I think that the things that startle me the most about history is the things that man will do to their fellow man. And there is no better example of this than what took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.

For several days the ugliness of the human spirit was put on public display when an entire section of Tulsa was burned to the ground and many lives were lost. This was not a tornado, not an earthquake, not a natural disaster. This was manmade. It was a crime at the highest degree and was the result of a black man that the newspapers of the time claimed had assaulted a helpless white girl. The claim was wrong but that didn't stop the city's residents from going after the black population dead set on their destruction.

In 1921 the white south still had anger issues over the Civil War and Civil Rights. They still blamed the blacks for their loss of the war and for just about everything else. In Tulsa the black residents had built a community that were doing pretty well financially. Black residents owned businesses and nice homes and drove nice cars. This angered the Ku Klux Klan. Anything black angered the Klan. I have no doubt they were probably angered by black coffee.

Once the black man was accused, there was no need for a trial. The south figured that a black man was guilty until proven innocent. What followed is a scar on the face of Tulsa and the south in general. And what was the lowest point of the whole event was that afterward, the people were proud of their actions.

The following is the story of this event. After the text is a photo gallery of the attack. It's another example of man vs. man at it's lowest.