New York Times, June 19, 2020: Opinion | The Burning of Black Wall Street, Revisited
Like many other Tulsans, Undersheriff Maxey doubted the city’s suspiciously low body count. During the Avery interview, he spoke of seeing five or six truckloads of Black bodies moving up Main Street to an unknown destination. “I seen them haul truckload after truckload of colored people in those things, stacked up like cordwood,” he said. Asked where the dead might have gone, he replied, “I don’t even know that, but they was hauling them out somewhere, I guess, and put them in ditches or something.”
As Tulsa scours the landscape for its dead, the centennial of one of the most destructive episodes of racial terrorism in the country’s history is fast approaching. When archaeologists resume their work, modern-day Tulsans could well learn more about the blood-drenched episode that has haunted the city’s dreams for nearly a century.
