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Racial Massacres and Expulsions in the United States: East St Louis, Elaine, Tulsa and Rosewood

1917–1923 · Americas

Displacement Mass Killing Killing was the defining act

Displaced

15,000

The largest single displacement was at Tulsa, where the Oklahoma Historical Society records that more than a thousand homes and businesses in the Greenwood district were destroyed, the vast majority of the city's African American residents were made homeless and thousands spent the winter of 1921-22 in tents. Roughly 6,000 African Americans left East St Louis after the July 1917 massacre, and the entire African American population of Rosewood, Florida, was driven out permanently in January 1923. Figures come from the 2001 Oklahoma commission report, contemporary Red Cross relief records and the 1993 Florida legislative study.

Share of the population affected

33%

of the combined Black population of the four communities attacked - East St Louis, Illinois; Tulsa's Greenwood district; Phillips County, Arkansas; and Rosewood, Florida - around 1920, 1920

Killed

250–800

direct killing

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What happened

Between 1917 and 1923 a series of massacres destroyed African American communities in the United States, driven by competition over jobs and housing during the Great Migration, by the return of Black servicemen after the First World War, and by white resistance to Black economic independence and organisation. In East St Louis in July 1917 a mob killed dozens of people and burned Black neighbourhoods. In the Red Summer of 1919 violence struck Chicago, Washington and other cities; in Elaine, Arkansas, in October 1919, a Black sharecroppers' union meeting was attacked and posses and federal troops killed a number of people usually estimated between 100 and 240. At Tulsa on 31 May and 1 June 1921 a white mob, deputised by the authorities and joined by aircraft dropping incendiaries according to survivor testimony, destroyed the Greenwood district; the Oklahoma Historical Society records credible death estimates between fifty and three hundred, more than a thousand homes and businesses burned and thousands of Black Tulsans held under armed guard, and no white person was ever imprisoned for the killings or the arson. At Rosewood, Florida, in January 1923 the Black population of the town was killed or driven out and the settlement destroyed. Florida's legislature compensated Rosewood survivors in 1994, and Oklahoma's 1997-2001 commission recommended reparations for Tulsa survivors, which the legislature declined to pay.

Parties

White mobs, often with the participation or acquiescence of local police and, in Tulsa and Elaine, of National Guard and federal troops, killed African Americans and burned their neighbourhoods and towns across the United States

Disputed

Death tolls at Tulsa and Elaine remain uncertain because bodies were removed and no reliable inquest was held; the Oklahoma commission concluded that victims were buried in unmarked graves, and searches for them have continued. Whether the events should be described as riots or as massacres was itself contested for decades, and reparations claims have been rejected by courts on limitation grounds.

The denominator

A constructed sum, not a single published figure: roughly 10,000-11,000 Black residents in East St Louis in 1917, close to 10,000 in Tulsa's Greenwood district in 1921, some 20,000-25,000 Black residents of Phillips County (where Black residents outnumbered white by about ten to one in the Elaine area), and 200-300 at Rosewood. Component figures come from the 1920 federal census and the state commissions of inquiry.

The denominator is a sum of four local Black populations assembled by hand, and the Phillips County component covers a whole county while the violence fell on part of it, so the percentage should be read as an order of magnitude only.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

No aggregate count exists. The Oklahoma Historical Society gives credible estimates of fifty to three hundred dead at Tulsa; the 2001 Oklahoma commission documented unmarked graves whose excavation has continued since 2020. Elaine is usually put at 100-240 Black dead and five white; East St Louis at 39-150; Rosewood at 6-30 or more. The ranges reflect the removal and concealment of bodies, the absence of inquests and the reluctance of contemporary authorities to count Black victims.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionArbitrary DetentionDestruction of Property

The killings, the mass detention of Black residents under armed guard and the burning of Greenwood and Rosewood are documented in the 2001 Oklahoma commission report, in contemporary Red Cross relief records and in the 1993 Florida legislative study.

Formal findings

Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (established by the Oklahoma Legislature in 1997, reported 2001) (2001) — The commission established the scale of the destruction of Greenwood, found evidence of victims buried in unmarked graves and of the deputisation of white civilians by city authorities, and recommended that reparations be paid to surviving victims; the legislature did not enact reparations. — source
Florida Legislature (1994) — In 1994, following an academic study commissioned by the legislature, Florida enacted a compensation act for the survivors and descendants of the 1923 destruction of Rosewood, the first such payment by a US state for a racial massacre. — source