The Smoke Still Rises

Elara Jenkins traced the faded photograph with her trembling finger. Her aged eyes scanned the smiling faces captured nearly a century ago. A grand brick building stood proudly in the background, its windows reflecting the lively energy of a spring day. It was the Stradford Hotel, a symbol of prosperity and Black ambition. Beneath her finger, a faint inscription in elegant script read: “Greenwood, Tulsa, 1920.” Most people dismissed it as a relic of a past era, just another piece of Americana. Elara knew better. She remembered the names of every person in that photo, the dreams they had, and the deep scar left by the day it all disappeared, not just from the landscape but from the nation’s memory.

Elara often thought of history as a river reshaped by determined hands. Some stories get dammed, others diverted, and some simply dry up from indifference and denial. The tale of Greenwood, the thriving Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one such truth deliberately buried, a page torn from the American narrative. For decades, it lived only in whispers among survivors, in the nightmares of witnesses, and in the quiet determination of a community fighting to reclaim its stolen heritage.

Before the violent destruction, before the silence, Greenwood thrived with a spirit rarely seen, especially in the segregated South. Located in north Tulsa, it showcased the entrepreneurial spirit and resilience of Black Americans. Built by African Americans moving west for opportunity and escape from the harsh racism of the Deep South, Greenwood became an economic powerhouse. Lawyers, doctors, dentists, real estate agents, tailors, and various entrepreneurs opened businesses that served their community. More than 300 Black-owned businesses thrived, including two movie theaters, a hospital, a post office branch, and a public library. Homes ranged from modest bungalows to grand two-story houses, all well maintained. It was a place where Black dollars circulated within the community many times before leaving, creating a wealth that earned it the name “Black Wall Street.”

Young Elara, just seven years old at the time, remembered Greenwood as a place filled with wonder. Her father owned a busy barbershop on Greenwood Avenue, the steady rhythm of shears was a constant background in her childhood. She recalled the scent of her mother’s baking drifting from their kitchen, mixing with the aroma of freshly pressed suits from the tailor next door. Sundays were a parade of fine clothes, families walking to one of the many churches, their laughter echoing through the tree-lined streets. There was a strong sense of pride and ownership, a future being built step by step. “We were creating our own world,” her father would say, his eyes sparkling with visions of the future he dreamed of seeing his daughter live in. “A world where our worth was unquestioned, where our dreams could grow.”

Greenwood’s prosperity, its refusal to bow to Jim Crow oppression, was also its tragic flaw. It challenged the racist belief that asserted Black inferiority. It stood against the racial hierarchy that upheld white supremacy. This uncomfortable truth, this symbol of Black success, stirred resentment in parts of the white community in Tulsa, a city already filled with racial tension and a strong Ku Klux Klan presence. All it needed was a spark.

That spark came on May 30, 1921. Dick Rowland, a young Black shoe-shiner, entered the Drexel Building downtown, a common practice for Black men using the “colored” restroom on the top floor. Accounts vary about what happened in the elevator with white operator Sarah Page. Some say Rowland stumbled and unintentionally stepped on Page’s foot. She screamed, and Rowland fled. Within hours, he was arrested for alleged assault. The Tulsa Tribune, a white-owned newspaper, stoked the flames with a sensational headline: “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.” The fuse was lit.

As news of Rowland’s arrest spread, a white mob gathered outside the courthouse, demanding his lynching. Concerned for Rowland's safety, armed Black men, many of them World War I veterans, arrived at the courthouse to protect him, offering help to the sheriff. Their presence challenged the mob’s assumed authority and enraged the white crowd. A scuffle erupted, and a gun went off—whether accidentally or on purpose, no one could determine. However, Elara recalled her father saying that this shot tore the fabric of their world apart.

What followed was not just a riot; it was a planned assault. Thousands of armed mob members surged into Greenwood, carrying guns and torches. Elara’s family barricaded themselves in their home as the sounds of shattering glass and distant gunfire grew closer. From behind drawn curtains, her small face pressed against the cool glass, she watched in horror as businesses, homes, and churches, once full of life, turned into raging fires. The sky glowed an alarming orange, choked with thick black smoke. The air, usually filled with scents of baking and flowers, now smelled of ash, burning wood, and something even more terrifying—the acrid odor of burning flesh.

