The Tulsa massacre wasn't an isolated event. These are some of the others

[SummerMadness]

The Tulsa massacre wasn't an isolated event. These are some of the others

On May 31, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, became the site of a horrific massacre that was shrouded in silence for decades.

A White mob descended on the city’s prosperous Black enclave of Greenwood and proceeded to burn, loot and kill until scores were dead and 35 city blocks were destroyed.

One hundred years later, Tulsa is still reckoning with this violent history. As it does, Americans across the country face another truth: Tulsa wasn’t alone.

Between the end of the Civil War and the 1940s, the destruction seen in Tulsa happened in various ways to communities of color across the country.

These acts of racial violence took aim at the roots of generational wealth, shaping the nation and its inequities in ways we still see today.

“We estimate that there were upwards of 100 massacres that took place between the end of the Civil War and the 1940s,” says William Darity Jr., a Duke University economist who co-authored “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” with writer and folklorist A. Kirsten Mullen. “And they take place North and South, East and West.”

We looked back through research and news clippings, paying particular attention to around 50 racially charged incidents between 1863 and 1923 when people of color lost property or economic opportunity. The events highlighted here reveal how acts of racial violence of different scope played out across the country and targeted various ethnicities. Historians then helped us examine how and why they had occurred and where we still see the impact today.