[22] The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 black and 13 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records.

[24][12] The massacre began during Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building.

In what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919, industrial cities across the Midwest and Northeast experienced severe race riots in which whites attacked black communities, sometimes with the assistance of local authorities.

Black Americans had created their own businesses and services in this enclave, including several grocers, two newspapers, two movie theaters, nightclubs, and numerous churches.

Small groups of armed black men ventured toward the courthouse in automobiles, partly for surveillance and to demonstrate they were prepared to take necessary action to protect Rowland.

[77] This Land Press reported that previously, Brady led the Tulsa Outrage, the November 7, 1917, tarring and feathering of members of the Industrial Workers of the World—an incident understood to be economically and politically, rather than racially, motivated.

[84] Warner noted that while a number of newspapers targeted at black readers heavily reported the use of nitroglycerin, turpentine, and rifles from the planes, many cited anonymous sources or second-hand accounts.

[86] State representative Don Ross (born in Tulsa in 1941), however, dissented from the evidence presented in the report concluding that bombs were in fact dropped from planes during the violence.

[87] In 2015, a previously unknown written eyewitness account of the events of May 31, 1921, was discovered and subsequently obtained by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

However, at one site, the ground disturbance was found in a five-meter square area, but cemetery records indicate that three graves had been dug and bodies buried within this envelope before the riot.

Important for the future survival of this district, they worked to create "a large-scale plan in order to provide security, food, shelter, job training and placement, health coverage, and legal support for all of them [the survivors].

"[111] The Red Cross was working in the aftermath of a tragedy, the victims of which "had all the characteristics of prisoners of war: homeless and helpless, abandoned by their home country, confined in specific areas, denied basic human rights, treated without respect and deprived of their possessions".

Cleaver was a deputy sheriff for Okmulgee County and not under the supervision of the city police department; his duties mainly involved enforcing the law among the "colored people" of Greenwood, but he also operated a business as a private investigator.

[6] The Morning Tulsa Daily World stated, "Cleaver named Will Robinson, a dope peddler and all-around bad negro, as the leader of the armed blacks.

[7] By June 6, the Associated Press reported that a citizens' Public Safety Committee had been established, made up of 250 white men who vowed to protect the city and put down any more disturbance.

Willows heavily criticized the Tulsa city officials for interfering with his efforts, for their role in the Public Welfare Committee, which first sought to rezone the "burned area" as industrial, and for constructing a union station in its place with no consideration for the refugees.

City planners immediately saw the fire that destroyed homes and businesses across Greenwood as a fortunate event for advancing their objectives, meanwhile showing a disregard for the welfare of affected residents.

[122] The Tulsa Daily World reported that the mayor and city commissioners expressed that, "a large industrial section will be found desirable in causing a wider separation between negroes and whites.

Johnson, and Barney Cleaver as participants in the forum, it was reported that all members were in agreement with the plan to redevelop the burned district as an industrial section and agreed that the proposed union station project was desirable.

However, in the aftermath of the riot, land on which homes and businesses had been destroyed by the fires suddenly became available, allowing for a larger train depot near the heart of the city to be built in Greenwood instead.

[127] Parrish, an African-American citizen of Tulsa, summarized the lawlessness in Oklahoma as a contributing factor in 1922 as, "if ... it were not for the profitable alliance of politics and vice or professional crime, the tiny spark which is the beginning of all these outrages would be promptly extinguished.

[131][132] An assistant of the attorney general replied to one such letter by stating that their budget was too stretched to respond and recommending instead that the citizens of Tulsa simply vote for new officers.

Mary Elizabeth Jones Parrish, a young black teacher and journalist from Rochester, New York, was hired by the Inter-racial Commission to write an account of the riot.

Mary Parrish wrote a first-person account and collected eye-witness statements from dozens of others and published them immediately following the tragedy under the title The Events of the Tulsa Disaster.

She recounts how Peg Leg Taylor "fought his way to" Eloise and helped her escape into the woods north of the city, where they then lay and hid while White rioters continued to hunt down and kill other survivors around them.

In April 2007, Ogletree appealed to the U.S. Congress to pass a bill extending the statute of limitations for the case, given the state and city's accountability for the destruction and the long suppression of material about it.

[199] On May 29, 2020, the eve of the 99th anniversary of the event and the onset of the George Floyd protests, Human Rights Watch released a report titled "The Case for Reparations in Tulsa, Oklahoma: A Human Rights Argument", demanding reparations for survivors and descendants of the violence because the economic impact of the massacre is still visible as illustrated by the high poverty rates and lower life expectancies in north Tulsa.

[202] In 2021, Oklahoma librarians persuaded the Library of Congress to change the official subject headings, which place limits on the terms that people are allowed to use whenever they conduct searches for some of the information, for the event from "riot" to "massacre".

[203] On May 19, 2021, survivors Fletcher, then 107; her 100-year-old brother, Hughes Van Ellis; and 106-year old Lessie Benningfield Randle testified about their experiences during the massacre and their reparations lawsuit before a House Judiciary subcommittee.

[210] Tulsa's ongoing Beyond Apology Commission is tasked with improving economic mobility and the building of inter-generational wealth for survivors of the massacre and was reported by the New York Times to be planning new housing benefits in January 2025.