Burned in 1921, Rebuilt From Its Basement: A Tulsa Church Marks 100 Years Since a Mob Levelled 35 Blocks of Black Wealth

• Hundreds gathered at Vernon AME Church in Tulsa’s Greenwood district on the massacre’s centennial
• A white mob burned and levelled a 35-square-block area of the prosperous Black neighbourhood in 1921
• The church was nearly destroyed, but members kept meeting in its basement and rebuilt
• Greenwood later lost homes to eminent domain and an interstate in 1970s urban renewal

Hundreds of people gathered outside Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to dedicate a prayer wall on the 100th anniversary of the first day of one of the deadliest racist massacres in United States history, the Associated Press reported in a story carried by the Jamaica Observer.

In 1921 a white mob descended on Greenwood, then a prosperous Black neighbourhood, burning, killing, looting and levelling a 35-square-block area. Estimates of the death toll range from dozens to 300. Vernon AME was largely destroyed. Its members kept meeting in the basement, and the church was rebuilt several years later, becoming a symbol of the Black community’s resilience. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

Civil rights leaders including the Revs Jesse Jackson and William Barber joined local faith leaders at the interfaith service. Barber said he was “humbled even to stand on this holy ground”, adding: “You can kill the people but you cannot kill the voice of the blood.” At the end, participants laid their hands on the prayer wall on the side of the sanctuary as a soloist sang.

The neighbourhood’s losses did not end in 1921. Greenwood was rebuilt after the massacre, but it slowly declined some 50 years later after homes were taken by eminent domain for urban renewal in the 1970s. Traffic from an interstate that now cuts through the district could be heard during the ceremony. The centennial was also marked by disputes. A headline event with John Legend and Stacey Abrams was cancelled after no agreement could be reached on payments to three survivors, and disagreements over millions of dollars in donations led to rival programmes.

Greenwood shows two ways a community’s wealth can be taken: suddenly by violence, and slowly by planning decisions such as compulsory purchase and a highway routed through homes. The church came through because its congregation kept worshipping in what was left of the building and then rebuilt it. For Jamaican families at home and in the diaspora, the lessons are practical ones. Keep titles and records safe and duplicated, and pay attention when a road, development or acquisition plan is drawn over your community. Church land held securely can remain a community anchor after homes around it have gone.

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