A thriving Black neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street” lies in ruin following the Tulsa race riot of 1921.
Credit: Library of Congress

May 31, 2021, marked 100 years since the start of the Tulsa race riot of 1921. It was one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in United States history.

From May 31 to June 1, 1921, groups of armed white men attacked Black residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The riot began after white vigilantes gathered to lynch (put to death without a lawful trial) a Black man who had been accused of attacking a white woman. The riot probably caused about 300 deaths and destroyed Tulsa’s Black business district.

On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, entered an elevator in the Drexel Building in downtown Tulsa. He encountered Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator. What occurred next is unclear. Many historians believe that Rowland may have either stepped on Page’s foot or tripped and grabbed Page’s arm to steady himself. Page screamed. A clerk from a nearby store, assuming that the girl had been the victim of an assault, called police. Rowland fled the scene and was arrested the next day.

Newspaper accounts and rumors about the incident led to widespread talk of lynching. On the evening of May 31, hundreds of white people, including many armed men, gathered near the courthouse where Rowland was held. Groups of armed Black men—many of them veterans of World War I—then arrived at the scene. They offered their services to the sheriff to help protect Rowland, but their offers were refused.

At around 10 p.m., shots were fired during a commotion near the courthouse. The Blacks who had gathered there were outnumbered, and they retreated. They went to Greenwood Avenue—the heart of the Black business district known as “Black Wall Street.” A white mob followed.

Scattered shootings then occurred near Greenwood Avenue in the early hours of June 1. Groups of armed Blacks assembled to hold off the white mob. Many Black residents fought to protect their businesses or families, while others fled to the countryside. Law enforcement officials deputized (appointed as agents of the law) hundreds of members of the mob. Members of the Oklahoma National Guard—all of whom were white—gathered near boundaries of Black and white neighborhoods. Among some whites, rumors attributed the violence to a “Negro uprising.” The mob grew to more than 5,000 white men.

Around 5 a.m., a whistle sounded, and thousands of armed white men marched into the Black business district. They burned and looted homes and businesses. National Guardsmen led thousands of Blacks at gunpoint to makeshift detention centers. Many who resisted were shot. Police did little to stop the arson and violence, and they spent most of their resources protecting white neighborhoods. In many instances, local members of the state National Guard joined in the attacks. Black eyewitnesses recalled white pilots firing on Black neighborhoods from airplanes above.

Thousands of armed white men burned and looted Black homes and businesses during the riot.
Credit: Library of Congress

Around 9 a.m., members of a National Guard regiment from Oklahoma City arrived in Tulsa. Locals called them the “state troops.” Order was restored around 11:30 a.m., when Governor James B. A. Robertson declared martial law (emergency military rule) in Tulsa County. By the time the riot ended, more than 1,200 structures—nearly the entire “Negro Quarter”—had been destroyed by fires.

There is documented evidence of at least 40 deaths in the Tulsa riot. Of this number, about two-thirds were Black. However, many historians estimate that around 300 people were killed. Some unidentified Black victims may have been interred in mass graves.

Authorities never brought criminal charges against Rowland. Authorities also brought no charges against white rioters. Neither the City of Tulsa nor insurance companies compensated Black property owners for losses. The Greenwood business district was eventually rebuilt, but many of its residents remained homeless for months.

Rebuilding begins in the Black neighborhood destroyed by the riot.
Credit: Library of Congress

Newspapers reported on the riot in the days and weeks after the event. Over time, however, the incident received little coverage. The riot was omitted from most Oklahoma history books and classroom lessons.

Blacks displaced by the neighborhood’s destruction line up outside a refugee camp at the Tulsa fairgrounds.
Credit: Library of Congress

In 1997, state officials formed the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission released an extensive report about the event in 2001. Tulsa’s John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park commemorates the victims of the riot. The park, named for a leading Black scholar whose own father survived the riot, officially opened in 2010.

September 18, 2019

Tomorrow, September 19, writer Joy Harjo will become the first Native American poet laureate of the United States. The poet laureate, appointed by the librarian of Congress, works to increase the national appreciation and awareness of poetry. Harjo is a member of the Muskogee (also spelled Muscogee or Mvskoke) Creek Nation. Harjo will succeed the American poet Tracy K. Smith, who has served in the position since 2017.

Native American writer Joy Harjo will become poet laureate of the United States on Sept. 19, 2019. Credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

Harjo was born Joy Foster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951. Her father was Muskogee Creek, and her mother was of Cherokee and European ancestry. At age 19, Joy became a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation and took the last name of her father’s mother—Harjo—a common last name among the Muskogee. Harjo earned a B.A. degree in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. She has since taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and at universities in several states.

In 1975, Harjo published her first collection of poems in a short book called The Last Song. Her first full-length volume of poetry was What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979). Her poetry became well known with such collections as She Had Some Horses (1983), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). Her forceful, intimate style draws on both natural and spiritual influences. Her poems often incorporate elements of Native American mythology and imagery. Harjo’s later collections include A Map to the Next World (2000), How We Became Human (2002), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), and An American Sunrise (2019). She has won many awards for her work.

Harjo also wrote The Good Luck Cat (2000), a children’s picture book about a girl who worries about her lucky cat, which has used up eight of its nine lives. A poetic picture book for young adults called For a Girl Becoming (2009) celebrates the birth of a baby girl and the girl’s path to adulthood. Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave (2012), describes her own youth and her discovery of her creative voice.

