Dark truths unearthed

A mass grave. Of children. In Canada.

David French has a characteristically thoughtful piece on the Tulsa Race Massacre, which happened one hundred years ago today, and is just now being recognized after decades as one of those things people just didn’t talk about:

…On May 31, 1921, a 19-year-old black man named Dick Rowland was arrested after an encounter in an elevator with a 17-year-old white elevator operator named Sarah Page. We don’t know definitively what happened in that elevator, but Page apparently screamed, Rowland ran, and word soon spread across town that a black man had been arrested for sexually assaulting a white woman.

As an angry white lynch mob numbering in the hundreds gathered, a small band of 25 armed black men arrived to try to protect Rowland’s life. At the sight of armed black men, a number of white men left to gather their guns, and the white crowd continued to grow. Approximately 75 more black men arrived to help protect Rowland. At around 10:00 p.m., one of the white men demanded that a black Wor…