What The Tul­sa Race Mas­sacre Destroyed

“Places to work. Places to live. Places to learn and shop and play. Places to wor­ship.” This piece from the New York Times describes the thriv­ing neigh­bor­hood of Green­wood, its promis­ing future, and the gen­er­a­tional wealth that was destroyed dur­ing the 1921 mas­sacre. “Piec­ing togeth­er archival maps and pho­tographs, with guid­ance from his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times con­struct­ed a 3‑D mod­el of the Green­wood neigh­bor­hood as it was before the destruc­tion.”

The true costs of the Tul­sa race mas­sacre, 100 years lat­er

In this his­to­ry of Tul­sa’s lost wealth, sur­vivors of the mas­sacre and their descen­dants recount the dou­ble his­to­ry of Green­wood’s destruction—once at the hands of the racist mob in 1921, and again as rede­vel­op­ment and free­way con­struc­tion swept the city dur­ing the “urban renew­al” peri­od of the 1960s and 1970s. A Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion analy­sis assess­es “the esti­mat­ed dol­lar amounts of lost wealth from the 1921 mas­sacre, and consider[s] what that col­lec­tive wealth might be able to accom­plish in con­tem­po­rary Tul­sa were that mon­ey still in cir­cu­la­tion.” Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ics and Soci­ol­o­gy, the prop­er­ty destroyed in the mas­sacre would be val­ued at $200 mil­lion today. “If restored to the com­mu­ni­ty in the form of repa­ra­tions, what could that lost wealth pay for today?”

Tul­sa Race Mas­sacre Side­lined Lega­cy of Black Wealth in Green­wood

The Wall Street Jour­nal exam­ines the eco­nom­ic lega­cy of the destruc­tion of “one of the nation’s most pros­per­ous Black com­mu­ni­ties” and how “the mas­sacre dis­rupt­ed the growth of assets that could have been passed to [descen­dants] or used to start oth­er ven­tures.” The gap in wealth between Black and white Amer­i­cans con­tin­ues to grow. “Black peo­ple have shown the abil­i­ty to cre­ate wealth, but have nev­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pound wealth,” says Har­ry Hollines, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer for the Lati­no Lead­er­ship Insti­tute.

Tul­sa’s Green­wood neigh­bor­hood found pros­per­i­ty after the 1921 mas­sacre. Then the high­ways arrived.

After the mas­sacre, Green­wood expe­ri­enced a “sec­ond renais­sance” as Black Tul­sans rebuilt “big­ger than before,” help­ing Green­wood once again become, as W.E.B. Dubois called it, “a hap­py city” with “new clothes.” How­ev­er, Car­los Moreno’s new book, The Vic­to­ry of Green­wood, recounts the neigh­bor­hood’s resur­gence and its sub­se­quent destruc­tion by free­ways and rede­vel­op­ment when res­i­dents were again robbed of their prop­er­ty through emi­nent domain. “Green­wood’s cur­rent and for­mer res­i­dents are still call­ing for jus­tice, whether through equi­ty in prop­er­ty own­er­ship, or the removal of the high­ways. Many say they still don’t have a seat at the table when it comes to the fate of what was once the coun­try’s most cul­tur­al­ly vibrant and finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful Black neigh­bor­hood.”

Black Land Own­er­ship Primed Green­wood’s Rebound After Mas­sacre

To rebuild Green­wood after 1921, local entre­pre­neurs and landown­ers received “lit­tle or no gov­ern­ment assis­tance,” with insur­ance com­pa­nies deny­ing claims and busi­ness own­ers fac­ing the loss of their inven­to­ry with no safe­ty net. But “[m]any res­i­dents instead used their prop­er­ty as col­lat­er­al to secure short-term mort­gages from finan­cial insti­tu­tions, more afflu­ent indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ty lend­ing pools,” let­ting the neigh­bor­hood recov­er to the point that, by 1940, the Black home­own­er­ship rate out­paced white home­own­er­ship in Tul­sa. “Green­wood’s sec­ond calami­ty was, in part, a con­se­quence of broad­er urban renew­al efforts in the 1960s. Rede­vel­op­ment plans and the clear­ing of blight­ed prop­er­ties uproot­ed local busi­ness­es and res­i­dents, accel­er­at­ing the neigh­bor­hood’s decline, res­i­dents and descen­dants of for­mer busi­ness own­ers said.” Even­tu­al­ly, the con­struc­tion of a new inter­state free­way “upend­ed the local econ­o­my, pierc­ing the heart of the busi­ness dis­trict and for­ev­er chang­ing the neigh­bor­hood.”

Black Mas­sacres in the U.S.

“Mas­sacres are the vio­lence inher­ent to white suprema­cy unleashed in full force. Tak­ing untold scores of Black lives, these mas­sacres have large­ly been erased from the pub­lic con­scious­ness.” These events, “sys­tem­at­ic expres­sions of white suprema­cy,” were “not iso­lat­ed foot­notes of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” A map from Decolo­nial Atlas illus­trates the long-sup­pressed his­to­ry of some of the oth­er race mas­sacres per­pe­trat­ed around the coun­try.

Chica­go had a ‘Black Wall Street’ too

As Amer­i­ca reck­ons with its his­to­ry of racist vio­lence, it has become appar­ent that inci­dents like the mas­sacre on Tul­sa’s “Black Wall Street” hap­pened all too often. From St. Louis to Chica­go to Atlanta, riots and attacks “fueled by racial and eco­nom­ic ten­sions” led to the deaths of hun­dreds of Black Amer­i­cans and the loss of untold Black wealth. Yet in spite of the vio­lence they faced, writes Clarence Page, Black Amer­i­cans “turned oppres­sion into oppor­tu­ni­ty, as well as they could with­in the con­fines of racial seg­re­ga­tion, much like the work­ers and busi­ness own­ers in Tul­sa and oth­er ‘Black Wall Streets’ under Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion.”

Not just Tul­sa: Racist mobs were ‘wide­spread and a con­stant con­cern’ 100 years ago

Far from being “the only tragedy of its kind,” the vio­lence in Tul­sa exem­pli­fied a vir­u­lent wave of racist attacks that “peaked over the course of 10 months in 1919 when more than 250 African Amer­i­cans were killed by white mobs in at least 25 riots across the coun­try.” In Elaine, Arkansas, “[m]ore than 200 Black men, women and chil­dren were killed” after Black share­crop­pers attempt­ed to union­ize. Rose­wood, Flori­da’s Black pop­u­la­tion fled the town alto­geth­er when a white mob burned Black homes and busi­ness­es after an alleged attack on a white woman. Racial­ly moti­vat­ed vio­lence was, for many peo­ple, a ter­ri­fy­ing and “con­stant con­cern.”