Tulsa Race Massacre (1921): The Archetype of Erasure

 

Violence Without Memory

On the night of May 31 and the morning of June 1, 1921, one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in United States history unfolded in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A white mob—assisted by local law enforcement, deputized civilians, and elements of the state militia—destroyed the Greenwood District, a thriving Black community often referred to as “Black Wall Street.” By the time the violence ended, as many as 300 Black residents were dead, over 1,200 homes were burned, thousands were displaced, and an entire economic ecosystem was reduced to ashes.

Yet for decades, this massacre barely existed in American national memory.

The Tulsa Race Massacre stands not only as an episode of extraordinary racial terror but as the archetype of historical erasure—a case study in how state power, media, educational institutions, and collective silence conspired to remove Black suffering from the nation’s official story. As historian James S. Hirsch observed, “For most of the twentieth century, the Tulsa race riot was a non-event in American history.” That absence was neither accidental nor benign; it was politically useful.

This essay argues that the Tulsa Race Massacre exemplifies how racial violence against Black Americans was deliberately obscured to protect national myths of progress, order, and innocence. Tulsa was not forgotten because it was insignificant; it was forgotten because it was too significant, too revealing of the contradictions at the heart of American democracy.

 

Greenwood Before the Flames: Black Prosperity as a Provocation.

Before its destruction, Greenwood was one of the most economically successful Black communities in the United States. Segregation laws confined Black residents to a distinct area north of the railroad tracks, but rather than producing deprivation alone, segregation in Tulsa inadvertently fostered a self-contained Black economy.

Greenwood featured:

• Banks, hotels, and grocery stores
• Law offices, newspapers, and medical practices
• Schools, churches, theaters, and restaurants

Historian Hannibal B. Johnson emphasizes that Greenwood’s success was not accidental but the product of “Black entrepreneurial discipline forged in a hostile racial environment.” Segregation forced Black dollars to circulate internally, creating wealth accumulation rarely acknowledged in mainstream economic histories.

However, Greenwood’s prosperity was also perceived as a racial affront. In the racial logic of Jim Crow America, Black success threatened the ideological foundations of white supremacy. As sociologist Charles Payne argues, “White violence was often triggered not by Black deprivation but by Black advancement.”

Thus, Greenwood existed in a state of permanent vulnerability—its success was both its strength and its danger.

 

The Spark and the Explosion: From Allegation to Annihilation.

The massacre was ignited by an incident involving Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator. Though the precise details remain unclear, Rowland was accused—without evidence—of assault. He was arrested, and rumors of lynching spread rapidly.

Local newspapers, particularly the Tulsa Tribune, inflamed tensions. One now-missing editorial allegedly called for a lynching, contributing to a charged atmosphere. Historian Scott Ellsworth, one of the foremost scholars of the massacre, notes that the press played a critical role in “mobilizing white Tulsa against its Black citizens.”

When Black veterans—many recently returned from World War I—arrived at the courthouse to prevent a lynching, their presence was interpreted as insubordination. What followed was not a spontaneous riot but a coordinated assault.

White mobs were:

• Deputized by local authorities
• Supplied with weapons
• Allowed to loot, burn, and kill with impunity

Eyewitness accounts describe airplanes dropping incendiaries on Greenwood—an unprecedented use of aerial assault against a civilian population in the continental United States. As Ellsworth writes, “Tulsa may be the only instance in American history where private citizens were bombed from the air by their own neighbors.”

 

State Complicity: Law, Order, and Racial Terror.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Tulsa massacre is the role of the state. Police officers and National Guard units did not protect Greenwood residents; instead, they disarmed Black citizens and interned them in detention centers while white mobs continued their destruction.

Legal scholar Patricia Williams argues that racial violence in the United States must be understood not as lawlessness but as “law operating exactly as intended within a racial hierarchy.” Tulsa exemplifies this reality. No white perpetrators were convicted. Insurance companies denied claims, citing riot clauses. The city proposed rezoning Greenwood to prevent rebuilding.

Justice was not delayed—it was denied by design.

 

The Language of Obfuscation: Why “Riot” Replaced “Massacre”.

For decades, the Tulsa massacre was officially referred to as the “Tulsa Race Riot.” This terminology was not neutral. The word “riot” implies mutual aggression, shared culpability, and chaos rather than organized violence.

