5 Race Riots In America That You Were Never Taught In School

5 Race Riots In America That You Were Never Taught In School - Page 5

Countless riots—tragic and often ignored—have unfolded throughout American history, remaining absent from most textbooks and classrooms. Here are five you may not have learned about in school.

4. The Tulsa Race Massacre (1921) – Tulsa, Oklahoma

Though it’s gained more attention in recent years, the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa was long left out of mainstream history books. In 1921, white mobs destroyed the prosperous Greenwood District — one of the wealthiest Black communities in America. More than 1,000 homes and businesses were leveled, and an estimated 100 to 300 people were killed. According to Tulsa History, the incident stemmed from a vicious rumor that spread about a young Black man named Dick Rowland who had rode the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page.

Known as the “Black Wall Street,” Greenwood was a bustling Black community that took up nearly 35 square blocks in downtown Tulsa. It was home to hundreds of flourishing Black businesses. According to History, the self-sustaining community was filled with Black-owned barber shops, restaurants, movie theaters, clothing stores, doctor offices and more.

However, on the dreadful day of May 31, 1921, white assailants looted, torched and burned down hundreds of Black-owned homes and businesses in the area, leaving a trail of billowing smoke. Around 300 people died during the egregious attack. “We lost so much. I believe if all this hadn’t happened when I was a child, they would’ve been better in life,” Hughes Van Ellis, a survivor of the horrific massacre, told 2 News Oklahoma in a 2021 interview, two years before his death in 2023.

“My sister Viola told me. She said it was thought guns were going off,” he continued. “Dad looked outside to see people getting gunshot, houses getting burned. So, there’s only six little kids. I was a baby. So, my father just managed to barely get out, just with the clothes on our backs. We didn’t have time to get nothing else together.”

Before his passing, Ellis — a World War II veteran — joined his sister, 109-year-old Viola Fletcher, in the fight for reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre. Alongside them was 108-year-old Lessie Benningfield, another survivor of the horrific attack.