In the end, apparently most of the actual rioting was done by poor whites, who resented the blacks in north Tulsa, who had, as blacks go, become relatively successful by doing exactly what the whites had told them to do in those segregationist days. In point of actual fact, the police actually armed the white rioters. One wonders how well protected they felt, having to depend on those who had been killing their friends and neighbors for their lives. What I find interesting is that knowledge of the worst race riot in this country's history was so utterly and completely suppressed . It's not taught in the schools, it's not mentioned in history books.
Nobody knows about it.
Partly, it's that most of what we know of race riots and the like happened during the modern media age, or in larger cities. Mostly, however, it seems to be a conflation of those facts, plus the fact that Tulsa's city fathers made a concerted and successful effort to suppress the news of it. Still, somehow, you'd think that the news would have been more broadly disseminated by now. And then you think. No Gun Ree.