America Tried to Erase This Massacre From History #shorts

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]In 1921, one of the wealthiest black [music] communities in America was burned to the ground in under 16 hours and the state of Oklahoma removed it from history [music] books for 75 years.

[00:00:11]Greenwood, a district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was so prosperous it was called [music] Black Wall Street. It had its own hospitals, hotels, law offices, and [music] theaters. On May 30th, 1921, a young black shoe shiner named Dick Rowland was [music] accused of assaulting a white elevator operator named Sarah Page. The accusation was almost certainly false. Page herself later [music] refused to press charges, but the next morning, a white mob of up to [music] 10,000 people gathered at the courthouse. When black men from Greenwood arrived to defend [music] Rowland, shots were fired. What followed was a 16-hour massacre. The white mob burned 35 blocks of Greenwood to the ground, over 1,200 [music] homes, hospitals, schools, churches, and businesses. Airplanes reportedly fired on the district. Bodies were thrown into the [music] Arkansas River and buried in unmarked graves. The official 1921 [music] death count was 36. Historians now estimate between 100 and 300 black [music] Tulsans were killed, though the true number may never be known. 10,000 people were left homeless. [music] The Oklahoma government suppressed the event from school curricula for decades.

[00:01:23][music] It was not formally acknowledged in Oklahoma education until 1996.

[00:01:28][music] America's wealthiest black community was destroyed in one night and the government's [music] solution was to make sure nobody would ever learn it happened.