The Washington Post published contemporary photographs and videos of the Tulsa Race Massacre. As many as 300 black people were killed.
On May 30, 1921, Greenwood was one of the wealthiest Black communities in the country, home to doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs.
It boasted restaurants, grocery stores, churches, a hospital, a savings and loan, a post office, three hotels, jewelry and clothing stores, two movie theaters, a library, pool halls, a bus and cab service, a highly regarded school system, six private airplanes and two Black newspapers, according to the Greenwood Cultural Center.
Two days later, it was all gone.
Inflamed by rumors that a young black man had assaulted a young white woman, a white mob in Tulsa set out to avenge the alleged event. Fighting broke out between whites and blacks, and a large section of black-owned businesses and homes was reduced to ashes. Hundreds of blacks were killed, and a 35-block area of residences, restaurants, professional offices, and theatre was leveled. Subsequently the black man in the incident was absolved.
Alan Singer of Hofstra University writes here about the day that whites in Tulsa burned down a thriving black community.
Singer writes:
That night, white rioters looted and burned over 1,200 buildings in the Greenwood District, which at the time was a prosperous Black business and residential neighborhood known as Black Wall Street. White mobs bombed, looted, and set fire to buildings and opened fire on Black residents who tried to defend their homes and businesses. A report in the Tulsa Tribune described that “machine guns were set up and for 20 minutes poured a stream of lead on the negroes who sought refuge behind buildings, telephone poles, and in ditches.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The pictures from that massacre look like the bombed out cities in Poland during WWII. Greenwood was leveled to the ground and reduced to rubble.
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There is no way to temper or spin any presentation on the Tulsa massacre. It was an irrational, barbaric racist attack. Like the Holocaust sometimes we must look at all the horror, lest we forget.
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The June 2021 issue of National Geographic Magazine’s cover says,
“Reckoning With the Past, A Century After the Tulsa Race Massacre.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/issue/june-2021
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Thanks to Alan Singer for reminding us of this part of our past. This was not the only violence done in this hideous period of American history. All across the country there were moments of violence. Those who like to blame slavery for the plight of African-Americans should look much later. In our county, a violent mob burned the courthouse in 1934 over a rape allegation.
But there were others. My Uncle Ed would hire Dan Gordon to help him on the farm. If you caught them around quitting time, they would be talking and laughing under a favorite shade tree, a tall boy in front of each one. My Uncle, still tall and rangy as he neared 90 and his African-descended friend, shorter and broad-shouldered. Dan died at 95. Ed told me the news: “I lost the best friend I ever had today.”
If we could only reach out to one another. Both those men remembered the mob that burned the courthouse. But it was their stories and their memories they shared, I suppose. If I could only have been a fly on the pickup tailgate, perhaps could have learned.
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Shameful day times infinity.
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Also shameful- the estimated 6,000 deaths, the violence against children, their hunger and neglect at a school funded by the British Columbia government and run by a religious sect. The school operated until the early 1970’s. It’s in the news now because a mass grave was found. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a report and, P.M. Justin Trudeau asked for a formal apology from Pope Francis. Unlike other religious groups in similar circumstances, Pope Francis rejected Trudeau’s request.
One of the former students was asked by a journalist writing about the grave’s discovery, what he remembered most about the school, he said, “the hunger”.
It’s dangerous for American society to have as 3rd largest U.S. employer, a religious sect. It is especially dangerous when that sect has law firms designed to eliminate accountability, citing religious freedom/liberty. Government dollars enabling religious sect power is a growing threat.
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