Quartz published the story of the Tulsa massacre of 1921, in which the burgeoning “Black Wall Street” neighborhood of Tulsa was set ablaze in a bizarre night of white racial rage. Hundreds or African Americans were killed, and many thousands lost their homes.
👉 We still don’t know just how much was lost in the Tulsa massacre of 1921
More than a thousand African American homes and businesses were looted and burned to the ground; you had a thriving community occupying more than 35 square blocks in Tulsa that was totally destroyed.
But the real story is how little we know about this, “the single largest incident of racial violence in American history.” This terrible story was purposefully forgotten, apparently out of shame.
Despite the gravity of the event, like other important chapters of African-American history, the Tulsa race massacre was all but deleted from the US’s collective memory for decades.
It is also interesting that this savage attack did not destroy the neighborhood, which came bouncing back stronger than ever after the violence. However, eventually the larger forces of “desegregation, urban redesign, and competition from large-scale white businesses” did it in. 🤦🏻♂️
Via Apple News.
