Otis G. Clark died last week at the ripe old age of 109. Mr. Clark was the last
survivor of the terrible Tulsa Race Riot on May 31, 1921, ninety one years ago
today.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is considered one of the worst race riots in U.S. history, and yet barely anyone knows about it. This history was whitewashed, pun intended, and for decades it wasn’t taught in any Oklahoma history classes. Many people are unaware that during the riot Whites took up in planes left over from World War One. They dropped bombs on and shot at Blacks on the ground.

The Tulsa
riot of 1921 began as so many of these other disturbances did: A White person
took offense at something a Black person is alleged to have done and Whites went crazy.

The Oklahoma
Historical Society has more:

Believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence
in American history, the bloody 1921 Tulsa
race riot has continued to haunt Oklahomans to the present day. During the
course of eighteen terrible hours on May 31 and June 1, 1921, more than one
thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, while credible estimates of riot
deaths range from fifty to three hundred. By the time the violence ended, the
city had been placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held
under armed guard, and the state’s second-largest African
American community had been burned to the ground.

[…]

Tulsa
was also a deeply troubled town. Crime rates were sky high, while the city had
been plagued by vigilantism, including the August 1920 lynching,
by a white mob, of a white teenager accused of murder. Newspaper reports
confirmed that the Tulsa
police had done little to protect the lynching victim, who had been taken from
his jail cell at the county courthouse.

Eight months later an incident involving Dick Rowland, an
African American shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, would
set the stage for tragedy. While it is still uncertain as to precisely what
happened in the Drexel
Building on May 30, 1921,
the most common explanation is that Rowland stepped on Page’s foot as he
entered the elevator, causing her to scream.

The next day, however, the Tulsa
Tribune, the city’s afternoon daily newspaper, reported that Rowland,
who had been picked up by police, had attempted to rape Page. Moreover,
according to eyewitnesses, the Tribune also published a now-lost editorial
about the incident, titled “To Lynch Negro Tonight.” By early evening
there was, once again, lynch talk on the streets of Tulsa.