What began as a disorganized romp of rowdy teenagers evolved into something much more destructive. In the end, 49 Jews were killed, an untold number of Jewish women were raped, and 1,500 Jewish homes were damaged. The destruction in Tulsa was comparable. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 people were treated for injuries and contemporary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 people may have died, brutally butchered by the mob.
The New York Times account of Kishinev states that on Easter Sunday, as people left their churches:
The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews", was taken-up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.
The sheer destruction only tells a small part of the story, however. In both cases, for Tulsa and Kishinev, the causes were eerily similar and the long-term psychological and historical impacts were profound.
The Tulsa Massacre resulted from the growing resentment of whites at the relative prosperity achieved by Blacks, especially in the Greenwood section of the city, also known as "Black Wall Street." (See The New York Times' interactive exhibit). But the spark - the pretext - involved two teenagers in an elevator in the Drexel building in downtown Tulsa and morphed into a sexual assault accusation.
According to the Times, accounts vary about what happened between Dick Rowland, 19, a young Black shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, 17, a white elevator operator. The Times continues:
One common theory suggests Mr. Rowland tripped and grabbed onto the arm of Ms. Page while trying to catch his fall. She screamed, and he ran away, according to the commission report. The next day, Mr. Rowland was arrested and jailed in the Tulsa County Courthouse. By that afternoon, The Tulsa Tribune published a front-page news story with the headline “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” which essentially mobilized a lynch mob that showed up at the courthouse.
The pretext for the Kishinev massacre was similar. When a Ukrainian boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubăsari, about 40 km (25 mi) miles north of Kishinev, and a girl who committed suicide by poisoning herself was declared dead in a Jewish hospital, the Bessarabetz paper insinuated that both children had been murdered by the Jewish community for the purpose of using their blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover.
In both cases, the hated "other" is accused of harming innocent minors, thereby igniting mob violence. Such accusations have found their way into current discourse as well - which is one reason why the incendiary (and false) insinuation that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza evoked that anti-Semitic trope, and predictably, mob violence followed.
The destruction of Kishinev paled in comparison to the Holocaust that would follow, but it gave Jews a clue of what was to come - and that led many to decide to embark to America and to Palestine. They understood that there was no future for them in Russia.
Bialik's poem chided Jews for their passivity.
And all have eyes that are the eyes of slaves,
Slaves flogged before their masters;
And each one begs, and each one craves:
Those martyred bones that issue from your bags, And sing, with raucous voice, your pauper's ditty! So will you conjure up the pity of the nations, And so their sympathy implore. For you are now as you have been of yore And as you stretched your hand So will you stretch it, And as you have been wretched So are you wretched!
The Tulsa Massacre ripped from the Black community their hard-earned dignity, and with Jim Crow in ascent, it would be many decades before they would have a chance to regain it. For Jews and Blacks, then, these seminal episodes were designed to crush their spirits along with their bones, and for the oppressors, it was "mission accomplished."
But one hundred years later, a different story is being written. Yes, Jews, dispirited, left Russia en masse. But in doing so, millions of refugees and their descendants saved themselves from the genocide that would follow; and those who went to Palestine forged the foundation of the nascent Jewish State. After Kishinev, Theodore Herzl immediately embarked upon his plan to resettle the Jewish people in Uganda. That scheme was thankfully rejected (the falafel is lousy there), but it shows how profound was the impact of this pogrom in convincing Jews that they could no longer rely on God to save them, and that their future was elsewhere. While some stayed in Russia and enlisted in the fight against the Czars, others formed self defense groups in Palestine, which later led to the establishment of the Hagana. So the net result of Kishinev, as interpreted by Bialik, was one Jewish state defended by the most powerful army in the Middle East, and millions of living Jews in America (including me and possibly you) whose familiy would otherwise have been snuffed out a generation later. Even Tevye owes his fictitious life to the shock of Kishinev.
And for Blacks, the story of Tulsa is also still being written, in the growing dignity of this moment, with a Black Vice President, a reasonable chance at police reform, hope for renewed voting rights and true equality. We're not there yet - far from it - and our actions over the coming months will tell the tale.
The Kishinev pogrom was that moment when Jews turned away from "thoughts and prayer" passivity and moved decisively to action. At least some did, enough to make a difference. Those who came to these golden shores found a country that was not quite ready to accept them, but at least they could survive with a modicum of dignity and the possibility of a future for their kids. For the Black community of Tulsa, a brighter future beckons, but first they've got to reclaim their past.
And so, the mass graves of Tulsa are being exhumed, at long last, so there can be an overdue accounting.
Meanwhile, the graves of Kishinev are forgotten, tilting, bowed and burdened like the ancient, exhausted ancestors who lived and died there - while their youth went on to be reborn, as Bialik wrote in another of his famous poems, in distant, wondrous lands. 
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