Recently, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, has unearthed 24 unmarked graves suspected of burying victims of the 1921 Tulsa genocide, and the remains may belong to 19 adults and 5 children. According to National Public Radio, the excavation operation is expected to be completed on the 18th of this month.
The Tulsa massacre took place in 1921 and has been going on for 101 years now. This bloody history has long been kept secret by the local government, and many descendants of Holocaust survivors are ignorant of it, until the 70s of the 20th century. So, what really happened then?
In 1921, a massacre against blacks occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where thousands of whites attacked the black American community of Greenwood. In just two days, hundreds of blacks died. At the time, Greenwood was a prosperous black community, with two print media, two movie theaters, dozens of restaurants, and so on, known as the "Black Wall Street".
Scott Esworth, professor at the University of Michigan: At that time, for many black people, it was a community where the American dream could be achieved.
The wealth of blacks made many whites red-eyed, and the flame of racial discrimination and hatred of the rich was ignited by an incident.
On May 30, 1921, 19-year-old black shoeshine Dick Rowland walked into the elevator room of a local building and prepared to go to the black-only restroom on the roof. Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white girl who operates the elevator, screamed shortly after Roland entered the elevator. Immediately after, someone saw Roland running out of the elevator, but no one knew what really happened.
Afterwards, the Tulsa Tribune immediately published the news of Roland's "indecent" Page. The next day, Roland was taken to the police station by the police, and a headline similar to "A attacked a girl arrested in an elevator" appeared in the newspapers.
Thousands of incited whites clashed heavily with blacks who supported Roland. When the conflict escalated into genocide, smoke billowed from downtown Tulsa, and the former "Black Wall Street" was razed to the ground, and calm was not restored until June 1.
NAACP member Julius: They (whites) burned (black) homes, burned buildings, they buried blacks in open cemeteries.
At the time, the official count was just over 30 deaths. Later, this history was consciously covered up and almost no white people understood this history.
Scott Esworth, professor at the University of Michigan: For nearly half a century, news of massacres in white neighborhoods has been withheld, official records have been stolen and destroyed, newspaper articles have been cut out, and white newspapers in Tulsa have never mentioned it.
It was not until the end of the 90s of the 20th century that this tragedy went down in history. Upon further investigation, the actual death toll was nearly ten times that of the official report, with nearly 300 deaths, mostly black. Some 10,000 blacks were displaced, many living in tents nearby. Dick Rowland was not released until the end of the riot, and he immediately left Tulsa.
More than 100 years later, in today's Tulsa, the streets, shops, etc. have long been rebuilt, but the scars in people's hearts can never be repaired.
Source: CCTV news client