The University of Tulsa McFarlin Library Department of Special Collections houses materials related to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This online exhibit is designed to show the photographs and newspaper materials that have been collected by and donated to the department over the decades.
Navigation is simple: at the top of this page, mouse over the word Pages for a drop-down menu. Galleries are the images grouped by acquisition. Timeline gives an account of what happened on May 31st and June 1st, 1921. Additional Reading will take you to a list of other resources available through our department.
Personal belongings and household goods had been removed from many homes and piled in the streets. On the steps of the few houses that remained sat feeble and gray Negro men and women and occasionally a small child. The look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication.
Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence to them whether they lived or died. Harmless themselves, they apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their friends and neighbors and just as deliberately shoot them down in their tracks.
Tulsa Daily World, June 2, 1921, as quoted by State Representative Don Ross in his prologue to the Oklahoma Commission 2001 Final Report