Had Dick Rowland no pressing need to answer nature’s call, then arguably America’s worst race massacre could’ve been prevented. Or realistically could it ever have been? Tulsa, Oklahoma was for long sitting on a tinder box, and racial conflicts were waiting to explode. But Rowland, just 17 in May of 1921, didn’t understand all the complications the color of his skin brought with it. He was just a young and poor human being. And he desperately needed to visit a restroom—one reserved for African Americans on the top floor of a building next to the one where he shined shoes of white Americans to make a living. His skin color didn’t, of course, allow him to use a restroom in the building he worked in, so he ran that day towards the elevator in the next building to ride it up to the sixth floor. This was 1920s America where Jim Crow laws were in place, and eugenics was in fashion.