The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was less an act of spontaneous vengeance against Black residents and more premeditated and organized than previously known, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The study also found local law enforcement and military personnel helped organize the attack in which an estimated 10,000 white Tulsans destroyed Greenwood, a thriving community also known as “Black Wall Street.”
The attack “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence. White men murdered hundreds of Black residents, burned businesses and homes to the ground, and left survivors without resources or recourse. In the aftermath, authorities failed to offer meaningful help, and efforts to seek justice through the courts foundered,” says the report, which was released three days before the end of the Biden administration.
The 124-page report was the culmination of a 2024 investigation by the cold case unit of the department’s Civil Rights Division, which reported: “Members of the unit spoke with survivors and with descendants of survivors, examined firsthand accounts of the massacre given by individuals who are now deceased, studied primary source materials, spoke to scholars of the massacre and reviewed legal pleadings, books and scholarly articles relating to the massacre.”
Kristen Clarke
The purpose of the Jan. 17 report was to break the federal government silence that has shrouded details about the violence for more than a century and to expose it as the “coordinated, military-style attack” it was, said Kristen Clarke, former assistant attorney general of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” she said. “Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past.”
According to most accounts of the incident, the massacre was set in motion the evening of May 31,1921, when about 25 Black men arrived, possibly at the invitation of the sheriff, at the Tulsa courthouse jail to prevent a group of at least 300 white men from lynching a 19-year-old African American man accused of assaulting a white woman. The Black men eventually left the scene after being assured by the sheriff no lynching would take place.
The attack “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.”
But the fuse had been lit, the DOJ report says. “The presence of armed Black men, some in (military) uniform, infuriated the white men who had assembled at the courthouse. In response, the white mob began to grow. Alarm spread through the white community as there were reports of incursions of other groups of Black men, armed, into the white part of Tulsa.”
When a group of 75 Black men arrived at the courthouse later that evening, the white crowd had swollen to several hundred. Amid verbal exchanges, two men — one white, one Black — tussled over a pistol when a shot rang out and “all hell broke loose,” the report states. Another account claims violence erupted when a white man fired a shot into the group of Greenwood men.
Chaos reigned as sporadic gun battles broke out all over downtown Tulsa. Both Black and white men engaged in these attacks, with witnesses recalling Black and white men “shooting wildly from moving cars. White residents who had not gathered at the courthouse but who had been out in the evening, engaged in other activities, were surprised and terrified by the sudden violence.”
Many Black men were shot and several were killed that night, either on their way back to Greenwood or when back in the community, the report states. Meanwhile, rumors about a Black uprising began spreading through Tulsa.
But it was the following day when white rage was fully unleashed on Greenwood, from 5 a.m. to noon the report continues. The June 1 attack “differed considerably from the violence of the previous evening. Although there were pockets of resistance, much of the morning’s violence was one-sided and directed not only at Black men with firearms but also at women, children and the elderly. In the words of one witness, ‘Tuesday night, May 31, was the riot, and Wednesday morning, by daybreak, was the invasion.’”
The attackers were highly organized by forming into military style companies the night before and kicking off the action when a whistle signaled to begin the attack, according to the report. “Once these white Tulsans crossed into Greenwood, they moved efficiently from house to house, burning the community. The burnings were methodical, which corroborates that they were the product of a plan rather than spontaneous acts of violence. Survivors later recalled that these white men systematically destroyed Greenwood neighborhoods, block by block.”
“The burnings were methodical, which corroborates that they were the product of a plan rather than spontaneous acts of violence.”
The DOJ investigators uncovered the roles various organizations and leaders played in the attack, including arming and organization of the assailants: “Local police deputized hundreds of white residents, many of whom had been advocating for a lynching and had been drinking. Law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies — as well as other white Tulsans — into the martial forces that ravaged Greenwood.”
