Black History Month: The Economic Powerhouse That Was Black Wall Street
In early 1921, the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States. More than 70 businesses, mostly owned by Black Americans, lined up in just the 100 block of Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa. This single block was home to four hotels, two newspapers, eight doctors, seven barbers, nine restaurants, and a half-dozen professional offices of real estate agents, dentists, and lawyers. The economic success of Black entrepreneurs in Greenwood added to the striking image of Tulsa as America’s Black Wall Street.
Its heyday was short-lived. On May 31 of that year, the local paper reported that a Black man, Dick Rowland, attempted to rape a white woman, Sarah Page. A faction of the white majority in Tulsa refused to wait for the investigative process to play out, sparking two days of unprecedented racial violence. Thirty-five city blocks went up in flames, 300 people died, and 800 were injured. The defense of white female virtue was the expressed motivation for the collective racial violence. Notably, this would be the same unfounded allegation that would lead to the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.
The economic status of these Greenwood entrepreneurs did not save them from racial hostility. Survivors later recounted what really happened that night. Eyewitnesses said that “the area was bombed with kerosene and/or nitroglycerin,” causing the inferno to rage more aggressively. Official accounts state that private planes “were on reconnaissance missions; they were surveying the area to see what happened.”
Nine thousand people became homeless, and journalist and cultural critic Josie Pickens wrote about it in Ebony magazine. This “modern, majestic, sophisticated, and unapologetically black” community boasted “banks, hotels, cafés, clothiers, movie theaters, and contemporary homes.” Additionally, “indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system that superiorly educated black children” was destroyed. Undoubtedly, less fortunate white neighbors resented their upper-class lifestyle. As a result of a jealous desire “to put progressive, high-achieving African Americans in their place,” a wave of domestic white terrorism caused black dispossession.
Despite all of the economic damage, neither the survivors nor their families ever received the reparations suggested by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission. The commission recommended reparations for people who lost property and proposed the establishment of a scholarship fund. The commission also suggested initiatives for the economic revitalization of the Greenwood community. Despite these efforts, these grand ideas never came to fruition.
The deep scars left by the tragedy remained visible for years. While Greenwood was eventually rebuilt, many families never truly recovered from the disaster. Moreover, for many years, the violence was a taboo subject, particularly in Tulsa. A state commission was formed in the 1990s to investigate. The report recommended that reparations be paid to the remaining Black survivors. A team of scientists and historians uncovered evidence supporting long-held beliefs that unidentified victims had been buried in unmarked grave sites.
The financial impact of the massacre was astounding. The losses of assets—homes, cash, and commercial property—would be around $350M in today’s dollars. However, the economic losses were not limited to those that could be quantified. In an article in the Atlantic, the authors write that before the massacre, Black residents were doing better than in comparable cities in the region and that the massacre negatively impacted home ownership, marriage, wages, and employment in the subsequent decades.
I want to leave you with this as we close out Black History Month: every month is Black History Month. Black history IS American history. There are many “never forget” events in American history—the Alamo, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and 9/11. The Tulsa massacre is something that mainstream history and media must never forget as well. For more information on the Tulsa massacre, click here.