Harjo has written screenplays for television and contributed, as a writer or narrator, to several documentaries on aspects of Native American culture. As an accomplished musician and saxophone player, she has released several recordings. She also is an activist for Native American and other causes.

March 25, 2014

Katie Francis, an 11-year-old Girl Scout from Oklahoma City, has smashed the national record for cookie sales by peddling 18,107 boxes of the tasty treats. The previous record–18,000–was set in 1985 by Elizabeth Brinton of Virginia. Thanks to her sales abilities, Katie, a sixth-grader at Hefner Middle School, also cinched a second consecutive title for most cookies sold in a state. And she’s not done. Katie broke the record on Sunday, March 23. But she aims to go higher yet. Because of the terrible weather this winter, cookie sales have been extended until March 30.

The secret of her success, Katie told the Oklahoman newspaper was devoting a lot of time and commitment to the sale and asking everyone she meets to buy at least one box. Katie’s troop will receive a share of the profits from the sales, which they plan to donate to breast cancer research.

Selling cookies to fund troop activities began in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1917, according the Girl Scouts of the USA website. Members of the Mistletoe Troop baked the cookies and sold them in their high school cafeteria as a service project. In July 1922, The American Girl magazine, published by Girl Scout national headquarters, included a cookie recipe that had been given to the 2,000 Girl Scouts in Chicago for a fund-raising project. The idea of cookie sales spread rapidly. In the 1920′s and 1930′s, the website relates, Girl Scouts in different parts of the country baked simple sugar cookies with their mothers. These cookies were packaged in wax paper bags, sealed with a sticker, and sold door to door for 25 to 35 cents per dozen.

Girl Scouts unpack a box of cookies for their annual cookie sale. Local Girl Scout councils in the United States conduct annual cookie drives to earn badges and raise funds for their own troops and groups. (AP Photo)

Nearly all of the cookies are sold door-to-door or at booths set up at train stations, malls, or other public sites, a selling technique pioneered by Elizabeth Brinton. This year, however, Girl Scout councils in Houston, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota have been testing the idea of selling cookies online and from mobile handheld devices.

Additional World Book articles:

• Baden-Powell, Lord
• Girl Guides
• Low, Juliette Gordon
• Scouts Canada

May 21, 2013

A tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday, a suburb of Oklahoma City, leaving 24 people dead, including 10 children.  The death count had been revised downward from the 51 dead initially reported. The medical examiners office believes some victims were counted twice in the early aftermath of the disaster.

Tornados are created when certain conditions are met: adequate moisture in the air; a layer of warm, moist air near the ground and a layer of cool air above; andwinds at higher elevations that differ from those at lower levels in speed, direction, or both. (© Gene & Karen Rhoden, Peter Arnold Images/photolibrary)

The U.S. National Weather Service estimated that the tornado was around ½-mile (0.8-kilometer) wide. The storm touched down at 2:56 pm and was on the ground for about 40 minutes. A preliminary report from the weather service estimated that the storm was an EF-4, indicating wind speeds of 166 to 200 miles (267 to 322 kilometers) per hour. (The EF stands for Enhanced Fujita Scale, named by meteorologist and storm researcher Tetsuya Theodore Fujita.)

The tornado in Moore picked up and carried away cars. Whole neighborhoods were leveled. Two elementary schools, directly in the tornado’s path, were flattened. Rescuers today are in a race to search through the rubble and find the dozens of children still missing.

This map of the United States shows the number of tornadoes that occur yearly in each 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) of area. (World Book map)

Oklahoma is one of the states in “Tornado Alley,” a belt that stretches across the Midwestern and Southern states that has a very high incidence of tornadoes. Moore was the site of one of the most destructive tornadoes in U.S. history. On May 3, 1999, a tornado ripped through the area, killing 42 people. That tornado was an EF-5, with the highest recorded wind speeds in history, at 302 miles (486 kilometers) per hour.

Additional World Book articles:

• Twisted—More Terrible Tornadoes (a Special Report)
• Weather 1999 (a Back in Time article)

April 16, 2012

A series of powerful thunderstorms spawned more than 120 tornadoes across the Plains states during a 24-hour period on April 14 and 15. The tornadoes were part of a weather system that crossed parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. The National Weather Service confirmed that Kansas alone had 99 tornadoes on the night of April 14. In Oklahoma, at least 6 people were killed and 28 others injured in Woodward, a town 140 miles (224 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City. A tornado caused widespread damage in Wichita, Kansas, including the loss of electric power in parts of the city. Between 75 to 90 percent of the homes in Thurman, Iowa, were leveled, but miraculously, there were no major injuries. Outside the town, five tractor-trailers traveling on Interstate 29 were overturned by the high winds.  A tornado took the roof off the regional hospital in Creston, Iowa, a town of 7,800 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Des Moines.

Although the tornado season has just started in the United States, meteorologists point out that there have already been dozens of destructive twisters from Illinois to Texas. Tornadoes have killed at least 40 people in the United States so far in 2012.

A tornado's winds can swirl at speeds of hundreds of miles or kilometers per hour, hurling debris in all directions. Copyright Gene & Karen Rhoden, Peter Arnold Images/photolibrary

Additional World Book articles:

• Safety (During a tornado)
• Storm
• Fire From the Sky (a special report)
• The Forecast: Better Weather Prediction Ahead (a special report)