About 40 blocks were destroyed, including 1,256 homes, many of which had been looted before they were set alight. The death toll, most likely never to be fully determined, was estimated in the state report at 100 to 300. Survivors were rounded up and interned by the National Guard. Many of the homeless spent the following year living in tents pitched in the ruins of the neighborhood.

A grand jury at the time blamed the black community for the riot. No one was convicted of participating in the riot; no one was compensated for lost property. Soon after, the story essentially disappeared — buried so deeply that people who lived their entire lives here, including prominent leaders like mayors and district attorneys, said they had never heard of the riot until recent decades.

Don Ross is credited with helping to break that silence. A magazine he started published the first article in decades about the riot, written by a local historian around the time of the 50th anniversary. But it was not until 25 years later when Mr. Ross was a state representative that the riot garnered nationwide attention. He pushed for the formation of the riot state commission that produced the report and became an unrelenting advocate for payments to the survivors because, he explained, there is “no money in apologies.”

Since retiring, Mr. Ross has extracted himself from those efforts, believing that neither blacks nor whites were committed to the task. He no longer even speaks to the survivors. “I cut that connection,” he said. “It was too heartbreaking.”

The issue of payments to survivors, like those paid to the survivors of a similar riot two years later in Rosewood, Fla., was always difficult.

The Oklahoma Legislature refused, saying it was constitutionally prohibited. The federal courts dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims, saying the statute of limitations had expired. And efforts in Congress to remove that legal obstacle have repeatedly failed, partly because of concerns that it might open the door to reparations for slavery, though there are plans to reintroduce the bill. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who represented the survivors in the effort, called the case his “most disappointing and heartbreaking.”