QuickTalk Friday Interview Series
A Racist Newspaper Headline Led To the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
An interview with author Carlos Moreno
A black teenager accidentally stepped on the foot of a white teenager.
Richard Lloyd-Jones, the white owner of the Tulsa Tribune, wrote a sensationalized editorial with the headline, “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” after the teenager was taken into custody for assault.
However, the girl never pressed charges.
And neither teenager had little to do with what happened next in Greenwood district, known as the Black Wall Street, for being one of the wealthiest black communities at the time in the United States.
Forty blocks of businesses and residences in Greenwood were burned to the ground and an estimated 300 black residents were killed.
Carlos Moreno’s book The Victory of Greenwood presents evidence to prove the Tulsa race massacre was planned out and tells the story of the 15 years before the massacre and 45 years after when Greenwood was rebuilt.
Your book describes the entrepreneurial spirit of Greenwood so well. What were some of the businesses that were burned and then rebuilt?
