Black WallStreet (The Wealthiest Black City In the World) And It's Destruction


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The Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, grew into the most famous and prosperous black urban community in the United States during the early 1900s. Dubbed the “Negro Wall Street” by educator Booker T. Washington, this community had a flourishing population that included both a working class and a middle class of prosperous citizens.
After the Civil War, most of the all-black townships that had been established in the United States were located in Indian and Oklahoma Territories. One of those townships, Greenwood, was created in 1906 by one of Tulsa’s earliest pioneers, O.W. Gurley, who had come from Arkansas to Oklahoma in the 1889 Land Rush. A black educator and entrepreneur who gained wealth by speculating on land, Gurley purchased forty acres on the northern outskirts of Tulsa, which itself had been incorporated only eight years earlier in 1898. Gurley sold his land to African Americans who soon developed a small community. Tulsa grew rapidly because of the oil boom in the surrounding countryside and by 1910 annexed Greenwood.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Greenwood appealed to African American southerners migrating to the North and West in hopes of escaping the economic and political repression of blacks in the South. Many of them came to Tulsa and soon created a prosperous community in segregated Greenwood.
According to 1920 city directories, there were 108 black business establishments, including 2 newspapers, 41 groceries and meat markets, 30 cafes and restaurants. There were also offices for 33 professionals, including 15 physicians and attorneys in Tulsa’s African American community serving the nearly 10,000 residents.
In addition, Deep Greenwood had clothing stores, funeral parlors, billiard halls, hotels, barbershops, hairdressers, shoemakers, tailors, nightclubs, and two movie theaters. Because most white establishments refused to serve African Americans, black entrepreneurs held a captive market rich in pent-up demand.


By 1920, the black “Wall Street” also had twenty-two churches and was a center for jazz and blues music. It was the place where a young Count Basie first encountered big-band jazz. The schools in Greenwood were described as exceptional compared to those in the “white” areas of town. Deep Greenwood, as it was now often called, was further advanced economically than some of the white areas of Tulsa.


On May 31, 1921, the Tulsa Riot nearly put an end to the thriving district. An estimated 300 black men, women, and children were killed and thousands severely injured. Most of the thirty-five square blocks of Greenwood, both businesses and residential neighborhoods, were destroyed by white rioters and nearly 10,000 thousand African Americans, virtually the entire black population of Tulsa, was left homeless.

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After the destruction of Greenwood, the city of Tulsa denied aid to the survivors of the riot. However, the African American businessmen and residents of Greenwood took it upon themselves to rebuild their community, using their own resources and help sent from across the United States. By the summer of 1922, more than eighty businesses were again up and running.
The Tulsa Riot of 1921, although a major setback for Greenwood, was not the event that caused the decline in Deep Greenwood’s economy. The national Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s eventually led to Civil Rights Act of 1964. As African Americans began to use businesses and accommodations throughout Tulsa and move throughout the city, the Greenwood businesses began to decline. Urban renewal and freeway construction in Tulsa in the 1960s and 1970s accelerated that process.
Today, