TULSA, Okla. —
The president’s decision to hold a rally in Tulsa, originally on Juneteenth, put a new spotlight on the city’s racial history. The story of Black Wall Street, a thriving community disintegrated by hate, is a dark story that many people in the country do not know.
The tale of bloodshed on Black Wall Street took place nearly 100 years ago. The victims’ stories fraught with terror and violence, spurred on by racism. There were loss of lives and everything the community built over the course of time was gone in a matter days.
“It started in the Drexel Building with a shoeshiner named Dick Rowland,” Dexter Nelson II said. “There was an altercation with him and a white elevator operator named Sarah Page.”
From that moment, rage stemming from the incident would end up being the downfall of what so many worked so hard to create in world tainted by segregation and prejudice.
Both black and white people were responding.
“We see black mob thinking that Dick Rowland is going to be lynched instead of seeing his day in court. Then we see white mob come to meet the black mob, then we see an altercation. There was a shot fired and then the massacre broke out,” Nelson said.
It’s at that moment the destruction and physical downfall took place. Sheer chaos. The pictures inside Greenwood Cultural Center depict those very defining moments.
“This was a move against the black residents in this community,” Nelson said.