A Century After The Race Massacre, Tulsa Confronts Its Bloody Past

It's been 100 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre — one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history. An armed white mob attacked Greenwood, a prosperous Black community in Tulsa, Okla., killing as many as 300 people. What was known as Black Wall Street was burned to the ground.

"Mother, I see men with guns," said Florence Mary Parrish, a small child looking out the window on the evening of May 31, 1921, when the siege began.

"And my great-grandmother was shushing her, saying, 'I'm reading now, don't bother me,'" says Anneliese M. Bruner, a descendant of the Parrish family. But the child became more insistent.

"And so, my great-grandmother put down her reading and went to see what her daughter was talking about. And indeed, the street was populated with people with guns," Bruner says. "Bullets were flying everywhere and they fled trying to reach safety at a friend's home."

Bruner is able to tell the harrowing story today because her great-grandmother Mary E. Jones Parrish, a teacher and journalist, survived and documented the massacre.