On May 31, 1921, one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in American history began in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma—widely known as “Black Wall Street.” Over the course of 18 hours, white mobs, some deputized and armed by local officials, looted and burned the thriving Black community to the ground.

The massacre left more than 15,000 Black residents homeless, with 1,500 homes destroyed and over 600 Black-owned businesses—including hotels, newspapers, banks, schools, and hospitals—reduced to ashes across a 35-square-block area. While official counts originally reported 36 deaths, modern scholarship and eyewitness accounts suggest that between 300 and 3,000 people were killed, wounded, or went missing.

Greenwood’s prosperity had made it a target, and its destruction was not spontaneous—it was methodical, coordinated, and even included aerial attacks from private planes dropping incendiary devices.

This event, long suppressed in American historical narratives, is now recognized as a Black Holocaust on American soil—a sobering reminder of the economic and human toll of racial hatred.