Former Site of Booker T. Washington High School

Used as a make shift Hospital after the Massacre.

Booker T. Washington High School was founded in Tulsa in 1913, with a class of 14 students and a staff of two teachers. The principal was Ellis Walker Woods, a native of Louisville, Mississippi, who had recently moved to Tulsa from Memphis, Tennessee. The school has been housed in three buildings over its long history. An original four-room frame building was located at the corner of Easton Street and Elgin Place in the Greenwood District. The location we've pinned here marks the location of the 1919 three-story brick building (the historic photo) at Frankfort Avenue and Haskell Street, neither of which exists in 2020 at this location. A memorial to Principal Ellis Walker Woods and the classes which were graduated during his tenure now stands at the site. The school served African American high school students during segregation. It was named after the African-American education pioneer Booker T. Washington. Since Oklahoma statehood, black children were required to attend segregated schools until desegregation, which began in about 1955 in Tulsa.

The three-story brick building continued to operate for nearly three decades. It escaped destruction during the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot/Pogrom. Immediately after the massacre, the American Red Cross used the building as its headquarters for relief activities. About 2,000 people were temporarily sheltered there. A hospital facility was set up, along with a dental clinic and a medical dispensary. The Red Cross also inoculated about 1,800 riot victims against tetanus, typhoid, and smallpox.

The historic building was torn down in about 1990 to build the University Center at Tulsa campus, which then became Oklahoma State University--Tulsa in 1999.