Tulsa -- An American Tragedy

 In 1921, one of the worst race riots in America's history engulfed Tulsa, Oklahoma.

A band of 10,000 armed and crazed whites looted and burned down the city's entire, thriving black community.  Today, residents are finally coming to terms with those days of shame.

For more than 70 years, the riot remained Tulsa's brooding secret.  But now the black man, J. D. Stradford,  who was charged with inciting the violence has finally been cleared.

It now appears that he was framed by the real instigators of the riot, the Ku Klux Klan, whose members resented the success of the prosperous black Tulsan middle class and were waiting for a reason to destroy their community.

Trumped up allegations from a white woman, Sarah Page, who claimed she was attacked by a black man, Dick Rowland, was all that was needed to turn up hate's flames.  The hate and rage was further fueled by a racist newspaper, edited by Frank Lloyd Wright's cousin , that called for a lynching.  The KKK struck.

That night, a mob convened at the county courthouse and when a group of blacks tried to stand up to the crowd the mood turned ugly.

What ensued was the most ugly and vicious night of lawlessness that has ever been seen in the United States.  Armed whites stormed the black neighborhoods and went building to building, block by block fighting, pillaging, burning and killing.  In scenes reminiscent of East Texas today, black men were chained to car bumpers and dragged through the streets.  One can only hope that they were dead before their gruesome ordeal began.

The next day, the National Guard arrived and found a scene so frightening that it stuck with the Guardsmen for the rest of their lives.  But Tulsa's city leaders worked quickly to turn the story around.  And for over seventy years they were able to convince the world that the riot was caused by bands of marauding blacks bent on rescuing a criminal from his just punishment.

This blatant falsehood was finally undone by a young lawyer,Ken Levit, (a white man) who sensed a great injustice had been done and the grandson of J. D. Stradford (now a judge in Chicago) who combined forces to set the record straight.  This is the story of an American tragedy and how the truth was finally told.