...England and his friend and roommate, Alvin Watts, 32, waged what city leaders believe was a racially motivated shooting rampage in the predominantly black neighborhoods of north Tulsa early Friday morning, driving through the streets in a pickup truck and randomly shooting pedestrians. Three black people were killed, and two others were wounded in the attacks....

Tulsa officials said the shootings were unlike anything the city had ever seen in its modern history. None of the victims knew one another, and all of them were shot within a few miles. Mr. Henderson said he had heard from constituents that in one of the shootings, the suspects had approached their victims at random and asked for directions. “When they turned around to walk away, they just opened fire,” Mr. Henderson said.

In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of a riot that is one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in the nation’s history, in which a mob of white Tulsans destroyed a black neighborhood and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of black residents....