Scott Ellsworth would come to write a book on this. But, back then, growing up in Tulsa Oklahoma, it was hid from his eyes and from his ears -- and from the eyes and ears of most everyone growing up in the city.
No memorial anywhere in town marked the 1921 massacre. Teachers in school made no mention of it, even when discussing local history. And, if it wasn't being discussed even in Tulsa, where it happened, you know it was being covered up all across America.
Ellsworth told the online publication Insider the Tulsa Race Massacre stands as "one of the biggest skeletons" in American history. "There was a concerted effort to absolutely bury and suppress this history. Official records disappeared, never to be seen again," Ellsworth told Insider. "Individuals who tried to study this as late as the early 1970s had their lives and their jobs threatened. Tulsa's white daily newspapers went way out their way not to ever mention it for 50 years. It was just a taboo subject."
Perhaps as many as 300 were killed. A white mob rioted in a community known as "Black Wall Street," because it was so successful that in a small way, it mirrored New York's Wall Street. That grated at some of the White people, and thus they burned the area down.
An air assault brought rifle fire and firebombs from above. The Greenwood, Oklahoma, community had been the wealthiest Black community in all of America, but was reduced to shambles.
What of this dark moment in American history? Have you, as a reader, ever heard of it?
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