people describe it as a massacre. i've been calling it a war. >> there's systemic causes for what happened here in 1921. but we fixate on this trigger incident that involved a black boy and a white girl on an elevator. the teenage boy is a boy named dick rowan. he's at work on memorial day, shining shoes in downtown tulsa. dick rowland was 19 years old in the spring of 1921. he worked in a white-owned and white-patronized shine parlor on main street in downtown tulsa. >> his nickname is diamond dick, so he's known to be this flashy young guy. just another person in the community that everyone knows, but he's never been seen as a troublemaker.