Black Wall Street
An untold story of the Greenwood District in Tulsa Oklahoma
In the early months of 1920, a neighborhood in the east corner of Tulsa Oklahoma, was rapidly expanding and generating wealth for their community and families. This neighborhood was comprised of an affluent Black community, which was home to nearly 100,000 residents. The black community made up 10.8 percent of Tulsa's population in 1920*. The Greenwood District was established to promote generational wealth and prosperity within the Black community.
The area that will later become know as the Greenwood District, was an investment made by the community, in hopes to grow strength and independence. Booker T Washington, O.W Gurley, J.B Stanford, and a long list of other affluent black individuals turned that investment into something tangible.
A community for the people
Current outline of the Greenwood District
Businesses within Greenwood District
Greenwood District had four well‐equipped drug stores, grocery stores, a theater. Elliott & Hooker, men's and women's furnishing store, carried as high a grade of goods in the city; two fine hotels accommodated the traveling public; Welcome Grocery was a model; modern barber shop, and two shoe shops with up‐to‐date machinery.*
Aside from generation local economic stability, the district also encouraged financial autonomy and independence.
Black wall street was being to attract many Black Americans who were in search for a place that would allow for true independent economic stability. Due to the growing amounts of new residents, the Greenwood Distracted started to overlap whites only boundaries.
Black families and individuals flocked to this area to use their education to move forward in life, as it was intended. Pharmacists, jewelers, lawyers, nurses, photographers, physicians, and real estate and insurance agents were some of the professions included in the district . The entrepreneurial mindset spread through out the area and encouraged individuals to invest their money into something that produced revenue.
Redlining, is the systematic denial of various services by federal government agencies, local governments as well as the private sector*.
The destruction of a district
During 1921, one minor interaction between two teens, would change Black Wall Street forever. With racial tensions running high within the country, and the dehumanization of black people, the white people of Tulsa took it upon themselves to kill a young man for doing nothing other than being black*.
Dick Rowland, was a nineteen year old black shoeshine. Rowland was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white elevator operator. Immediately taken into custody, and whispers of lynching start to roar.
Beginning on May 31st and ending on June 1921, a mob of white citizens of Tulsa took to the street destroy the Greenwood District. The community of Greenwood created a line of defense to fight off the mob. This riot left nearly 10,000 black individuals without homes, businesses, nor land to turn to*. The exact number of fatalities is still unknown, but was dramatically minimized when reported by the press at that time.
Damages totaled to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property at the time*. The residents of Greenwood never received compensation for the property loss or damaged. The brutal murders and acts of crimes where kept out of the paper and news outlets.
After the race riots, the history of the crime and the legacy of the district vanished. A few, black residents stayed in the area and tried to rebuild what they could, while white residents took pictures to use for racist memorabilia. In 1996, new state legislation permitted the Oklahoma Commission to conduct research on the race riot and develop a more organized form of the history*. After the study was conducted, there were many residents who were decedents of individuals within the area. In hopes to provide some financial relief to the remaining families, scholarships for descendants of survivors and a memorial park in Tulsa was created. The failure to provide proper reparations for the race riots did not simply affect the direct victims, It was a part of a larger pattern. The lack of reciprocation for the white people who committed these vial crimes, sent a clear message for all. The message was, that white violence would be either condoned or tolerated when being afflicted on black individuals.
The massacre of Tulsa's "Black Wall Street"
