Sunset Hill

June 1, 1921 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

Despite a valiant effort, black Tulsans were simply outgunned and outnumbered. As the whites moved north, they set fire to practically every building in the African American community, including a dozen churches, 5 hotels, 31 restaurants, 4 drug stores, 8 doctors’ offices, more than two dozen grocery stores, and the black public library. More than a thousand homes were torched, the fires becoming so hot that nearby trees and outbuildings also burst into flame.

The fighting, meanwhile, continued— though now with a startling new development. After the firefight with African American gunmen to the north, the National Guard troops on Sunset Hill then joined in the invasion of black Tulsa, one detachment heading north, the other to the northeast. Initially, the guardsmen met with little armed resistance. About halfway across the district, however, they exchanged fire with black defenders in houses. A second skirmish broke out near the section line, where guardsmen joined with white rioters in assaulting a group of African Americans who were holed up in a concrete store. As black Tulsans fled the city, new dangers sometimes appeared. Stories have persisted for years that in some of the small towns outside Tulsa, local whites assaulted black refugees.

Not all whites shared the racial hatred of the rioters. Mary Korte, a maid for a wealthy Tulsa family, hid African American refugees at her family’s farm east of the city, while on the Sand Springs highway, one white man opened his home to a terrified group of black strangers fleeing Tulsa. When a recent immigrant from Mexico saw an airplane flown by white gunmen bearing down on two lost African American boys walking along North Peoria Avenue, the woman ran out into the street and scooped the children up into her arms, saving their lives. As the battle for black Tulsa raged northward, it soon became evident—even in neighborhoods far from the fighting— that on June 1, there would be no business as usual. One white assistant grocer arrived at work that morning only to find the owner locking up the store. It was “Nigger Day,” the boss declared, heading off with a rifle in hand. Downtown, at the all-white Central High School, several white students bolted from class when gunfire was heard nearby. Running north, toward black Tulsa, an elderly white man—headed in the opposite direction—handed one of the boys his gun, saying that he was finished shooting for the day.

And along the city’s southern edge, in the well-to-do neighborhood off of 21st Street, carloads of white vigilantes started going from house to house, rounding up African American maids and butlers at gunpoint, and hauling them off toward downtown. Even miles away out in the country, people knew that something was happening in Tulsa. Ever since daybreak, huge columns of dark smoke had been rising up, hundreds of feet in the air, above Tulsa. The smoke was still there, four hours later, when the state troops finally arrived in town.