Jack Scott, a 33-year-old professional boxer-turned-trainer who lived in Tulsa’s thriving Greenwood neighborhood, would often tell his wife Daisy, “We’re going to be rich one day.”
On May 31, 1921, he found himself outside the county courthouse, one of more than 75 Black men who had gathered to prevent the rumored lynching of a 19-year-old Black man. The next 24 hours would upend his plans and change the trajectory of the Scotts’ lives.
The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department was holding and protecting Dick Rowland, a shoe shiner, in a jail cell on the top floor of the courthouse, according to Scott Ellsworth, a historian at the University of Michigan, who teaches in the Department of Afro-American and African Studies. The day before, a white male store clerk had accused Mr. Rowland of entering an elevator and assaulting its teenage white operator, Sarah Page.