Historian David W. Blight, in his work on memory and forgetting, notes that “the language used to describe violence determines how responsibility is assigned—or avoided.” Calling Tulsa a riot diluted moral accountability and reframed Black victims as participants rather than targets.

This linguistic manipulation became one of the most effective tools of erasure. It allowed textbooks, newspapers, and public officials to acknowledge the event superficially while stripping it of its true meaning.

 

Erasing Tulsa: Silence, Schools, and Suppressed Records.

The erasure of the Tulsa Race Massacre was systematic and multi-layered:

1. Educational Exclusion.

For much of the twentieth century, Oklahoma schools did not teach the massacre. Students graduated without any knowledge of Greenwood’s destruction. National textbooks similarly ignored the event.

Education scholar James Loewen famously argued that American history textbooks are designed to “make students feel good about their country rather than tell them what actually happened.” Tulsa violated the emotional architecture of patriotic education.

2. Archival Disappearance.

Key records vanished. Police logs went missing. Newspaper pages were removed. Death certificates underreported casualties. Mass graves were rumored but never officially investigated until nearly a century later.

As Ellsworth notes, “You cannot accidentally lose this much history.”

3. Cultural Amnesia.

Public commemorations were nonexistent. No monuments were erected. Survivors were discouraged from speaking. Silence became a form of survival.

 

Survivors and the Burden of Memory.

For those who lived through the massacre, memory was not optional—it was inescapable. Yet survivors carried their trauma in isolation. Many feared retaliation if they spoke openly.

Oral historian Tiya Miles emphasizes that “silence is often imposed on the traumatized by those who benefit from forgetting.” The burden of remembrance fell on families, churches, and local Black institutions rather than the nation.

It was not until the late twentieth century that survivors began to testify publicly, forcing Tulsa back into historical consciousness.

 

The 2001 Oklahoma Commission: Recognition Without Repair.

In 2001, the Oklahoma state government released a formal report acknowledging the massacre. The commission confirmed state complicity and documented the scale of destruction. However, recommendations for reparations were largely ignored.

Legal scholar Ta-Nehisi Coates later described this pattern as “acknowledgment without restitution—confession without repentance.”

Recognition alone could not rebuild Greenwood’s lost wealth, nor could it compensate for generational economic harm.

 

Why Tulsa Matters: The Archetype of Erasure.

Tulsa is not unique because it happened—it is unique because it was forgotten so effectively. Similar massacres occurred in:

• Colfax, Louisiana (1873)
• Elaine, Arkansas (1919)
• Ocoee, Florida (1920)
• Rosewood, Florida (1923)

But Tulsa’s erasure became a model. It demonstrated how racial violence could be buried beneath progress narratives, legal silence, and selective memory.

Historian Robin D. G. Kelley writes, “The archive is not neutral; it is a site of power.” Tulsa reveals how archives can be emptied as easily as they are filled.

 

Reclaiming Greenwood: Memory as Justice.

In recent years, renewed efforts to investigate mass graves, revise curricula, and commemorate Greenwood represent an overdue confrontation with the past. Yet remembrance alone is insufficient.

Memory, as Blight reminds us, is always contested. The question is not whether Tulsa will be remembered—but how, and to what end.

Will it be remembered as an unfortunate anomaly?
Or as evidence of systemic racial violence embedded in American history?

 

A Nation That Forgot on Purpose.

The Tulsa Race Massacre was erased from United States national memory because remembering it would require uncomfortable truths: that American prosperity was racially conditional, that law enforcement enabled terror, and that democracy failed spectacularly when Black citizens exercised autonomy.

Tulsa exposes the cost of forgetting. It reveals how silence preserves injustice and how history, when unmanaged, threatens power.

To remember Tulsa honestly is not to indict the past alone—it is to challenge the present.

Blight, D. W. (2001). Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Harvard University Press.

Coates, T.-N. (2014). The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic.

Ellsworth, S. (1982). Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Louisiana State University Press.

Ellsworth, S. (2021). The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice. Penguin Press.

Hirsch, J. S. (2002). Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy. Houghton Mifflin.

Johnson, H. B. (1998). Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District. Eakin Press.

Kelley, R. D. G. (2016). Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Beacon Press.

Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. The New Press.

Miles, T. (2020). All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. Random House.

Payne, C. M. (1995). I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. University of California Press.

Williams, P. J. (1991). The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Harvard University Press.

Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. (2001). Tulsa Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission. State of Oklahoma.