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1868–1935

Gurley Hotel · Gurley Building

Real estate developer, hotelier

Arkansas-born former educator and Indian Territory postmaster, O.W. Gurley purchased 40 acres in north Tulsa in 1906 and began selling lots exclusively to other Black families — founding what became Greenwood. He built the Gurley Hotel, the Gurley Building, and was a founding trustee of Vernon AME Church. He lost an estimated $200,000 (over $3 million in today's dollars) in the 1921 massacre and never recovered financially.

1861–1935

Stradford Hotel

Hotelier, attorney, entrepreneur

Son of a man born into slavery in Kentucky, J.B. Stradford built the 54-room Stradford Hotel — at the time the largest Black-owned hotel in the country, valued at $75,000. He was a vocal advocate for Greenwood residents' rights and on May 31, 1921, helped lead the armed defense at the courthouse. After the massacre Stradford was falsely indicted; he fled to Chicago to avoid being lynched, where he practiced law. The state of Oklahoma posthumously exonerated him in 1996.

1883–1961

Tulsa Star (newspaper)

Newspaper publisher, civil rights advocate

Publisher of the Tulsa Star, the most influential Black newspaper in Oklahoma, A.J. Smitherman was a fierce editorial voice against lynching and a co-founder of the Western Negro Press Association. Like Stradford, he was indicted after the massacre and fled — eventually to Buffalo, New York, where he continued publishing newspapers until his death. He was exonerated by Oklahoma in 2007.

1880–1939

Williams Dreamland Theatre · Williams Confectionery

Theater owners, confectioners

John and Loula Cotten Williams were among Greenwood's wealthiest families. Their 750-seat Dreamland Theatre was the largest Black-owned movie palace in Tulsa. They also operated the Williams Confectionery and East End Garage. All three businesses, plus their home, were destroyed in the massacre. Loula rebuilt the Dreamland; the family eventually relocated to Chicago.

1879–1921

Surgeon

Dr. A.C. Jackson was widely regarded as one of the most skilled Black surgeons in the United States — the Mayo brothers reportedly described him as 'the most able Negro surgeon in America.' On the morning of June 1, 1921, he surrendered to white men outside his home with his hands in the air. A young white man in a white shirt and cap shot him. His murder is documented in the 2025 DOJ Civil Rights Division Review.

1879–1960

Attorney

B.C. Franklin lost his law office in the massacre and rebuilt his practice from a tent in the ruins. He successfully sued the City of Tulsa to overturn an emergency fire ordinance that would have prevented Black residents from rebuilding on their own lots — preserving Greenwood's land for the survivors. He was the father of historian John Hope Franklin. His handwritten 10-page eyewitness manuscript of the massacre was discovered in 2015 and is now housed at the Smithsonian.

1897–2001

Little Rose Beauty Salon

Beauty salon owner, author

Mabel Bonner Little ran the Little Rose Beauty Salon on Greenwood Avenue in the years before 1921. After the massacre destroyed her salon and home, she rebuilt. She wrote 'Fire on Mount Zion: My Life and History as a Black Woman in America' (1990), one of the few first-person book-length accounts of the massacre. She lived to 103.

1915–2018

Psychologist, professor, U.S. Coast Guard SPAR

At 6 years old Olivia Hooker hid under a kitchen table as white men ransacked her family's Greenwood home. She went on to become the first Black woman to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard (in 1945, as a SPAR), earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and taught at Fordham for decades. She testified before Congress on the massacre and lived to 103.

1914

Domestic worker, plaintiff

'Mother Fletcher' was 7 years old when her family fled Greenwood on the night of May 31, 1921. In 2021 — at age 107 — she testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, becoming one of the last living survivors to formally seek reparations. She was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit dismissed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2024.

1915

Plaintiff, community advocate

'Mother Randle' was 6 years old at the time of the massacre. With Viola Fletcher and her brother Hughes Van Ellis, she was a plaintiff in Randle v. City of Tulsa, the final legal effort by living survivors to obtain reparations from the City of Tulsa. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2024.

1921–2023

WWII veteran, plaintiff

Born just months before the massacre, 'Uncle Red' was the youngest of the three named plaintiffs in the final reparations lawsuit. A WWII veteran, he testified alongside his sister Viola Fletcher before Congress in 2021. He died in 2023 at age 102, before the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued its dismissal.