Tulsa County Courthouse Circa 1921

In 1910, Tulsa County built a courthouse in Tulsa on the northeast corner of Sixth Street and South Boulder Avenue. Yule marble was used in its construction. The land had previously been the site of a mansion owned by George Perryman and his wife.

"As predicted, whites began to gather outside of the Tulsa County Courthouse, where Dick Rowland was being held, before sunset. The crowd soon grew into the hundreds. At 8:20 p.m., (May 30, 1921) three white men entered the courthouse and demanded that the authorities hand over Rowland, but they were turned away." Hill, K -1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Meanwhile, along Greenwood Avenue, in the heart of the African American commercial district, word of the impending lynching spread like wildfire. Cries of “We can’t let this happen here” were heard as black men and women anxiously discussed how to respond to the oncoming calamity. At nine o’clock, a group of twenty-five armed black men traveled by automobile to the courthouse. There, they offered their assistance to the authorities should the white mob attack the courthouse. Assured that Dick Rowland was safe, they returned to Greenwood. The arrival of the black men at the courthouse electrified the white mob, now more than a thousand strong. Whites without guns went home to retrieve them. One group of whites tried to break into the National Guard Armory, in order to gain access to the weapons stored inside. But a small contingent of armed National Guardsmen, threatening to open fire, turned the angry whites away. By 9:30 p.m. Tulsa was a city that was quickly spinning out of control. By half-past nine o’clock on Tuesday evening, the white mob outside the county courthouse had swollen to nearly two thousand persons. They blocked the sidewalks and the streets and spilled over onto the front yards of nearby residences. There were women as well as men, children as well as adults. And with each passing minute, there were more and more guns. Willard M. McCullough, Tulsa County’s new sheriff, tried to talk the would-be lynchers into going home, but the mob hooted him down. McCullough had, however, organized his handful of deputies into a defensive ring around Dick Rowland, who was being held in the jail on the top floor of the courthouse. The sheriff positioned six men, armed with rifles and shotguns, on the roof of the building. He also disabled the elevator and ordered his men at the top of the stairs to shoot any intruders on sight. Tulsa police chief John A. Gustafson later claimed that he, too, tried to talk the lynch mob into going home. But, at no time on the afternoon or evening of May 31st did he order a substantial number of his sixty-four-man police force to appear, fully armed, in front of the courthouse. Indeed, by 10:00 p.m., when the drama at the courthouse was nearing its climax, Gustafson was no longer at the scene but had returned to his office at Police Headquarters. In the city’s African American neighborhoods, meanwhile, tensions continued to mount over the deteriorating situation at the courthouse. (pg 262-3)