The Black Wall Street

(video)

The history of the Tulsa Massacre of (Little Africa) Black Wall Street June 1, 1921. The Black Business district of Greenwood Oklahoma. The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires. Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses that were very successful up until the Tulsa Race Riot.   Greenwood contained a number of higher-end houses belonging to doctors, lawyers and business owners. Also, the buildings on Greenwood Avenue housed the offices of almost all of Tulsa’s black lawyers, realtors, doctors, and other professionals.  In Tulsa at the time of the riot, there were fifteen well-known African American physicians, one of whom, Dr. A.C. Jackson, was considered the “most able Negro surgeon in America” by one of the Mayo brothers

Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s, it was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.

June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 3000 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.