The History of Black Wall Street

How the Tulsa massacre reveals that change—and violence—are still possible, with Victor Luckerson

In an illuminating, troubling commentary on the state of race relations in the U.S., journalist Victor Luckerson resuscitates the history of the Tulsa massacre of 1921 and its ongoing relevance today.

Victor is a journalist and author based in Tulsa. He’s a former staff writer at The Ringer, and his writing and research have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wired, and Smithsonian. He also manages a newsletter about underexplored aspects of Black history called Run It Back, and is the author of Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street.

In his book, and in conversation, Victor explores the history of Greenwood, the neighborhood where the massacre occurred. A condensed transcript edited for clarity is below. Paying subscribers can also listen to the audio of our conversation, which includes further discussion of people living in Greenwood over the years, Victor’s resonant experience at BLM protests in Tulsa, and more:

We analyzed a Motown-themed neighborhood

Ben: Victor, thank you so much for being here.

VL: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ben: Today I’d like to trace Greenwood’s history from before the massacre until the present day. Reading your book, you come away seeing Greenwood as a representation of Black history in this country, both for good and notoriously, for ill.

To begin, can you talk about how at the beginning of the twentieth century, Tulsa became “Magic City, the Many-Millionaire City, the Oil Capital of the World”?

VL: In the 1800s, Oklahoma was considered a worthless plot of land, but no one knew that oil was bubbling below the surface. In the early 1900s, when deposits were discovered right outside of Tulsa, the city quickly transformed from a frontier outpost to one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

For Black people, Oklahoma became a symbol of a potential new life; a place where they could find economic prosperity and escape Jim Crow. In my book, I follow several families who left the Deep South seeking a better life and chose to plant their stakes in Tulsa—specifically in Greenwood.

A lot of really interesting entrepreneurs found success there. The most fascinating character was Loula Williams, a woman who opened a movie theater, called the Dreamland Theater, right on Greenwood Avenue in the heart of the neighborhood.

Ben: You note that Greenwood Avenue wasn’t much to look at. When it rained, it got so muddy and waterlogged that one observer called it “a splendid opportunity for some mariner to put in a ferry.” 

Yet despite Greenwood’s unwanted similarities to Venice, you highlight how it was a community where people looked out for each other.

VL: I’m glad you brought that up. We see such an emphasis on individualism today, but Greenwood showed what a community can build together. It became “Black Wall Street” because people supported each other; because the money that Black people spent in Greenwood was consistently reinvested back into the community.

And this spirit reflected a broader sense in the early 1900s that Oklahoma could become anything it wanted. I was surprised to learn that as late as 1900, Black, white, and Indigenous children all went to school together.

But when Oklahoma became the 47th state in 1907, the first law passed by the state legislature segregated train cars. In Tulsa, a few years later, a segregation ordinance made it impossible for Black people to live in white communities unless they were maids or servants of the white ruling class. In short, the horrors of the Jim Crow South that so many Greenwood residents had fled began to follow them to Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, Black folks were going abroad to fight in World War I. In France, they got a different view of human dignity. They were respected by French military leaders and celebrated by French citizens. But when they came back to America after the war, they were put right back under the boot of white supremacy.

The push-and-pull that followed—the tension between Black citizens demanding equal rights and white citizens digging in against them—led to the events of 1921. 

Ben: To cover the events a little, how did they start, and how did the police enable them to continue?

VL: On May 30th, 1921, a Black shoeshiner named Dick Rowland entered a downtown office building in Tulsa. He stepped into an elevator with a white attendant named Sarah Page. The door closed, and the elevator lurched. No one knows exactly what happened, but very likely Dick Rowland stepped on Page’s foot. She screamed. Rowland ran off before being arrested on a false charge of rape. 

It's possible that this whole thing might’ve blown over. However, the Tulsa Tribune, one of the white newspapers in Tulsa ran a sensationalized article saying Rowland had attacked Sarah and clawed at her face. None of it was true, but it really whipped up a frenzy in white Tulsa.

As Rowland was being held in the county jail, hundreds of white Tulsans got together, some of them with the intention of probably trying to lynch him. What these folks did not expect was for Greenwood residents, many of them World War I veterans, to come down to the jail and attempt to protect Rowland themselves. Ultimately, the members of the potential white lynch mob and Greenwood veterans got into an altercation. 

The police soon worried there was about to be a Black uprising, so they devoted their resources to protecting white Tulsans’ property, instead of protecting Greenwood. During that window of time, the mob grew into an unstoppable force of thousands of white people. On the morning of June 1st, as punishment to Black Tulsans for attempting to defend Rowland, the mob entered Greenwood and burned it wholesale, destroying more than 1,200 buildings and killing up to 300 people. 

Ben: It’s a horrifying, unforgettable episode—and yet Black and white Tulsans alike buried the history of the massacre in its immediate aftermath. Why?

VL: Well, it was in the city’s interest to project a facade of unity, which helped drive business. Quickly moving past the mob’s violence was also part of Tulsa’s efforts to bury lawsuits filed by suffering Greenwood residents.

Even on the Black side of town, there was an economic factor at play. Entrepreneurs didn’t want their city to be totally demonized and no one to ever move to Greenwood.

But I think more broadly, no one wants to pass trauma on to their descendants. A lot of Black folks hoped something like the massacre would never happen again and thought maybe they could just put it behind them. Unfortunately, that wasn't true. In just one example, Loula Williams, whose theater was burned down by the rioters, passed away in 1927 from symptoms likely consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

So Greenwood was undoubtedly resilient. It turned into an even bigger community in the 1930s and 40s. But I also try to show that there are many more layers to the story than that. 

Ben: Greenwood’s resilience would be tested again, arguably to an even deeper extent. Can you talk about the effects of urban renewal? 

VL: Definitely.

During the Truman era, a concept was forged in Congress, called “urban renewal,” with the mentality that “inner cities” suffered from “blight” and needed government investment to transform them. In Tulsa, like in a lot of other communities, what ended up happening was that Black people were largely removed from their homes to make way for new developments. 

In Greenwood, renewal authorities bought up individual properties or seized them through eminent domain during the 60s and 70s. Meanwhile, hundreds of businesses were destroyed and thousands of people were displaced. 

Ben: And when displaced, it wasn’t like Greenwood residents had a lot of places they could go in segregated Tulsa. For instance, they were barred from a neighborhood called White City, supposedly named for the color of its picket fences.

VL: When I found out about White City, people didn’t believe me!

Ben: So crazy. It’s kind of like the KKK calling a hideout “Supremacist City” and saying they chose that name because they love Diana Ross. 

VL: Ha, exactly.