On May 30, 1921, 17-year-old Sarah Page, a white elevator operator who worked in the downtown Tulsa Drexel Building, accused Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoeshiner, of assault.
Although she later recanted the charge, Rowland was jailed at the courthouse. An armed white mob—some newly deputized—gathered, and lynching rumors circulated. A group of black men, some with guns, twice gathered to prevent such an event. But a firefight flared and, as survivors reported, “All hell broke loose.”