Tulsa Race Massacre was what decimated "Black Wall Street" and continues to hurt Black Americans over a century.
Researchers found that the attacks destroyed large swathes of Black wealth, and prevented many people from owning homes.
The team said that many effects were a result of racist news coverage and they have worsened over the years.
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One of America's most successful Black neighborhoods was destroyed by the Tulsa Race Massacre a century ago. According to a National Bureau of Economic Research study, Black Americans still feel the effects of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Tulsa's massacre of 1921 is one of the most tragic acts of racial violence in American history. The attack on the once-famous community of "Black Wall Street" resulted in $47 million in losses. Tulsa's white residents set fire to the district, resulting in thousands of Black Americans being held in internment camps. It is believed that 300 people were killed.
Although progress has been made towards racial equality in the century that followed the massacre, the Tulsa attacks still have a significant impact on America's Black population. Many Black Americans saw the massacre as a warning about the destruction of wealth, according to researchers Alex Albright and Jeremy Cook, James Feigenbaum. Laura Kincaide, Jason Long and Nathan Nunn wrote in the July paper. This led to a decline in homeownership and a tendency to invest more in other assets. The team also noted that similar trends were observed in communities matching Tulsa’s high levels of racial separation.
The homeownership rate of Black household heads in Tulsa dropped by 4.5% after the Massacre. Black Americans living in homes owned by their family members fell 6.3% and Black white-collar workers dropped 2.3%.
The massacre was also covered in newspapers, which had negative consequences beyond Oklahoma. Many of the current coverage supported the attack, while others blamed Tulsa's wealth and Black Americans for the tragedy. According to the study, Black Americans are less likely to invest money in homes or other assets that appreciate, which can help push their households up the socioeconomic ladder.
The aftermath of Tulsa Race Massacre. During which white mobs attacked black residents of Tulsa's Greenwood District, Oklahoma on June 1921. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Researchers stated that the massacre was "at the time, it was the largest single episode in property destruction suffered by a Black community." It was a warning about the dangers of homeownership and the accumulation of wealth. One's possessions and home could be destroyed in an instant.
Research has shown that the negative effects of smoking didn't diminish over time, but instead intensified.
After analyzing the data to include 1990, 2000 and 1980, the researchers discovered that the direct effects of this massacre had a greater impact on Black homeownership in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its surrounding areas. Newspaper spillover effects also increased, meaning that neighborhoods that were exposed to positive coverage of this massacre suffered lingering losses in Black homeownership.
The team found that the segregation effect in areas with segregation such as Tulsa was "noticeably less in magnitude" and didn't persist. They suggested that the individual county's segregation trends could explain this diminished effect. This means that certain counties may still be affected by the segregation effect, while others are not.
Tulsa Race Massacre still haunts Black Americans in Oklahoma, and elsewhere, even a century later. The study found that the attacks caused permanent damage to wealth-building by Black Americans, whether it was in the form direct wealth loss, racism in newspaper coverage or lingering segregation.
The team stated that the massacre could have placed Black Tulsans or some Black communities on an alternative trajectory, at most in terms of homeownership.
