Upon hearing reports that a mob of hundreds of white men had gathered around the jail where Rowland was being kept, a group of 75 Black men, some of whom were armed, arrived at the jail in order to ensure that Rowland would not be lynched. ![]() ![]() After the arrest, rumors spread through the city that Rowland was to be lynched. The massacre began during the Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator at the Drexel Building, 319 S. At this point, no one really knows the exact number of casualties resulting from this horrific destruction of an entire Black neighborhood. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 Black residents were detained in large facilities, many of them for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead. A 2001 state commission examination of events was able to confirm 39 dead, 26 Black and 13 White, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates and other records. Furthermore, the commission posited additional estimates of casualties, ranging from 75 to 300 dead. When the violence ended, Greenwood Avenue was rubble: The mob had destroyed four hotels, two newspapers, eight doctor’s offices, seven barbershops, half a dozen real estate agencies, and half a dozen churches. It marks one of “the single worst incident(s) of racial violence in American history.” The attack destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district-at that time the wealthiest Black community in the United States (known as “Black Wall Street”) home to nearly 9,000 Black residents. ![]() The Tulsa race massacre (aka the Black Wall Street Massacre, the Greenwood Massacre) took place 31 May and 1 June 1921, when mobs of white residents, many of them deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and businesses in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.
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