By 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the "Green Country," between the Osage Hills and the Ozark Mountains, on Muscogee land forcibly taken by the U.S. government less than 60 years prior, Black Tulsans have built the Greenwood District, a neighborhood nicknamed “Black Wall Street”: 35 blocks of homes, banks, hotels, theaters, and law offices.

On May 31, a Black teenager is falsely accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator. The Tulsa Tribune newspaper runs an editorial that calls for a lynching. Armed white and Black men converge on the courthouse. A shot is fired. Within hours, up to 10,000 white Tulsans — some deputized by police — loot, burn, and shoot their way through Greenwood. At least 300 Black people are killed. 35 blocks are ash. Over 10,000 people are left homeless.

No one is ever prosecuted. In just a few years, the event is “forgotten” in white communities. A century later, the last survivors' lawsuit for reparations is dismissed.