In The Greenwood Case, Tulsa lawyer and novelist James Patrick Hunt examines the 1921 armed conflict in Tulsa's Greenwood District. In 1921, they called it a race war. It was later called a riot. It is now called the Tulsa Race Massacre.
African American historian and native Tulsan John Hope Franklin said after the event, "The self-confidence of Tulsa's Negroes soared, their businesses prospered, their institutions flourished, and they simply had no fear of whites." And yet today this message of resilience and fortitude has been replaced by a message of bleak and unremitting victimhood.
Indeed, much of the past has been rewritten to suit the political climate of the present. How did the riot start? Could it have been prevented? Was there indeed a massacre? Are there mass graves? A dispassionate review of the historical record will demonstrate that the answers are not so simple and often misrepresented by contemporary media.
