This week marks the centenary of the Tulsa, Oklahoma race massacre, one of the deadliest and most destructive antiblack pogroms in the history of the United States.
Officials confirmed 39 deaths—26 black and 13 white people—but it is estimated that the true toll could be as high as 300, with many African American victims uncounted and buried in mass graves. An Oklahoma state commission estimated in 2001 that the present day cost of the damage was $30 million.
On the night of May 31 and into June 1, 1921, a marauding mob of several thousand armed white men with the complicity of the police rampaged through the segregated African American section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as Greenwood, looting and burning businesses and homes. Eyewitnesses relayed that airplanes flew overhead, dropping firebombs onto rooftops.
Black residents, many of them veterans of World War I, fought back with rifles and pistols, but it was not enough to hold back the mob. When the attack subsided and the smoke cleared, 35 square blocks of Greenwood had been burnt to the ground, including the business district and the city’s largest African American church. Some 1,470 homes were burned or looted. With the aid of deputized marauders, 6,000 black residents were rounded up by the police and National Guard and
— source wsws.org | Niles Niemuth | 1 Jun 2021