3. Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre
What did you already know about the Tulsa Race Massacre before you read this book? What new things did you learn? What questions do you still have?
Answers
Answer:
On May 30, 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Okla., was a thriving black community: a rarity in an era of lynchings, segregation and a rapidly growing Ku Klux Klan.
By sunrise on June 2, Greenwood lay in ruins: burned to the ground by a mob of white people, aided and abetted by the National Guard, in one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history. The death toll may have been as high as 300, with hundreds more injured and an estimated 8,000 or more left homeless.
Local officials, seeing a public-relations nightmare, expressed contrition and said they would rebuild the community. Instead, they destroyed documentation and spent the next 50 years pretending nothing had happened. Those who were there went silent, generations of children grew up oblivious, and anyone who dared raise the subject was told in no uncertain terms: We don’t speak of that here.