Here’s What we Were Taught in Oklahoma About The Tulsa Riots
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. In 1921, exactly one hundred years ago, a race war broke out in Tulsa between a white mob that wanted to lynch a young black man and African-American citizens who were going to protect him. After two days of violence, there were at least 36 deaths (mostly blacks) and one of the most prosperous black communities in America was left in smoldering ruins. I grew up about 10 miles from where this occurred.
The Greenwood District in Tulsa was nicknamed “Black Wall Street” because of its middle-class and upper-middle class prosperity. Dick Rowland was a teenage shoeshiner who was well known and well-liked even by the wealthy white business leaders. There was some kind of incident between 19 year old Rowland and a white teenager named Sarah Page. The “incident” was never definitively defined but Page said later that she thought it was nothing but a huge m