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This week in 1921, white mobs & police, attacked the black neighborhood of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma in one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history. The mob shot black residents & set the entire community on fire, destroying 35 blocks & killing 300 people. 
The attack on Greenwood—one of the wealthiest communities in the US at the time—is known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. During the attack, black people were shot, dragged behind cars with nooses tied around their necks & 1,200 homes were torched with hundreds more looted.
An official report published by the city in 2001 confirmed that planes were used during the massacre by police to conduct reconnaissance. While others planes were piloted by white civilians who fired ammunition and dropped bottles of gasoline on the buildings below.
Following the attack, Oklahoma's governor called in the Ntl Guard. When the soldiers arrived they arrested all the city’s black residents & sent them to internment camps. Black residents were only allowed to leave if they had a pass signifying a white person vouched for them.
A majority of the African-American community in the weeks following the massacre was completely destroyed. Most African-Americans were in hiding, trapped in internment camps, financially destroyed, or forced to flee the city.
White residents even sold post cards of the massacre.
Six days after the massacre, an ordinance was passed by the city to prevent African Americans from rebuilding their community. Meanwhile, bids were being made by white businessmen for the land the African-American community rightfully owned.
An official Tulsa investigation describes how the police participated directly in the massacre. The city officials deputized men right after the attack began, who coordinated with uniformed officers in the massacre.
The report concluded that the city of Tulsa owed reparations to the survivors of the massacre and their descendants, but reparations have never been paid. An investigation found evidence supporting long-held beliefs that unidentified victims were buried in unmarked grave sites.
