. Donald Hamilton, the deputy director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) thinks the Tulsa incident should be classified as terrorism. He said, "I believe the survivors of the 1921 riot did survive a terrorist attack" (Brune). Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines "terrorism" as "the systematic us of terror esp. as a means of coercion". It defines "terror" as, among other things, "a state of intense fear" and "violence committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands" (Webster). It is possible to argue that the definition of "terrorism" does not stand because the "terror" was perhaps not as "systematic" or "coercive" as the definition intends. To split hairs over such matters, however, is to significantly cloud the important issues. Too many lives were lost, too many were left homeless, and too much history went up in flames.
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