Nobody knows how many died.
In 1921, when 35 blocks of a black district burned in what may have been America's worst race riot, the shamed city of Tulsa settled on the lower body count. Today, some people re-examining the riot lean toward the higher. Tulsa is looking back, with pained expressions, at that week in which hatred, horror and denial overtook a booming oil town. An 11-member Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed by the state of Oklahoma, is fielding testimonials from dozens of persons who fled the fires that wiped out what Booker T. Washington called the Negro Wall Street, Tulsa's vibrant Greenwood district. He sweeps his arm across an expanse of green.