On the morning of May 31st 1921, 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the 17-year-old white elevator operator of the Drexel Building. After being arrested, a white mob formed outside of the county courthouse, where he was being held, with the intention of taking Rowland out and murdering him. The black citizens of Tulsa knew that Rowland was innocent and that they needed to do something in order to keep him alive. But when the mixture of the angry white men, combined with the concerned black men, violence broke out.  Over 18 hours a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroying everything in their path. 

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