Editing Tulsa race massacre (section)

===Fires begin===
[[File:tulsariotpostcard2.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.35|Photo postcard showing fires burning along Archer and Greenwood during the massacre]]

At around 1 a.m., the white mob began setting fires, mainly in businesses on commercial Archer Street at the southern edge of the Greenwood district. As news traveled among Greenwood residents in the early morning hours, many began to take up arms in defense of their neighborhood, while others began a mass exodus from the city.<ref>{{cite web |last=Jones |first=F. |title=96 Years Later The Greenwood Cultural Center 1921 Race Riot Massacre Facts with Video |date=June 2017 |url=http://theoklahomaeagle.net/2017/06/01/96-years-later-the-greenwood-cultural-center-1921-race-riot-massacre-facts-with-video/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306044409/http://theoklahomaeagle.net/2017/06/01/96-years-later-the-greenwood-cultural-center-1921-race-riot-massacre-facts-with-video/ |archive-date=March 6, 2019 |access-date=April 9, 2019 |language=en-US }}</ref> Throughout the night both sides continued fighting, sometimes only sporadically.

As crews from the [[Tulsa Fire Department]] arrived to put out fires, they were turned away at gunpoint.{{sfn|Hirsch|2002|p=103}} Scott Elsworth makes the same claim,{{sfn|Oklahoma Commission|2001|p=66}} but his reference makes no mention of firefighters.{{sfn|Parrish|1922|p=19}} Mary E. Jones Parrish, a survivor of the massacre, gave only praise for the National Guard.{{sfn|Parrish|1922|p=20}} Another reference Elsworth gives to support the claim of holding firefighters at gunpoint is only a summary of events in which they suppressed the firing of guns by the rioters and disarmed them of their firearms.<ref name="Voorhis letter" /> Yet another of his references states that they were fired upon by the white mob, "It would mean a fireman's life to turn a stream of water on one of those negro buildings. They shot at us all morning when we were trying to do something but none of my men was hit. There is not a chance in the world to get through that mob into the negro district."<!--article right next to this article states that there was a mob of a thousand black and 500 white people at the railroad. --><ref name="guthrie1" /> By 4 a.m., an estimated two dozen black-owned businesses had been set ablaze.

Tulsa co-founder and Ku Klux Klan member [[W. Tate Brady]] participated in the riot as a night watchman.<ref>''Tulsa Daily World'', June 1, 1921</ref> ''[[This Land Press]]'' reported that previously, Brady led the [[Tulsa Outrage]], the November 7, 1917, [[tarring and feathering]] of members of the [[Industrial Workers of the World]]—an incident understood to be economically and politically, rather than racially, motivated.<ref>{{Cite news |date=November 10, 1917 |title=Modern Ku Klux Klan Comes Into Being: Seventeen First Victims |work=Tulsa Daily World |url=https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc134561/ }}</ref>