The Tulsa Race Massacre

The Tulsa Race Massacre challenges our understanding of early Oklahoma as a frontier offering freedom, opportunity, and progress to anyone. The experiences of individual Oklahomans may have occasionally aligned with that understanding, but that occurred infrequently at best. The lives and experiences of Oklahomans are much more complex. The events that transpired on the night of May 31, 1921, and the following day are difficult to comprehend, and the fact that it happened is frightening. We have a responsibility to face this chapter in order to know our history.

The Greenwood District in Tulsa after the riots, June 1, 1921 (image courtesy of the Library of Congress).