Police did not intervene as white citizens burned and looted 35 city blocks and, in some cases, shot Black Tulsans attempting to protect their homes or caught on the streets. Two high-ranking police officials reportedly helped organize companies of attackers, while another officer drove to nearby Jenks, Okla., to recruit more white men to participate in the attack on Greenwood.
“Law enforcement actively participated in the destruction, disarming Black residents, confiscating their weapons and detaining many in makeshift camps under armed guard,” the report says. “There are allegations that some members of law enforcement participated in arsons and murders.”
Tulsa-based National Guard members used automatic rifles and at least one machine gun during the rampage, investigators found. “Initially, the Tulsa guardsmen were deployed downtown, tasked with patrolling the streets. Later in the evening, guardsmen assisted police in forming companies of white men and, by their own admission, they played a direct role in entering Greenwood and rounding up Black residents.”
Greenwood District of Tulsa, Okla., in its prime.
Guard units sent from other parts of the state June 1 to enforce martial law were praised by some Black residents for protecting their houses, churches and businesses. But the actions of those units were not totally above reproach, the DOJ reports. “The Guard arrested some white residents for looting but did not confine any white resident to the camps. Thus, these troops did not protect Black and white Tulsa equally.”
Tulsa Mayor T.D. Evans was described as having disappeared during the siege, while lawsuits filed after the incident accused him of ordering the burning of homes and the killing of Greenwood residents. But the report says these accusations were based on “bare-bones allegations.”
Local aircraft owners were thought to be behind the planes seen flying over Greenwood during the riot: “What is hotly disputed is whether, and to what extent, airplanes dropped incendiary material such as turpentine balls, nitroglycerin, bombs, dynamite, or kerosene on Greenwood buildings, and to what extent the pilots or passengers shot at those fleeing the devastation. Many survivors reported seeing incendiary material fall from the planes.”
“Even if the Klan did not yet have a firm foothold in Tulsa before the massacre, Klan sentiment certainly did.”
The involvement of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups in the attack was reported by some and disputed by others, with some experts saying the Klan was disorganized in Tulsa in 1921, according to the report. “Even if the Klan did not yet have a firm foothold in Tulsa before the massacre, Klan sentiment certainly did. Groups like the Confederate Veterans had a strong presence in Tulsa. So too did the Knights of Liberty, a vigilante group formed as an enforcement wing of the Council of Defense, an organization with white supremacist leanings formed during the Great War.”
For Black Tulsans, the injustice did not end when the attack subsided. Between 4,000 and 6,000 Greenwood residents were held in camps for as long as two weeks. While detained, many were required to clear debris and bury bodies, and many were forced to live in Red Cross tents for months after the massacre.
The report estimates about 300 Black Tulsans died in the violence, but the actual figure is unknown because many bodies were dumped into the Arkansas River or buried in unmarked graves. The Red Cross estimated another 700 were injured. The agency also estimated more than 1,256 homes were burned and hundreds more houses and businesses burned and looted by the white attackers.
Legal and economic justice also were elusive for victims of the massacre, the report says. No assailants were sent to prison and only one, Chief Gustafson, was convicted for dereliction of duty and pre-massacre corruption. And city promises to help rebuild Greenwood were not kept.
Even the Justice Department’s 1921 investigation, which took less than a week to conclude, also blamed Black residents for the massacre and gave no credence to white racism as a factor in the massacre.
“Moreover, although the 1921 report asserts that the massacre (then called a ‘riot’) was not the result of ‘racial feeling,’ perpetrators of the massacre overtly expressed and acted upon racial bias,” the DOJ report says. “As the fires consumed Greenwood, many Black families fled for their lives. White residents chased them across and beyond the city, taking men, women, children, the elderly and the infirm into custody. The destruction of the district was total. The survivors were left with nothing.”
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Is it now illegal to mention the Tulsa Race Massacre in the classrooms of Oklahoma? | Opinion by Alan Bean
Juneteenth should remind us of all the things we don’t know | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
I’m weary of hearing “I’m sorry” from white people | James Ellis III