September 30, 2024
The Civil Rights Division’s Unsolved Crimes Section Unit is undertaking the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation’s history.
On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked a then thriving Black community: the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, sometimes referred to as the “Black Wall Street.”
The immediate catalyst for the riot was, as with Emmett Till’s murder, the claim that a Black youth had inappropriately engaged with a white woman. The young man, Dick Rowland, was arrested. White men went to the jail to demand that he be released to face mob justice. Members of the Black community assembled at the courthouse to try to prevent a lynching. An altercation broke out. In response, a white mob invaded Greenwood. The mob burned more than 35 square blocks of the community, destroying businesses and homes and killing hundreds of Black men, women and children, although the exact toll remains uncertain. Some suspect that the aim of the white mob was, all along, to appropriate the wealth of the Black community, and that the allegations against Mr. Rowland were merely an excuse.
To its credit, Tulsa has itself launched a new review of the massacre and proposed remedial steps. We will not interfere with this effort but rather hope to include in our review any information Tulsa gathers or steps it takes.
When our review and evaluation conclude, we will issue a public report analyzing the massacre in light of both modern and then-existing civil rights law. and detail our findings and conclusions pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007.