It's interesting reading the history of that and seeing the initial shots were fired by a group of armed black men, killing several white men at the police station. The whites then responded and began shooting back and all hell broke loose leading to what is called the Tulsa Riots. But the spins that are put on the story will make you dizzy. I think a lot of people got their understanding of the event from the fictionalized version on Watchmen maybe?

According to the Wikipedia page your account is wrong. Do you have other sources? It says there was a single gunshot from an ambiguous source resulting from a conflict on which a white man tried to forcibly disarm a black man who was there only to try and protect the jailed man from being lynched and was willingly leaving after being persuaded that there was no need for their protection.

This leaves out the crucial fact that the police were not threatening to lynch anybody, they had the guy in jail and told the protestors who were threatening him to piss off. Then a group of armed black men escalated the situation further by entering the police station with guns which was not allowed. Predictably, someone tried to wrestle the gun out of a hand of one of the people in the armed mob that just tried to illegally take over the police station. That man was shot and killed by one of the black men, and then the riot started.

It's important to tell this part since it unsurprisingly always seems to get left out. That doesn't absolve any of the white people who then went on to participate in the riot or who originally wanted the guy lynched, but during that riot a significant number of men on both sides of the riot were killed (I believe it was 26 black people, 10 white people or roughly in line with those estimates).

Now, one could look at it and say well if someone didn't try to disarm one of the black men who had stormed the police station armed, then the riot never would have happened. And that's true. One could also say that if the group of white men outside of the police station weren't yelling about lynching the guy, then nobody would have stormed the police station and thus no riot. That is also true. So in reality there really is blame to go around. My point is, on every telling of this story it gets further and further from the truth.

Another interesting point that gets lost is there were more than TWICE as many white people lynched in Oklahoma than black people.[1] The point is with stories like this we need to let the data and first hand accounts tell the story, not emotion. If you go off emotion you'll be believing 800 people were killed and the whole town was firebombed by the US army.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race...

The police themselves weren't threatening to lynch anyone, but there was a mob of hundreds of people gathering who appeared to intend a lynching. I see no indication that the black men conducted any violence and simply being armed is perfectly legal in the US, as modern-day right wingers love to emphasize when the people doing it are the right color, and they attempted to leave peacefully after seeing that there was not imminent danger of a lynching.

"seeing the initial shots were fired by a group of armed black men, killing several white men at the police station"

This is a loose interpretation of the article which loses important context. The initial shot was fired when a white man attempted to wrestle a gun away from a black man. The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Your interpretation would lead a reader to believe that a group of armed black men began the entire event by murdering white men.

    > The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing.

Well it didn't exactly discharge into the floor, it discharged into a person and killed him. And the armed mob that stormed the police station wasn't supposed to be armed in the police station at all, so of course the situation escalated.

There is blame to go around, as each side escalated it until there was bloodshed.