A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE: THE TULSA RACE RIOT OF 1921

On the evening of May 31, 1921, a crowd of whites gathered at the Tulsa, Oklahoma Courthouse, drawn there in part by a newspaper story implying that Dick Rowland, a black shoeshine man being held there, had assaulted Sarah Page, a white woman, in the elevator where she worked as an operator. When rumors that Rowland would be lynched began to circulate in the city's African-American community, a number of blacks converged at the Courthouse to protect him. Tensions ran high, a pistol went off, and soon a riot erupted. Local units of the National Guard were called in and began working with hundreds of white men deputized by the Tulsa police chief – some of whom were themselves participants in the violence – to quell the riot. Beginning early the next morning, white mobs invaded Greenwood, the prosperous black section of Tulsa, following closely after the guardsmen who arrested every black they could find and took them into “protective custody,” leaving their property undefended. Truckloads of whites, often including the special deputies, set fires and shot blacks on sight.