‘Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten’ pays respect to lives lost
Exclusive: “There s this tendency to talk about bootstraps and a tendency to leave out the fact that America likes to take your shoestrings or your bootstraps,” Greg Robinson II, activist and descendent of Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, says.
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A century has passed since the Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed the vibrant and prosperous Black Wall Street, but it’s still seared in the public consciousness.
Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten is just one of the many documentaries that will delve further into the horrific event.
Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten is a 90-minute documentary that explores the racial violence that ravaged the Greenwood district known as Black Wall Street on May 31, 1921. An unruly white mob of 2,000 descended into Black Wall Street and burned down the neighborhood to ashes and claimed 100-300 Black lives.
The horrific two-day attack resulted in the murder of at least 300 Black Americans in the once thriving Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, which was known as the Black Wall Street
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A Look at the Similarities Between the Tulsa Massacre and George Floyd’s Murder (Exclusive Clip)
Now, to commemorate the 100th anniversary, there are three new documentaries from History, National Geographic and PBS chronicling and re-examining the events leading up to and during the actual massacre while also looking at the larger context of racial violence and social injustice in America and how the country and specifically Tulsa is reckoning with its past.
While Nelson feels that a documentary about the Tulsa Race Massacre is evergreen and could have come out at any time, “I think it’s especially important now,” he says. “It’s especially important as this country is doing a bit of introspection about how we got to where we are and why we got to where we are following the George Floyd killing and the protests we went through last summer.”
May 6, 2021
Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten
, a production Saybrook Productions Ltd. in association with The WNET Group, premieres Monday, May 31 at 9 p.m. on THIRTEEN.
One of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history occurred 100 years ago, from May 31 to June 1, 1921, when a mob of white residents set fire to “Black Wall Street,” an affluent Black community in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, this act of anti‑Black violence destroyed hundreds of Black-owned businesses and homes, killing an estimated 100-300 Black residents, and leaving an estimated 10,000 Black residents homeless.
This explosion of racial terror was compounded by the silence that followed. No one was punished for the crimes committed, and history textbooks often made no reference to them even in Oklahoma so many Americans are still unaware of this history.