The Biggest Mass Shooting In U.S. History Happened 100 Years Ago

The largest mass shooting in the U.S. took place in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was encouraged in part by the police.

Greenwood, a segregated area of Tulsa was thriving thanks to a local oil boom and the district earned itself the nickname “Black Wall Street”. The white population was resentful of the success of the African-Americans.

Tensions boiled over when a black man was suspected of assaulting a white woman. An angry mob gathered at the courthouse where the man was detained. Gunshots were fired between blacks and whites.

The next day, a white mob descended on Greenwood and burned it to the ground. Police deputized 500 whites as Special Deputies. Up to 300 black people were murdered, mostly by gunfire. Some of them by the deputized whites who were also torching the neighborhood. More than 1,200 homes were looted and burned, 9,000 people were left homeless. Lest we forget!

The phrase "Lest we forget" is commonly used in war remembrance services and commemorative occasions in English speaking countries, in particular Remembrance Day and ANZAC Day. Before the term was used in reference to soldiers and war, it was first used in a 1897 Christian poem written by Rudyard Kipling called "Recessional".