What do you think was the real motivating factor that caused the massacre as depicted in the documentary Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street?

I believe it was racism and jealousy and hatred.

Ditto @Hawaii_Jake The good ‘ol boys, as we would refer to them today, couldn’t handle people of color getting ahead in life. Pretty simple I think. Despite all the horse shit we spewed during WW II about the Four Freedoms, Freedom From Fear being one of them I believe. Too bad we don’t apply that to our own citizens. And it still goes on today as evidenced by all of the murders of people of color by police, that have been occuring. So our generation is not one whit better than our ancestors of 100 years ago. Long since time to shIt or get off the pot, America. If we can’t practice what we preach we should shut the hell up about freedom, and stop trying to police the world.

I didn’t see the CNN special, but I know some of the history. I’ll have to watch the special on demand.

Racism, thievery, anger, jealousy, mob mentality, peer pressure, supremacy, all kinds of disgusting entitlement and lack of morality. I hope the Christians are right and all of those men who committed the multiple heinous crimes associated with the event are rotting in hell. No forgiveness from me.

Ditto @JLeslie.

As far as airplanes were concerned, they may have been military air craft trying to suppress the rioting. This was post WW I so the Army Air Service, as it was called then, was already in existence.

Ignorance and racism can account for most of it and I include institutional racism. The local paper “Tulsa World” in its headline story on the morning of Friday, June 3 quotes the black deputy sheriff as saying “I am going to do everything I can to bring the negroes responsible for the outrage to the bars of justice.” That tells you a lot about policing and press reporting at that time.

@Nomore_lockout They were military aircraft that were dropping bombs and shooting at the Black residents of Greenwood. They were aiding and abetting the racists who were killing the residents of the thriving Black community.

There are several articles about this available now and several documentaries; many on PBS. It was a boiling up of racism. 300 Blacks were killed and 35 blocks of a thriving neighborhood “Greenwood, the Black Wall Street” destroyed. You don’t need to look very hard for the motivation. Racism boiling over.

I think the term “racism” says it all. Check your dictionary.

Racism, nothing more.

Why look for “something more than racism involved” ? The US history of racism has for many years been the poison at the soul of the U.S.

As many have said above, jealousy and racism. There seems always to be a population that has to feel superior to an “other”, and that other has to be put in their place and kept down. Sometimes by any means necessary.

@lastexit Even without the different types (colors, religions, ethnicities) of people, there would still “be a population that has to feel superior to an “other”, and that other has to be put in their place and kept down.”

^^ Unfortunate, but probably true.

We talking about the Tulsa massacre? Which was sparked by a black man supposedly flirting with a white woman?
If so, it all comes down to dick size and envy.
And yes. They employed planes against the blacks.

It was racism, and I think we sometimes underestimate the different forms racism can take. Almost every racist trope was at play here. The initial case that led to the lynch mob was the classic “black man as sexual threat” story, then we had a lynch mob that was resisted effectively by a black crowd, and in response to that show of power, the trashing and looting of the wealthy black neighborhood by resentful whites. The extent to which racism often manifested itself as a kind of hysterical rage is sometimes underappreciated. Any instance in which black people showed power or were insisting on being treated the same as whites had to be stamped out (whether it was the power of the mob resisting the lynching or the wealth of “Black Wall Street”).

I can’t remember who said this or the exact quote, but it was a black woman discussing this topic and the question white people sometimes ask of black people in America: “why can’t they succeed? why can’t they get ahead?” This Tulsa neighborhood was an example of black people succeeding and white people responded by burning it to the ground.

I would also like to add that I was born and raised in Oklahoma where Tulsa is located. I studied Oklahoma history at school in the 1970s. This event never appeared in the history book, and I only learned about it in the last few years.

I never heard of it until recently either. I don’t blame the schools or my parents either.
I didn’t hear of the tanker crashing in a predominately black neighborhood in Wichita a few years before we moved here, until 2000 something.
I don’t blame the schools or my parents.

I absolutely blame the Oklahoma State Board of Education which mandates what is included in the textbooks used in the public schools. They purposefully deleted this piece of white supremacy history that the state abetted. I blame my local Board of Education as well for not adding a supplemental text to the state approved textbook. I blame my teacher for not telling us what was omitted. I blame my parents for neglecting to tell me that what I was learning was edited.

Good lord. If they covered every riot they wouldn’t have time to teach anything else.

@Dutchess_III What other of the “every riot” to which you refer involved military aircraft dropping bombs on and strafing citizens?

Note: That the land that was given to them as a Treaty Agreement with the natives that had these slaves also included that those slaves ‘will” have legal rights to own that land that the State/County agreed upon.
What those slaves discovered and prospered from was the discovery of oil on that land.

Hence one huge reason that “greenwood” was hazed. n the end the County took it over and demolished all existing structures to build a Freeway!

Those slaves were resourceful and created a better Society that brought more to their area that increased its economy.

Note: About that man “flirting” is wrong information.

He actually slipped over the elevator floor that was NOT aligned evenly and thus grabbing for

stability he inadvertently fell on her arm ( ripping a small portion of her sleeve), making her

scream and this alerted others who ” Assumed” that he tried to molest her?

With a history in that area of old stories of rape by blacks upon white women this was the powder keg that erupted into chaos.

Looks like to me it was the excuse to ransack a rich neighborhood that lived on rich land that they in the beginning “legally” allotted to them in the first place.

More hypocrisy in the finest American tradition. The American Dream, making a better life for you and your family, building wealth, yadda yadda. They forgot the part about how it will all be destroyed, if you aren’t Caucasian. This may have been 100 years ago, but it still angers and sickens me. Just cut it with the lies and propaganda America. Until it becomes true. For every American. Regardless of skin color. Someday. Maybe.

They always carry on about black men raping white woman, but I am certain there was more raping by white men of black women that happened.

@Dutchess_III I’d say you can probably take that to the bank. And that we can include even Founding Fathers. Tom Jefferson had a well known thing for Sally Hemmings, his Black slave.