Before the May 31, 1921 edition of the Tulsa Tribune was microfilmed in the 1930s, two parts of it were excised: a front-page story and nearly one-third of the editorial page. That day, a mob of angry white citizens of the Oklahoma city gathered downtown after rumors spread that a Black teenager assaulted a white elevator operator, sowing the seeds for a bloody massacre. The following morning, white Tulsans would attack Black residents of the city’s Greenwood District, also known as “Black Wall Street,” razing the neighborhood in one of the single worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. But evidence of the events that led to the massacre in the local white-owned newspaper is scant.
No intact copies of that day’s paper remain. But the front page, which was recovered decades later, featured an inflammatory account of the alleged sexual assault; the editorial, which was never found, reportedly said white Tulsans were gathering to lynch the Black teen. It seems the Tulsa Tribune had laid the groundwork for the mob that would decimate the Greenwood District—and the white gatekeepers of the archives hid the evidence.