The terror extended beyond the ground. Elara’s most vivid memory was of the planes. Biplanes, she later found out, many flown by white Tulsans deputized by law enforcement, circled above, dropping bombs and incendiary devices onto Greenwood. This wasn’t a rumor; it was a horrifying reality, witnessed by many and confirmed in later investigations. “It was like the sky was raining fire,” her grandmother whispered years later, her voice trembling with remembered fear. People running in chaos were shot down in the streets. Entire families were trapped in their burning homes. By June 2nd, around 35 square blocks of Greenwood—over 1,250 homes, businesses, and community buildings—lay in ruins. Hundreds were dead, although official counts claimed only dozens, a number survivors strongly disputed. The Red Cross estimated 300 lives lost, but even that felt too low to the survivors.

In the aftermath, Greenwood’s Black residents, the very victims of the tragedy, were rounded up and held in internment camps with armed guards. Elara’s family, spared from immediate violence only through a miraculous escape, spent days in one such camp, confused, grieving, and stripped of everything familiar. Meanwhile, the white press spun tales of Black rebellion, blaming the victims and downplaying the scale of the massacre. The Tulsa Tribune, which had ignited the flames, erased all records of its inflammatory front page. Official reports left out details, minimized white responsibility, and shifted blame. The grand jury convened after the massacre indicted no white individuals. Not one person was ever held accountable for the crimes committed.

The city, state, and federal governments participated in a decades-long conspiracy of silence. Textbooks were sanitized. Newspaper archives mysteriously lost crucial issues. Survivors faced intimidation to silence them. Businesses that used to thrive were denied insurance claims, making rebuilding impossible. The name “Tulsa Race Massacre” became taboo, replaced by phrases like “Tulsa Race Riot” or simple silence. For Elara, this silence was almost as painful as the fire itself. It represented a second act of violence, a collective amnesia imposed from above, erasing not just the reality of Black Wall Street but also the memory of its existence and the horror of its destruction.

“They didn’t want us to remember,” Elara would tell her grandchildren, her voice raw with years of unexpressed sorrow and quiet resistance. “Because if we remembered, we would demand justice. And if the world remembered, they would have to face the truth of what they allowed to happen.” She kept her photographs, her yellowed newspaper clippings (saved secretly by her father), and her memories stored away, guarding them like sacred relics. She noticed the flickers of curiosity in her grandchildren's eyes, a hope that perhaps, one day, the truth would speak beyond the walls of her living room.

That day began to arrive. In the late 20th century, driven by the relentless work of a few historians, journalists, and, importantly, the aging survivors, the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre began to emerge into public awareness. In 1997, the Oklahoma Legislature established the Tulsa Race Riot Commission to investigate the event. Its 2001 report acknowledged the full extent of the violence, the government's role in it, and the deliberate cover-up. It suggested reparations for survivors and descendants, although such reparations have largely remained out of reach. Yet, the report was a crack in the wall of silence. Museums began to tell the story. Documentaries were produced. Textbooks finally started to include the shocking details. The “Tulsa Race Riot” slowly transformed into the “Tulsa Race Massacre,” a more accurate and assertive term for the atrocity.

Elara Jenkins lived long enough to witness the first hints of acknowledgment become a louder chorus. She saw news anchors use the word “massacre” without hesitation. She witnessed descendants of survivors speak out, free from the fears that once silenced her generation. She watched a new generation, unburdened by the shame and complacency that had previously caused erasure, seeking to understand, learn, and remember. It was a slow, painful journey, but the story was being reclaimed, word by word.

The photograph still sits on Elara’s mantle, no longer a secret, but a quiet testament. The faces in the picture now look not just at her, but at a world starting to bear witness. The smoke of Greenwood may have cleared, the ruins long since rebuilt, but the memory, once buried under layers of denial, now rises, demanding truth and accountability. The page they didn’t want us to read is being rewritten, not just with historical facts, but with the undeniable weight of lived experience, ensuring the vibrant life and brutal destruction of Black Wall Street will never again be forgotten.