1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Was 'Military-Style Attack'

The Justice Department has finished its first-ever review of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst racial attacks in US history. Among the findings about the attack that left as many as 300 people dead and 1,200 homes, businesses, schools, and churches destroyed:

• The attack was the result of "a coordinated, military-style attack" by white citizens, not an uncontrolled mob, per the New York Times.
• "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," said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights. "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."

• While federal prosecution may have been possible a century ago, the department says no cases are possible today, per the AP. "Now, the perpetrators are long dead, statutes of limitations for all civil rights charges expired decades ago, and there are no viable avenues for further investigation," the report states.
• But if today's civil rights laws were in effect at the time, both citizens and public officials may have faced hate-crime charges, says the 123-page report.
• The report examined the role of various people and organizations in the massacre, including the Tulsa Police Department, local sheriff, Oklahoma National Guard, and then-Tulsa Mayor T.D. Evans, determining that each played a role in the chaos and destruction, either by failing to act or by actively participating in the attack.
• Victor Luckerson, a Black author and historian who wrote a book about Tulsa's Greenwood district, says there is value in the government establishing a definitive record of the attack. "Having government documents available lays the groundwork for the possibility of reparations," Luckerson says. "Any of those discussions about reparations, one of the first questions is how we establish a factual record of what happened."
• As the Times notes, the massacre began with a false accusation that a young Black man assaulted a white woman. A local newspaper then amplified the story.

(More Tulsa Race Massacre stories.)