It’s depressingly fitting that a nationwide spree of protests against racist policing would occur on the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, what’s been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history. Using guns and aircrafts, white racists destroyed 35 square blocks of what had — until then — been the wealthiest black community in the country, resulting in more than $32 million dollars in damage adjusted for inflation. Like many such tragic events, it began when white racists accused a black man of looking at a white woman the wrong way.
And sadly, it’s a thing that most people didn’t even know about it until they watched Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen sequel on HBO in the fall of 2019. It took 80 years before any kind of official report was made to acknowledge the event; mass graves are still being discovered nearly a century later.
Here are some links if you want to learn more:
‘Watchmen’ Opened With the Tulsa Race Riot. Here’s What to Read About It. [Jennifer Vineyard / The New York Times]
“They was killing black people” [DeNeen L. Brown / The Washington Post]
The Massacre of Black Wall Street [Re/Think / The Atlantic]
Tulsa Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Black Wall Street: The African American Haven That Burned and Then Rose From the Ashes [Victor Luckerson / The Ringer]
Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
