MTSU’s Forensic Institute for Research and Education, FIRE, hosted the “Silent No More: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921” symposium in the Keathley University Center theater on April 29. The event shed light on one of the most brutal displays of racial violence in American history and highlighted the resilience of the community left in its wake.
Thomas Holland, the director of FIRE at MTSU, opened the discussion by briefly covering the events that led up to the 1921 carnage.
Following Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Americans flocked from the South to the northern and western states in a mass migration in search of new opportunities, only to often be met with hostility in new cities.
“It’s estimated that half a million Blacks moved from rural South to urban areas between 1910 and 1920,” Holland said. “What these urban areas in the North discovered is that maybe they weren’t as racially accepting as they had thought themselves to be. All of this conspires into this boiling tension in the first decade following the turn of the century [1900s].”
April 1919 marked the beginning of the Red Summer, when at least 25 race riots across the country took the lives of hundreds and injured thousands of people, predominantly Black Americans.
Suzette Malveaux, a law professor at Washington and Lee School of Law, delivered a presentation at the symposium on the events that took place in only 18 hours between May 31 and June 1, 1921.
The Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also referred to as Black Wall Street, was a thriving, predominantly Black community before white mobs burned it to the ground in 1921. Police arrested Black teenager Dick Rowland for allegedly assaulting a white woman in May of that year, resulting in a mob outside the jail where he was held.
What initially began as a riot quickly evolved into an organized, systemic attack, with many of the white men who participated in the racial violence being temporarily granted authority by the Tulsa police, according to a 126-page report released by the Department of Justice in January 2025.
In those 18 hours, 35 blocks of the Greenwood neighborhood were looted and burned to the ground, and it’s estimated that over 300 African Americans were murdered.
“Some saw this as kind of a festive occasion, dancing and laughing,” Malveaux said. “There were women and children involved in this, sort of like a blood sport. Pictures were taken, and people were displaying black bodies as trophies. There were souvenirs, [and] there were postcards made of this event.”
Malveaux also acted as pro bono – or free-of-charge – counsel for survivors of the massacre when they filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma in 2003.
The federal court system dismissed the case, Alexander v. State of Oklahoma, citing the two-year statute of limitations. The court ruled that, since the massacre occurred in 1921, the lawsuit should have been filed by 1923. No one was ever indicted, and the U.S. Department of Justice did not investigate it. A grand jury in June of that year blamed the massacre on the victims, according to Legal Clarity.
Despite the dismissal, Malveaux continues to speak about the atrocities that occurred that summer to advocate for justice.
“Maybe this is disappointing, but really, how pernicious the law is in terms of silencing those voices … the law has morphed over time and has been used as a tool to squash the resilience of those survivors,” Malveaux said.
Desiree Westry, a forensics student, understood the importance of the event and why it was crucial to hear these stories.
“People say that slavery was so long ago, but there is the path after that that kind of fills in the gap of why we are where we are today, and what happened that can slow down progress,” Westry said.
The event also included a documentary, “Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten,” and a panel discussion.
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