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- Apr 21, 2015
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This weekend is our fourth Black History Matters Event focusing on the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
By 1921, the predominantly African-American Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma had grown into a prosperous area of the city and was known as Black Wall Street. In Greenwood, African-Americans enjoyed relative prosperity by selecting their own leaders, employing black doctors and lawyers, and creating their own businesses. The massacre that devastated the Greenwood District began on the night of May 31st, 1921. An angry white mob, seeking to lynch a young African-American teenager falsely accused of ***ual assault, gathered outside of the city’s courthouse. African-American residents, who feared the teenager would be lynched, headed to the courthouse to try and intervene. Shots were fired and chaos broke out. Over the next several hours, groups of white Tulsans, some of whom were deputized and given weapons by law enforcement, committed numerous acts of violence against the city’s African-American residents. As dawn broke on June 1st, thousands of white citizens flooded the Greenwood District on the ground, looting and burning homes and businesses. Additional white residents took to the air in private planes to fire bomb the district using burning balls of turpentine soaked fabric. The devastation spread across 35 city blocks with over a thousand homes burned, numerous Black-owned businesses damaged or destroyed, and over 8,000 of the city’s residents left homeless. Officially, it was reported that 36 people died in the riots, however later investigations have indicated the death toll may have been as high as 300. The Tulsa Race Massacre is known as one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.
. We just want the event information. A d that some event are too amerincan to be undertood by everyone.
