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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FINDS TULSA MASSACRE WAS A “COORDINATED,
MILITARY-STYLE ATTACK”  
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Equal Justice Initiative
January 13, 2025
Equal Justice Initiative
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_ The Cold Case Unit of the DoJ has issued a report on the 1921 Tulsa
race massacre. The report contains new information that "shows that
the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a
coordinated, military-style attack." _

Homes and businesses burned in Greenwood, June 1, 1921, public
domain, author unknown

 

The Justice Department issued a report Friday [Jan. 10, 2025 --
moderator] on the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when as many as 10,000
white Tulsans murdered hundreds of Black residents and burned
businesses and homes to the ground in an attack that federal
investigators found “was so systematic and coordinated that it
transcended mere mob violence.”

“The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique
in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter
annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Assistant Attorney
General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division said in a statement
[[link removed]].
“In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood,
burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked
the survivors in internment camps.”

“Until this day, the justice department has not spoken publicly
about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific
events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by
rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest
episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information
and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob
violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.”

The Cold Case Unit in the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section
“spoke with survivors and with descendants of survivors, examined
firsthand accounts of the massacre given by individuals who are now
deceased, studied primary source materials, spoke to scholars of the
massacre and reviewed legal pleadings, books, and scholarly articles
relating to the massacre,” according to DOJ.

The resulting 126-page report
[[link removed]] is the federal
government’s “first thorough reckoning” with the massacre
and—unlike an earlier cursory and informal review that blamed Black
men for the massacre—it “officially acknowledges, illuminates, and
preserves for history the horrible ordeals of the massacre’s
victims.”

A “Systematic and Coordinated” Attack

The report documents
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between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when “white Tulsans mounted a
concerted effort to destroy a vibrant Black community, remembered
today as Black Wall Street.” The violent attack by as many as 10,000
white Tulsans that destroyed Greenwood was “so systematic and
coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.”

The trigger for the violence, investigators reported
[[link removed]], “was the kind of
unfounded condemnation that, at the time, commonly justified
unspeakable treatment of Black men.”

On May 30, while working in a building in downtown Tulsa, 19-year-old
Dick Rowland boarded an elevator operated by Sarah Page, a 17-year-old
white girl. When a store clerk heard a scream, he ran to the elevator
to find Ms. Page. The clerk assumed that the young Black man in the
elevator had tried to attack Ms. Page and quickly called police to
arrest Dick Rowland.

Ms. Page told police that Mr. Rowland had startled her by touching her
arm but insisted she did not want to press charges. Rumors soon
spread, however, and turned into a sensationalized allegation that
Dick Rowland had attempted rape.

Police arrested Mr. Rowland at his Greenwood home and jailed him at
the courthouse. The next night, a mob of white men gathered at the
jail seeking to lynch him, but 30 armed Black men from Greenwood were
there to ensure that the sheriff and deputies were able to protect
Dick Rowland from that fate.

Related: White Mob in Tulsa Destroys Black Community; Kills Hundreds
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“The white mob saw this effort to save Rowland as a challenge to the
social order and quickly recruited others,” DOJ found
[[link removed]]. “The mob grew. A
confrontation broke out, and when someone fired a shot, ‘all hell
broke loose.’”

Tulsa police “deputized hundreds of white residents, many of
whom—immediately before being awarded a badge—had been drinking
and agitating for Rowland’s murder,” DOJ reported
[[link removed]].
According to the report, more than 500 men were deputized in less than
30 minutes.

Police and National Guard troops organized these and other white
Tulsans—many of whom were veterans with previous war
experience—into “martial forces” that “invaded” Greenwood,
the report found [[link removed]].
“It was not a wild and disorderly mob,” the report makes clear,
“but an organized force” that carried out a “coordinated
invasion” at daybreak on June 1, launched by a whistle.

Planned and systematic violence and arsons followed. The invaders were
“organized and efficient in their destruction,” the
department reported
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as they looted, burned, and destroyed 35 city blocks. Many Black
families fled for their lives, leaving behind their homes and
possessions, as white residents chased them across the city and looted
their homes. “The destruction of the district was total.”

The Aftermath

Law enforcement (Tulsa Police and National Guard) actively
participated in the destruction, federal investigators found
[[link removed]]. They disarmed Black
residents, confiscated their weapons, and detained many in makeshift
camps under armed guard. Investigators also found credible reports
that at least some law enforcement officers participated in murder,
arson, and looting.

The massacre killed as many as 300 Tulsans, perhaps even more.
Investigators wrote
[[link removed]] that an accurate death
toll may never be determined due to “the haphazard disposal of
bodies in the Arkansas River, on flatbed rail cars, and in unmarked
mass graves,” and because many survivors fled the city and never
returned. In addition to the deceased, the Red Cross estimated another
700 victims were injured, according to the report.

Thousands of Black residents were left homeless. Tulsa officials
promised to help Greenwood rebuild, DOJ said
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but city government instead “put up obstacles to residential
reconstruction,” and imposed harsh new fire codes to prevent
residents from rebuilding in the area.

Survivors were left with little to nothing, but the city failed to
offer meaningful financial or other help. Victims were never
compensated for the loss of their homes or businesses, and the
perpetrators were not held accountable then—or now, as
DOJ acknowledged
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“there is no living perpetrator for the Justice Department to
prosecute.”

Justice Delayed

One hundred years after the massacre, three survivors—Mrs. Viola
Fletcher, now 110, her younger brother Hughes Van Ellis, who died in
2023 at 102, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, now 110—testified
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Congress and called for local and federal officials to confront the
truth about the Tulsa Massacre.

“I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our
home. I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the
street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses
being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the
screams,” Mrs. Fletcher testified before a House Judiciary
Subcommittee. “I have lived through the massacre every day. Our
country may forget this history, but I cannot.”

The known survivors sued the city of Tulsa for covering up the attack,
portraying Black victims as instigators of the violence, and profiting
from the use of victims’ names and stories while survivors and their
descendants continue to live in poverty. The Oklahoma Supreme
Court dismissed
[[link removed]] the
suit last summer.

_The Equal Justice Initiative [[link removed]] is committed to
ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United
States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to
protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in
American society._

_EJI challenges poverty and racial injustice, advocates for equal
treatment in the criminal justice system, and creates hope for
marginalized communities._

_Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public
interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a
private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal
representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly
sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the
death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry
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_EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and
discouraged by unequal treatment. We are committed to changing the
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an award-winning calendar, and short films that explore our nation’s
history of racial injustice. And in 2018, we opened the Legacy Museum:
From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for
Peace and Justice as part of our national effort to create new spaces,
markers, and memorials that address the legacy of slavery, lynching,
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* Tulsa Race Riots
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* Tulsa Massacre
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* racial violence
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* Black History
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* Equal Justice Initiative
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