Fire on the Land: What the Sources Say About the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

By HistorianSpeaks

This source explainer republishes and expands our May 31, 2021, post, [Fire on the Land: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921](/blog/fire-on-the-land-the-tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921). Five years ago we gathered the coverage. Now we go to the record itself: the eyewitnesses, the Red Cross, the State of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Historical Society and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Eighteen Hours in Greenwood

Between the night of May 31 and the afternoon of June 1, 1921, a white mob invaded, looted and burned Greenwood, the Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, that the nation knew as Black Wall Street. Many in the mob had been deputized and armed by city officials. By the time the fires died, about 35 square blocks were gone. More than 1,200 homes burned, along with churches, a hospital, a library, schools, hotels, theaters and the offices of Black doctors, dentists and lawyers. Historians estimate that as many as 300 people were killed. Thousands of Black Tulsans were marched at gunpoint into internment camps.

For decades, official Tulsa called it a "riot," kept it out of schoolbooks and let the paper trail grow cold. But the record survived, in the hands of Black writers, lawyers, relief workers and, much later, state and federal investigators. This explainer walks through the ten sources that matter most.

Fire from the Sky

The most disputed part of the story is the airplanes. The Oklahoma Historical Society puts it plainly: some who witnessed the massacre recall airplanes dropping bombs on June 1, including lawyer B. C. Franklin, while others report the planes were used for reconnaissance. The state commission devoted an entire chapter to the question.

Franklin wrote what he saw in a 1931 typescript, "The Tulsa Race Riot and Three of Its Victims," rediscovered in 2015 and now held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture:

"I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building... The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught from the top."

Other records point the same way. Richard Warner's chapter for the 2001 state commission, "Airplanes and the Riot," cites Dr. R. T. Bridgewater, who heard women cry, "Look out for the aeroplanes, they are shooting upon us." It records Barney Cleaver's lawsuit, which said a plane carrying a police captain dropped "turpentine balls and bombs" on his property. The Chicago Defender and St. Louis Argus reported fire from the air within days, and NAACP investigator Walter White wrote in The Nation that eight planes were used. Warner judged the air attacks real but limited. Scott Ellsworth, writing the commission's main history, said there is "little doubt" that people in the planes fired on Black Tulsans.

Badges, Guns and Guardsmen

Tulsa's violence was not a clash between equals. The 2001 commission found that police officials deputized hundreds of white men on the night of May 31 and told some of them to get guns. Hardware stores and pawnshops were opened and emptied. When National Guard units took charge on June 1, they disarmed and detained Black residents, not the invaders. Thousands were held at Convention Hall, McNulty Park and the fairgrounds, and many could leave only if a white employer vouched for them.

The Justice Department's January 2025 review, the first federal account of the massacre, reached the same conclusion in the language of civil rights law: the attack was coordinated, it was carried out with the participation of public officials, and no one was ever held to account.

The Red Cross and the Chronicler

Two documents from 1921 and 1922 preserved what officials wanted forgotten. The American Red Cross, under relief director Maurice Willows, ran the emergency response and kept the books. Its December 1921 report counted more than 1,200 homes burned and hundreds more looted, and recorded families wintering in tents while the city debated how to keep Black owners off their own land.

Mary E. Jones Parrish, a Greenwood teacher and writer who survived the attack, published Events of the Tulsa Disaster in 1922. It is the first book-length account, built from her own memories and the testimony of her neighbors. "Looking south from Detroit Avenue," one survivor told her, the fire seemed "a solid wall."

Lawyers in a Tent

The massacre turned straight into a land grab. Within days, the city passed a fire ordinance that would have made it nearly impossible for Black owners to rebuild, as civic leaders talked openly about turning Greenwood into an industrial district. B. C. Franklin, his partner I. H. Spears and their secretary, Effie Thompson, opened a law office in a tent and fought the ordinance in court. They won, and Greenwood rebuilt with its own money. No government paid a dollar in restitution.

The Graves Speak

For decades Tulsa's official toll was 36 dead. Survivors spoke of bodies dumped in trenches and the river. In 2020, the City of Tulsa's search, guided by forensic anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield, uncovered a mass grave of plain coffins at Oaklawn Cemetery. In July 2024, DNA and genealogy work identified the first victim from those graves: C. L. Daniel, a World War I veteran. His story echoes our earlier piece on Powell Green, Lynching of a WWI Veteran, 1919: Black men who served their country and were killed at home.

The Survivors and the Unpaid Debt

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tulsa educator Eddie Faye Gates recorded the testimony of dozens of survivors for the state commission. Those voices built the commission's case. In 2001 it recommended reparations, including direct payments to survivors. The legislature never paid.

The survivors kept going. Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle testified before Congress in 2021. Uncle Redd died in 2023. Mother Fletcher died on November 24, 2025, at 111 (our report and tribute). In June 2024 the Oklahoma Supreme Court threw out their public-nuisance suit, Randle v. City of Tulsa. Mother Randle, now 112, is the last known living survivor.

"White men with guns came and destroyed my community... What did we do to them?" Lessie Benningfield Randle, testimony to Congress, 2021

Take Action: H.R. 4228

The courthouse door in Oklahoma is closed. The door in Congress is not. H.R. 4228, the Original Justice for Living Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa/Greenwood Race Massacre Act, introduced by Rep. Al Green on June 27, 2025, would pay each living survivor from the federal Judgment Fund. Read our full legislative explainer, At 112, Mother Randle Is Greenwood's Last Witness: Why Congress Must Pass H.R. 4228 Now, and call your representative to ask them to cosponsor it.

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