This is an opinion column.

I have mixed emotions every year at this time now. Now, when many pause to recognize and remember the slaughter, destruction, a desecration that was the Tulsa Race Massacre.

When June 1, 1921, culminated three days of white men crossing the tracks into North Tulsa—Black Tulsa in those segregated times. Crossing the tracks and killing countless innocent men, women, and children, and burning to the ground homes and businesses of such prosperity and potential, the esteemed intellectual W.E.B Dubois called the area a “place of hope and power.”

And wealth.

I’m glad it is recognized and remembered now. For too many years, for generations, it was not. Nobody’s fault. Call it a collective conspiracy of silence. Whites who participated, and their descendants, buried it—along with the mass graves containing countless bodies of the dead—because, well, no one was ever prosecuted for the crimes. And they were crimes.

Blacks of a generation or two preceding me buried it, too. Maybe for a different reason: Nobody, a Tulsa historian once told me, brags about getting their ass kicked.

Those of you who know me know. You know I was born in Tulsa. You know my father was in Tulsa in those days, that he survived the massacre. You know he later owned a business on Greenwood Avenue, the heartbeat of what came to know as Black Wall Street.

The Black Wall Street.

You may also know my father died when I was 11 years old, so most of what I know about him now and of those days in 1921, I’ve gleaned from research. From curiosity.

From a passion to know, even if it also pains me. Pains me to know that those events—and the catastrophic evil that transpired later—just may have destroyed more Black wealth than any singular episode in American history.

I know that’s a statement, one dripping with hyperbole. Guilty.

Think about it, though. Imagine it. Imagine being there on this day, 102 years ago as embers smoldered just across the tracks from downtown. Embers from the residue of firebombs dropped from airplanes onto the several blocks of businesses and homes comprising one of the most thriving Black communities in the nation.

Embers from the souls of lives lost, Black lives—more than were counted. Lives dumped in the nearby Arkansas River.

Embers from livelihoods devastated. Because a Black man—stop me if you’ve heard this—was falsely accused of rape. Because Black men dared defend themselves when their businesses and homes were attacked for three days.

This week, the New York Times wrote of Greenwood: “The district counted at least 15 doctors, a dozen tailors, seven attorneys, a jeweler, a garment factory, and a skating rink among its more than 150 businesses. Several entrepreneurs were worth at least $500,000 in today’s dollars; a few were modern millionaires.”

The bombs dropped on the innocent people of Greenwood from airplanes commissioned by the government—imagine the American government dropping bombs on Americans. Oh, wait, you don’t have to imagine it because it’s happened. Not just in Tulsa—just 38 years ago. In Philly.

The murderous audaciousness that was the massacre was followed by bombs of dismissal by public officials and denial from insurance companies who refused to pay claims for lost property or even lives. They blamed the massacre on the Black residents, Black residents whose geographic sanctuary—borne of the legal segregation of Jim Crow, though it was—was invaded and pillaged.

That’s why for decades the massacre was framed as a “riot.” How the insurance companies justified their egregious denials.

Call it a conspiracy of crap.

I could be wrong, but the 1921 Tulsa Race massacre—and its unjustifiable aftermath—may have destroyed more Black wealth than any singular event in our nation’s history.

Think of it when today’s racial wealth gap is in the room. The massacre is just one of a cornucopia of attacks on Black prosperity a century ago in cities across the nation.

But Tulsa…

Imagine if the claims of those residents had been paid, if survivors had been properly, rightfully, and immediately compensated for their losses. If they had been able to build on the formidable financial foundations they created rather than watch them rise as dust from embers of destruction.

Imagine if your family’s wealth—be it their home, business, or the wealth that was their hope—was stripped from them a century ago. Stripped without compensation. Without justice.

Where would you be now? How passionately would you still be striving for recompense?

Imagine.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

Are we becoming the land of the bully and home of the nasty?

Through faith, former Birmingham news anchor finds unlikely new season as an actor

United Methodist member recalls effort in 1970s to merge Black and white congregations

Instead of forcing kids to hear the ‘Star-Spanged Banner’, they should study it

Questioning parenting after youth violence is real, but does not absolve lawmaker inaction

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Stay tuned for my upcoming limited series podcast Panther: Blueprint for Black Power, co-hosted with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj