

Excerpt from Tulsa Race Riot:  A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

February 28, 2001

Personal belongings and household goods had been removed from many homes and piled in the streets.  On the steps of the few houses that remained sat feeble and gray.  Negro men and women and occasionally a small child.  The look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplications.  Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence to them whether they lived or died.  Harmless themselves, they apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their friend sand neighbors and just as deliberately shoot them down in their tracks.

Tulsa Daily World, June 2, 1921