Author: [Usman Aslam]

Interviewer: [Benjamin Jenkins]

[Following the end of World War I racial tension were beginning to boil over all across the United States. The Red Summer of 1919 was a season of violence in urban areas like Chicago, St. Louis and Washington D.C. The destructive clashes were not segregated to just that year as the city of Tulsa Oklahoma found themselves in a similar situation in 1921. When Tulsa’s white citizens and newspapers called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, a black teenager accused of assaulting a white woman, the cities African Americans knew they needed to protect Rowland from a broken justice system. Their call to action did not go without angering a white mob that had gathered outside the Tulsa Courthouse to make sure Rowland faced their form of justice. What ensued was one of the largest riots to ever plague the United States.]