US marks 100th anniversary of Tulsa Race Massacre

By Meg Wagner, Melissa Mahtani, Veronica Rocha, Melissa Macaya and Mike Hayes, CNN

Updated 7:02 p.m. ET, June 1, 2021
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1:08 p.m. ET, June 1, 2021

The history of the Greenwood District and the origins of "Black Wall Street"

From CNN's Jazmin Goodwin

A woman walks past a mural in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 2020.
A woman walks past a mural in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 2020. Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images

It all started with 40 acres and a grocery store.

Ottawa W. Gurley, better known as O.W. Gurley, was one of Tulsa's earliest settlers. Gurley, traveled to the oil rich city of Tulsa in 1905 from Arkansas and purchased 40 acres of land, on which he built the People's Grocery Store and a one-story rooming house.

Gurley's grocery store and rooming house set the stage for the boom in Black entrepreneurial businesses that would follow. Greenwood was soon filled with restaurants, hotels, billiard halls, shoe stores, tailor shops and more.

The district's enterprising residents built their businesses for Black people, who were often barred or treated poorly in the nearby White establishments.

Stringent segregation laws had gone into effect after Oklahoma became a state in 1907. This paved the way for Greenwood to become an insular hub for the Black dollar to circulate, historians say. Many of the Black residents earned and spent their money entirely within the confines of Greenwood. The result was one of the most affluent and wealthiest African-American enclaves in the country.

Among Greenwood's most prominent residents was J.B. Stradford. The son of an emancipated slave, Stradford was a lawyer who amassed his fortune through real estate. Among his many properties, he built the opulent Stradford Hotel, complete with 54 rooms and crystal chandeliers, providing a welcoming space for Black visitors.

John and Loula Williams built and operated an auto repair garage, a confectionary and a rooming house. But they were best known for building the famous Williams Dreamland Theatre, which featured silent films and live musical and theatrical revues that regularly attracted Black audiences.

"Greenwood wasn't just a place, but a state of mind. They had built this place, they had created it. It wasn't a gift from anyone, it was their own community," said Scott Ellsworth, a University of Michigan historian and author of "The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice," who has been working on an effort to discover the unmarked graves of the Tulsa Massacre victims."In Greenwood, everybody knew they were just as good as anyone else."

Historical context: The foundations of the Greenwood District and Black Wall Street were built in the 1830s, when African Americans first migrated to Oklahoma.

Many Black people had arrived as slaves to the Native American members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole tribes — who were forced to relocate from the Southeastern US to Oklahoma Territory as a result of President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.

Following the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which called for the abolition of slavery, African Americans were granted citizenship and allotted plots of land where they could begin their new lives as free men and women.

This land allocation led to a boom in all-Black towns, including Greenwood. Between 1865 and 1920, the number of all-black towns and settlements grew to more than 50. Today, only 13 all-black towns exist, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

12:35 p.m. ET, June 1, 2021

Biden released a proclamation to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre

From CNN's Jason Hoffman

President Biden released a proclamation for a day of remembrance for the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre calling on the American people “to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our Nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country.”

“With this proclamation, I commit to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the descendants of victims, and to this Nation that we will never forget. We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts,” the President wrote.

Biden will visit Tulsa today to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre.

Read Biden's full proclamation here.

12:24 p.m. ET, June 1, 2021

Black Wall Street was decimated in 1921. Here's a look at the racial tensions that led to the massacre.

From CNN's Jazmin Goodwin

Tensions between the Black and White residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had started rising. Whites had grown resentful of the Black wealth and success of the residents of Greenwood District, according to Mechelle Brown, director of programs at the Greenwood Cultural Center.

On May 31, 1921, everything came to a head.

It all started after an elevator encounter between a 17-year-old White woman named Sarah Page and a 19-year-old Black man named Dick Rowland. It was alleged that Rowland had assaulted Page in the elevator, which he denied. But it didn't matter. News of a Black man's alleged assault of a White woman spread like wildfire throughout the White community of Tulsa and tempers flared.

Black residents rushed to the Tulsa County Courthouse to prevent Rowland's lynching, while White residents were deputized by the Tulsa Police and handed weapons.

