Greenwood District ("Black Wall Street") and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Greenwood

Greenwood grew out of a longer history of Black settlement in Oklahoma. The Smithsonian's NMAAHC traces it to African Americans who came to the territory in the 1830s, some enslaved and some free, alongside Native nations forced west on the Trail of Tears. After emancipation, they founded several all-Black towns. In Tulsa, the entrepreneur O. W. Gurley is credited with opening the district's first Black-owned business in 1906, on land he named after Greenwood, Mississippi.

By 1921 Greenwood had about 10,000 residents. It had churches, schools, community groups and hundreds of Black-owned businesses: hotels, theaters, groceries, barbershops, a hospital, a library, and offices for doctors and lawyers. Greenwood Avenue came to be called "Black Wall Street" (or, in the NMAAHC's account, "Negro Wall Street").

The massacre

On May 30, 1921, a young Black man named Dick Rowland was in an elevator in the Drexel Building with Sarah Page, a white elevator operator. Accounts of what happened differ, and rumours grew as they spread. Rowland was arrested the next day. After an inflammatory story in the Tulsa Tribune, armed white and Black crowds faced each other at the courthouse; some had come to protect Rowland and others intended to lynch him. The sheriff had barricaded the top floor to protect him. Shots were fired, and the outnumbered Black Tulsans fell back to Greenwood.

In the early hours of June 1, white mobs invaded Greenwood, shooting residents and looting and burning homes and businesses. By the end, 35 city blocks lay in ruins. A 2001 Oklahoma commission estimated that 1,256 homes were destroyed, along with churches, schools, a hospital and a library. More than 800 people were treated for injuries. Contemporary reports listed 36 dead. Historians now estimate that as many as 300 people died, and the commission put the toll at 100 to 300. The governor declared martial law, and more than 6,000 Black residents were held in internment sites, some for up to eight days.

Responsibility

The 2001 commission found that officials deputized and armed white residents and that no one was ever prosecuted. A U.S. Justice Department review, released on January 10, 2025, went further. It described a "coordinated, military-style attack," in which some officers took part in killing, arson and looting. It also found that the city later blocked rebuilding with costly fire codes. The department concluded that prosecution is no longer possible because no perpetrators are alive.

Aftermath and memory

Residents rebuilt largely on their own, with help from the Red Cross, Black churches and the NAACP. For decades the event was called a "riot." The Tulsa Historical Society notes the claim that this label helped insurers refuse claims. Tulsa has searched for mass graves described in oral histories. In 2024 the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a reparations suit brought by survivors Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle, saying the remedy they sought belonged to the legislature.