2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921—one of the most horrific incidents of racial violence in American history.

The massacre ignited after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator at the Drexel Building.

 

Despite the claim proving to be false, a mob set out to Lynch Rowland and proceeded to terrorize, torture, and murder hundreds of Black citizens in Tulsa's thriving Greenwood neighborhood, a business and residential community known as Black Wall Street.

 

Many survivors left Tulsa, while those who stayed kept silent about the violence for decades. The massacre was purposefully omitted from local, state, and national histories.

 

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