ON "60 MINUTES": FIRST AERIAL ASSAULT ON AMERICANS WAS AGAINST A BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD IN TULSA, OKLA., DURING A RACE MASSACRE LARGELY IGNORED BY HISTORY

99 Years Later, a Racially Divided City Is Still Uncovering and Coping with the Greenwood Massacre

The first time Americans were terrorized by an aerial assault was not Pearl Harbor. Scott Pelley reports on a race massacre in which an estimated 300 - mostly African American men, women and children - were killed, and aircraft were used to drop incendiary devices on a black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla. The Greenwood Massacre of 1921 has been largely ignored by history, but Pelley finds a Tulsa community seeking to shed more light on what's been called the worst race massacre in history. His report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, June 14 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The horror began when the city's white newspapers reported a black man was in custody for allegedly assaulting a white woman on an elevator. Calls for a lynching were answered by armed black WWI veterans who came to the jail to protect him. Armed whites then attacked the vets, chasing them back to their Greenwood neighborhood - called by some "The Negro Wall Street" for its thriving commerce in the oil-boom town. The white mob began shooting blacks in the streets, and the vets returned fire.

Historian John W. Franklin retells the written account of the massacre by his grandfather, Buck Colbert Franklin, a lawyer in Tulsa at the time. "And he hears planes circling and sees roofs of buildings catching fire. And these are from turpentine balls, burning turpentine balls dropped from planes," Franklin says. "Where's the fire department? Where's the police when we need them?" asks Franklin. "We're part of a city... a city of wealth and order and governance. And it's been now taken over by a mob."

The mob was joined by police, and more armed whites entered the Greenwood section as word got out. The National Guard was called out. There is some data on the episode in a 2001 Oklahoma State commission report. "The Red Cross reported that 1,256 houses burned, that 215 houses were looted and not burned, and the total number of buildings not burned but looted and robbed was 314," the report said. It also noted that even with armed black veterans resisting the invasion of their neighborhood, more than 1,200 homes were destroyed, and many of those killed were dumped into unmarked graves.

Eyewitnesses say machine guns were used, and a deputy sheriff reported seeing a black man being dragged behind a car. When the black hospital burned down, white hospitals refused to take wounded blacks, some of whom died of their wounds. One white hospital allowed the black wounded to be brought into its basement.

There is no complete list of who and how many were killed in the city over the two days of the tragedy from May 31-June 1, 1921. There's never been an arrest. Tulsa Mayor T.G. Bynum says he's opened an inquiry he considers a homicide investigation to uncover as many facts as possible, including discovering mass graves.

Many in Tulsa and across America had never heard of the Greenwood Massacre. It wasn't taught in most schools and not locally according to residents. Tulsa native Damario Solomon-Simmons says he first learned of it in college in 1998. "When I went to OU in 1998, I was sitting in a class of African American history, and the professor was talking about this place where black people had businesses and had money and had doctors and lawyers," says Solomon-Simmos. "And he said it was in Tulsa. And I raised my hand, I said, 'No, I'm from Tulsa. That's not accurate.' And he was talking about this massacre riot. I said, 'Man, what are you talking about?' I said, 'I went to school in Greenwood. I've never heard of this ever.'"

Franklin is haunted by his grandfather's experience. "He too was traumatized by seeing people being shot in front of his eyes. He describes a woman who's trying to find her child who's run in front of her, and she's unafraid of the bullets raining down, because her concern is to find her child," he tells Pelley.

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