The massacre began during the Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the 17-year-old white elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building. He was taken into custody. After Rowland was arrested, rumors that stated that he was going to be lynched were spread throughout the city, which had seen a White man named Roy Belton lynched the previous year.