Watchmen helped teach Americans a pivotal history lesson with its portrayal of the Tulsa Race Massacre

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Today President Biden delivered remarks in Tulsa, Oklahoma to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre after meeting with the few survivors of the tragedy. Although the 100th anniversary would've generated a lot of attention on the Tulsa Race Massacre, it was Watchmen where many first learned about the events of May 31, 1921-June 1, 1921 that was re-created in the opening for the HBO series that premiered in October 2019. "Viewers were stunned by the introductory scene of HBO’s Watchmen, an alternate-history sequel to the classic 1980s graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that used its collection of Justice League-like heroes for acute social commentary," says Kevin Polowy. "Based on the source material, many presumed the brutal, attention-grabbing show opening was fiction but enough viewers were unsure that search engine inquiries for “Tulsa 1921” and related terms spiked in the hours after the premiere. Fans learned that the events were a surprisingly authentic depiction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Massacre, which took place 100 years ago. Beginning May 31 and stretching into June 1, 1921, dozens of white Oklahomans stormed the Greenwood District — then the wealthiest Black community in the U.S., known as 'Black Wall Street' — and burned it to the ground. And just like that, with its widely viewed, widely acclaimed debut on Oct. 20, 2019, Watchmen helped teach Americans a pivotal history lesson long resigned to a footnote — if not omitted altogether — in educational materials and textbooks." As Watchmen star Regina King tweeted the next day: "Seeing so many tweets that #Watchmen was the first time they heard about Black Wall Street and had no idea that our opening depicted the Tulsa Massacre which had not been taught in US history classes."

ALSO:

• Tulsa Race Massacre documentary filmmakers ran into resistance pitching their projects -- until Watchmen aired: “We tried for at least a year to interest a number of broadcasters in the project, and none of them at the time recognized the nature of what we were doing,” says filmmaker Jonathan Silvers, director of PBS' Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten. “We weren’t just exposing a mass atrocity, but a mass atrocity that had been hidden from history.” OWN and Discovery+'s The Legacy of Black Wall Street director Salima Koroma, who started pitching her project in 2017, adds: “Nobody wanted it. Everyone seemed scared or claimed that the demographics were not right. One response that really stuck with me was someone telling me that the demographic of 30- to 55-year-old white men would not relate to the story.”
• Lovecraft Country followed Watchmen in raising awareness about the Tulsa Race Massacre
• Here are the three new documentaries on the Tulsa Race Massacre you can watch on the 100th anniversary