“Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.” Nana Fannie Lou Hamer

One of the most violent episodes of dispossession in U.S. history began on May 31, 1921, in Greenwood, a thriving Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. From May 31 through June 1, deputized whites killed from300-3000 Afrikan Americans many were shot on sight. Some survivors even claimed that people in airplanes dropped incendiary bombs. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 Black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921 . . . By the end of 5 years, THE RESIDENTS BY THEMSELVES, rebuilt their homes, but the city and real estate companies refused to compensate them. Many survivors left Tulsa. What finally killed Greenwood wasn’t an angry racist mob: it was the federally funded Interstate highway system. Coupled with urban renewal, highways built through North Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood in the late 1960’s did what the Klan and white racists couldn’t do: demolish and depopulate the place. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories for years. OUR HISTORY HAS BEEN ERASED AND WHAT HAS BEEN ERASED HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN

Tulsa Race Massacre: Events, Facts, Photos, Coverup | HISTORY

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Tulsa Race Massacre: Events, Facts, Photos, Coverup | HISTORY

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in U.S. history, destroyed the prospero...