The Tulsa race massacre was a two-day-long terrorist massacre perpetrated by white supremacists that took place in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, between May 31 and June 1, 1921. Mobs of white residents, some of whom had been armed and appointed as deputies by city government officials, attacked black residents and their homes and businesses. The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street." The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 black residents of Tulsa were interned, many of them for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded that 36 people died. In 2001, the Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 people dead (26 black and 13 white), based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records. The commission reported estimates ranging from 39 people to around 300 people dead.
The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building. He was arrested and rumors spread that he was to be lynched. Several hundred white residents assembled outside the courthouse, appearing to have the makings of a lynch mob. A group of approximately 50–60 black men, armed with rifles and shotguns, arrived at the jail to support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the mob. Having seen the armed black men, some of the whites who had been at the courthouse went home for their own guns. There are conflicting reports about the exact time and nature of the incident, or incidents, that immediately precipitated the massacre.
According to the 2001 Commission, "As the black men were leaving, a white man attempted to disarm a tall, African American World War I veteran. A struggle ensued, and a shot rang out." Then, according to the sheriff, "all hell broke loose." The two groups shot at each other until midnight when the group of black men was greatly outnumbered and forced to retreat to Greenwood. At the end of the exchange of gunfire, 12 people were dead, 10 white and 2 black. Alternatively, another eyewitness account was that the shooting began "down the street from the Courthouse" when black business owners came to the defense of a lone black man being attacked by a group of around six white men. It is possible that the eyewitness did not recognize the fact that this incident was occurring as a part of a rolling gunfight that was already underway.
As news of the violence spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. White rioters invaded Greenwood that night and the next morning, killing men and burning and looting stores and homes. Around noon on June 1, the Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law, ending the massacre. About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and the cost of the property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $40.61 million in 2025). By the end of 1922, most of the residents' homes had been rebuilt, but the city and real estate companies refused to compensate them. Many survivors left Tulsa.
The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for years. In 1997, a bipartisan group in the state legislature authorized the formation of the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission's final report, published in 2001, was unable to establish that the city had conspired with the racist mob; however it recommended a program of reparations to survivors and their descendants. The state passed legislation to establish scholarships for the descendants of survivors and develop a park in memory of the victims, which was dedicated in 2010. Schools in Oklahoma have been required to teach students about the massacre since 2002, and in 2020, the massacre officially became a part of the Oklahoma school curriculum.
In 1921, Oklahoma had a racially, socially, and politically tense atmosphere. The territory of northern Oklahoma had been established for the forced resettlement of Native Americans from the southeast, some of whom had owned slaves. The slaves were the first black inhabitants of Indian Territory, having been brought in by their native owners. Other areas had received many settlers from the South whose families had been slaveholders before the Civil War. Oklahoma was admitted as a state on November 16, 1907. The newly created state legislature, which had a large Democratic majority, passed racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws, as its first order of business. The 1907 Oklahoma Constitution did not call for strict segregation; delegates feared that U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt would veto the document if they included such restrictions. Still, the first law passed by the new legislature segregated all rail travel, and voter registration rules effectively disenfranchised non-whites. This meant that they were also barred from either serving on juries or serving in local public offices. These laws were enforced until they were ruled unconstitutional after the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Major cities passed laws that imposed additional restrictions.
On August 4, 1916, Tulsa passed an ordinance that mandated residential segregation by forbidding members of either race from residing on any block where three-quarters or more of the residents were members of the other race. Although the United States Supreme Court declared such an ordinance unconstitutional the following year, Tulsa and many other cities continued to establish and enforce segregation for the next three decades.
Many servicemen returned to Tulsa following the end of the First World War in 1918. As they tried to re-enter the labor force, social tensions and white supremacist sentiment increased in cities where job competition was fierce. An economic slump in Northeastern Oklahoma increased the level of unemployment. The Civil War, which ended in 1865, was still in living memory; civil rights for African Americans were lacking.
The Ku Klux Klan was resurgent (influenced by the popular 1915 film The Birth of a Nation). Since 1915, the Ku Klux Klan had been growing in urban chapters across the country. Its first significant appearance in Oklahoma occurred on August 12, 1921. By the end of 1921, 3,200 of Tulsa's 72,000 residents were Klan members, according to one estimate. In the early 20th century, lynchings were common in Oklahoma as part of a continuing effort to assert and maintain white supremacy. By 1921, at least 31 people, mostly men and boys, had been lynched in the newly formed state; 26 were black.
At the same time, black veterans pushed to have their civil rights enforced, believing that they had earned full citizenship as the result of their military service. In what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919, industrial cities across the Midwest and Northeast experienced severe race riots in which whites attacked black communities, sometimes with the assistance of local authorities.
As a booming oil city, Tulsa also supported a large number of affluent, educated, and professional African American residents. Greenwood was a district in Tulsa that was organized in 1906 following Booker T. Washington's 1905 tour of Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Oklahoma. It was a namesake of the Greenwood District, which Washington had established as his own district in Tuskegee, Alabama, five years earlier. Greenwood became so prosperous that it came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). Most black people lived together in the district. Black Americans had created their own businesses and services in this enclave, including several grocers, two newspapers, two movie theaters, nightclubs, and numerous churches. Black professionals, including doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy, served the community. During his trip to Tulsa in 1905, Washington encouraged the cooperation, economic independence, and excellence being demonstrated there. Greenwood residents selected their own leaders and raised capital there to support economic growth. In the surrounding areas of northeastern Oklahoma, they also enjoyed relative prosperity and participated in the oil boom.