A White mob, estimated to include some 10,000 people, descended upon the Greenwood District. Over the next 12 hours, the city of Greenwood experienced an all out assault of arson, shootings and aerial bombings from private planes. By the morning of June 1, 1921, Greenwood had been destroyed.

It would eventually be known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

"The race massacre was a part of American culture and lynching culture of the time. However, the scope and the scale of the violence and destruction was unprecedented," said Karlos K. Hill, associate professor and chair of the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the author of "Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory."

All 35 city blocks of the Greenwood District were completely decimated.

The Red Cross reported that 1,256 homes and 191 businesses were destroyed and 10,000 black people were left homeless. And it's believed that as many as 300 people were killed, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.

Survivors were left with nothing after their homes were looted and $2.7 million in insurance claims were denied, according to a 2001 state historical commission report.

Another research report out of Harvard University estimated that, in 2020 dollars, total financial losses were between $50 and $100 million.

For decades to follow, accounts of what happened in the summer of 1921 would remain largely unknown.

11:59 a.m. ET, June 1, 2021

Biden is traveling to Oklahoma today to commemorate 100th anniversary of Tulsa Race Massacre

From CNN's Caroline Kelly and Kate Sullivan

President Biden will visit Tulsa, Oklahoma, today to mark the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

At 4:15 p.m. ET, the President will deliver remarks to memorialize the hundreds of Black Americans who were killed by a White mob that had attacked their neighborhood and burned dozens of city blocks to the ground.

He will also meet with surviving members of the community, tour the Greenwood Cultural Center and outline his administration's efforts to combat racial inequality in the nation.

He's also expected to announce new steps to help minority-owned businesses grow and to address racial discrimination in the housing market, according to senior administration officials.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of a race massacre in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, which encompassed more than 35 city blocks of entirely Black-owned businesses. A beacon for African Americans looking to escape the discrimination and violence of the Jim Crow South and live a peaceful and safe life, the district was founded by Black men and women — many of whom were descendants of slaves — and became known as Black Wall Street.

On May 31, 1921, racial tensions and violence with the neighboring White residents in Tulsa boiled over in a massacre. Over the course of roughly 24 hours, hundreds of Greenwood's Black residents were killed and the district was left in ashes.

The White House's announcement of the visit came after Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met last week with the family of George Floyd on the one-year anniversary of his death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.

11:59 a.m. ET, June 1, 2021

100 years later, some massacre survivors are still alive — and the trauma is fresh in their minds

From CNN's Nicole Chavez

Viola Fletcher was 7 years old when she witnessed one of worst acts of racial violence the US has ever seen.

An angry White mob rampaged through Tulsa's Greenwood District in Oklahoma, killing hundreds of Black people and leaving her thriving neighborhood in ashes in 1921.

The 107-year-old testified before members of a House Judiciary subcommittee last month, calling for justice and for the country to officially acknowledge the massacre ahead of the 100th anniversary on May 31.

"I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire," Fletcher testified. "I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day."

The Tulsa race riot of 1921, also called the Tulsa Race Massacre, resulted in the decimation of the city's Greenwood district — then a Black economic hub also known as Black Wall Street — when a mob of White rioters looted and burned the community.

"I am 107 years old and have never seen justice. I pray that one day I will. I have been blessed with a long life -- and have seen the best and worst of this country. I think about the terror inflicted upon Black people in this country every day," Fletcher said.

Fletcher was one of the three survivors of the massacre who shared their stories with lawmakers. Her younger brother Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle also appeared before the subcommittee. Both noted the community wasn't able to rebuild and said survivors can still see the impact of the massacre.

"We were left with nothing. We were made refugees in our own country," said Van Ellis, 100.

Randle, who testified virtually, recalled how she felt safe and happy as a 6-year-old living in Tulsa before "everything changed."

"They burned houses and businesses. They just took what they wanted out of the buildings then they burned them. They murdered people. We were told they just dumped the dead bodies into the river," the 106-year-old woman said.

"I remember running outside of our house. I ran past dead bodies. It wasn't a pretty sight. I still see it today in my mind — 100 years later," she added.

The three survivors are the lead figures in a lawsuit filed last year that demands reparations for damage it says has continued since the destruction of the city's Greenwood District, nearly a 100 years ago.