In the early 1920s the Greenwood District in Tulsa Oklahoma is the wealthiest Black community in the United States. But Tulsa is still a segregated city. Black Wall Street and white Tulsa are very much divided. Twelve-year-old Lena knows this but she feels safe and sheltered from the racism in her successful flourishing neighborhood. That all changes when Dick Rowland a young Black man from Greenwood is accused of assaulting a white woman. Racial tensions boil over. Mobs of white citizens attack Greenwood terrorizing Black residents and businesses and forcing many–including Lena and her family–to flee. Now Lena must help her family survive one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.