Telling the Story of the Tulsa Massacre

An array of TV documentaries mark the centennial of one of America’s deadliest outbreaks of racist violence.

The Tulsa race massacre of June 1, 1921, has gone from virtually unknown to emblematic with impressive speed, propelled by the national reckoning with racism and specifically with sanctioned violence against Black Americans. That awareness is reflected in the spate of new television documentaries on the occasion of the massacre’s 100th anniversary. “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre” (Sunday on History), “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street” (Monday on CNN) and “Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten” (Monday on PBS) tell overlapping stories of the horrific day when a white mob stormed through the prosperous Greenwood District of Tulsa, Okla. Triggered by a confrontation between white men planning a lynching and Black men intent on stopping it, the 16-hour spasm of violence left 100 to 300 people dead and most of Greenwood, including more than 1,250 houses, burned to the ground. All three sketch the history of Black settlement in Oklahoma, where more than 40 Black towns existed in the early 20th century, and the singular success of Greenwood. Each carries the story into the present, covering the excavations carried out in 2020 looking for mass graves of massacre victims. Certain scenes and interview subjects are uniformly present: the historian Hannibal Johnson; “The Bobby Eaton Show” on KBOB 89.9 FM; the Rev. Dr. Robert Turner giving a tour of the basement of the Vernon A.M.E. Church, the only part that survived the conflagration.