KARLOS HILL: That story of the deadliest Race Massacre in American history begins with two individuals, Dick Rowland and Sarah Page.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: On Memorial Day, May 30, 1921, a young African-American male is walking in downtown Tulsa on Main Street. His name is Dick Rowland. He dropped out of Booker T. Washington High School where he's a football player to take a job shining shoes downtown. But he worked in a white patronized shoeshine parlor where there were no toilet facilities for African-Americans. So the white owner of the parlor arranged it so his African-American employees would walk down Main Street, go to the Drexel Building, ride the elevator to the fourth floor where there was a colored bathroom. And the elevator operator in the Drexel Building was a young white teenager named Sarah Page.

HANNIBAL JOHNSON: Sarah Page is manually operating the elevator. Something happens that caused the elevator to jerk or to lurch, [INAUDIBLE] bump into Sarah Page. She began to scream. Dick Rowland, frightened, ran from the elevator.

- We don't know exactly what happened. But we know something happened. Dick Rowland bumped into her, Dick Rowland stepped on her shoe. She was not expecting him, and she screamed.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: And then Dick Rowland is seen running out of the Drexel Building.

- Sarah Page exited the elevator who was comforted by a clerk from a local town called Renburgs. She told him about being assaulted on the elevator. The clerk, who was comforting her, called the police.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: The next day Tulsa Police show up at Dick's home. He's arrested. He's taken downtown to the courthouse awaiting arraignment.

HANNIBAL JOHNSON: That could have been the end of the story had it not been for the intervention of the Tulsa Tribune the daily afternoon newspaper. The Tribune published the story the next day entitled Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator. It was a false narrative about an attempted rape in broad daylight in downtown Tulsa.

- The story was very incendiary. It used all kinds of buzzwords and menacing images that invoked this notion of a Black man assaulting a white woman, which was a euphemism for rape.

- The newspaper story is published around 3 o'clock. By 4 o'clock in a small group of white men have began to assemble around and mill around the courthouse. This goes on for several hours. More and more whites showing up, murmuring about lynching Dick Rowland.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: First the crowd is 50, then 100, then 200, then 300, 400, 500 whites gathered outside of the Tulsa County Courthouse in whose jail Dick Rowland is held in a top floor jail cell. The crowd wants the Sheriff to turn over the prisoner, because they're going to kill him. They're going to lynch him.

KARLOS HILL: When Black people began to hear around 9 o'clock, 9:15, that there is a possible lynching of Dick Rowland, that's when JP Stratford, that's when OW Gurley, that's when AJ Smitherman have a meeting at the offices of the Tulsa Star.

KIMBERLY ELLIS: As the newspaper editor AJ Smitherman knew that this was a dog whistle, that this was the call for lynching, that it was trouble.

HANNIBAL JOHNSON: AJ Smitherman was a civil rights advocate. He had a voice because he had a newspaper. Not only would he write stories, he would actually put his body at risk. He would actually engage in incidents where there was threats of racial violence.

KARLOS HILL: And so there is a debate, and rightly so, what is the best plan of action. Is it to go downtown armed and offer assistance? Is it to just send a small group, or send one?

J.B. STRADFORD: The day a member of our group is mobbed in Tulsa the streets will be bathed in blood. If I can't get anyone to go with me, I will go single handed and then resign myself to that fate.

KARLOS HILL: Ultimately the idea of going downtown armed is what prevails.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: At about 9 o'clock a group of African-American World War I vets, all of whom are armed with pistols, rifles, shotguns, many of them have put on their army uniforms, marched up to the front steps of the courthouse and they approached Sheriff McAuliffe, and they say, Sheriff we are here to help defend the prisoner.

- They were told, don't worry, he will not be lynched, and no one's going to take him. He's going to be safe here.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: And the men leave. But the effect that the vets had on the white lynch mob is just transformative.

- Upon seeing this group of Black men who have come downtown, you know, boldly, holding their weapons, it's very manly, courageous way, it electrifies the whites.

- They go nuts. Members of the mob run home to get their own guns.

KARLOS HILL: And not only came back with weapons, brought others with them.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: The mob is getting bigger. 600, 700, 800 people, armed, angry.

KARLOS HILL: 20 minutes, 30 minutes later, a larger group of Black men returned to downtown.

SCOTT ELLSWORTH: They know that a Black person is about to be murdered by a lynching in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they are not going to let that happen.

KARLOS HILL: By this time the crowd has grown to nearly 2000, if not more.

- One of the white men approaches one of the Black men who's holding a gun and said, what are you doing with that gun? And the Black man says, what's it to you?

- The white man who was bumped into tries to take away the gun.

- A struggle ensues. A shot goes off. And then another shot, and another shot.

- And then, in the words of the Sheriff, all hell broke loose.

- And the worst single incident of racial violence in American history begins.