HISTORY
Why There’s a Long List of Black Towns Terrorized by White Americans
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was part of a broader attack
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,” the Irish author Jonathan Smith wrote. This phrase certainly applies to the Tulsa Race Massacre, a mass lynching inspired by misleading information provided to the public. On May 30, 1921, authorities arrested Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, wrongfully accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a 21-year-old White elevator operator in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In an article entitled, “Nab Negro For Attacking Girl in Elevator,” editors of The Tulsa Tribune suggested Rowland tried to rape Page, feeding into a racist stereotype about Black men.
“Black Tulsans had every reason to believe that Dick Rowland would be lynched after his arrest on charges later dismissed and highly suspect from the start,” according to the Oklahoma Commission tasked with publishing a formal state report in 2001. Twenty-five Black men traveled to the courthouse and bravely stood in solidarity with Rowland. While a local, white-run newspaper referred to the group as radical and violent, Walter F. White, the Assistant Secretary of the NAACP, challenged their accusations. White citizens were “attempting to blame the riot on Negro radicalism,” he…
