Report recounts hours of terror during '21 Tulsa race riots

"Like the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building some 73 years later, there is simply no denying the fact that the riot was a true Oklahoma tragedy, perhaps our greatest," wrote historians John Hope Franklin and Scott Ellsworth, who compiled the report.

Their work combines three years of research by the state-appointed Tulsa Race Riot Commission and a group of historians, anthropologists and lawyers.

The commission will next meet Friday in a series of December meetings to review the findings and prepare its final report to the state Legislature.

The document offers a narrative of the racial clash, a preliminary report on the deaths, a look at property losses and the actions of city and state officials.

The death toll, however, remains undetermined. Official records put it at three dozen, but historians believe that as many as 300 people, both black and white, died in two days of fighting.

Last year, the commission recommended reparations to living survivors and descendants of those whose property was damaged. It also called for a scholarship fund and business tax incentives for the Greenwood district where the riots occurred.

The narrative weaves witness accounts and historical documents into a horrifying picture of an attack by thousands of whites on the thriving black neighborhood on May 31 and June 1, 1921. A black woman describes running "amidst showers of bullets," her little girl in hand. A white attorney testifies seeing a black surgeon surrender with his hands up before being shot. A national guardsman describes how blacks were "captured, arrested and disarmed."

The violence broke out after a black shoeshine man was accused by whites of attacking a white woman working as an elevator operator. Exactly what happened is unclear, but some say he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling and she screamed.

The first shots rang out around 10:30 p.m. on May 31, when a white lynch mob clashed with a group of blacks seeking to protect the shoeshine man. The police deputized hundreds of white men and boys. They invaded the neighborhood, setting fire to a dozen black churches, five hotels, 31 restaurants, eight doctor's offices and more than 1,000 homes. Joe R. Burns, a commission member who survived the riot as a 5-year-old, sat in his kitchen Tuesday and read the report. His family hid in a railroad ditch before being taken into custody by National Guardsmen.

"We were told not to talk about it for years," Burns said.