A new report by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has concluded that the 1921 attack in Tulsa's Greenwood District was the result of racially motivated violence targeting Black residents, refuting an initial federal account from the time. A coordinated attack by thousands of White people led to the slaughter of hundreds of Black residents. DOJ conducted the reexamination of the case under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows it to examine fatalities caused by civil rights crimes that occurred on or before December 31, 1979.
DOJ said a recent four-month reexamination of evidence in the case, known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, found that what an investigator described a month after the attack as spontaneous violence was, in fact, a coordinated effort by White perpetrators to decimate a thriving community known as “Black Wall Street.” The attackers, organized and aided by law enforcement, shot, beat, and arrested Black residents while burning and looting 35 city blocks over several hours on May 31, 1921, DOJ concluded. White authorities promised to help rebuild the community but instead put up barriers to financial assistance and offered no avenues for legal redress, investigators said.
The findings refute much of the initial report on the crime, in which a DOJ investigator at the time wrote that the violence was a “small” and “half-hearted” lynching attempt after a White man falsely accused a 19-year-old Black man named Dick Rowland of assaulting a White woman in an elevator.
Since then, historians have established a narrative consistent with DOJ’s new report, which is based on examining documents, witness accounts, and scholarly and historical research. The massacre “stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility, and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke 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.”
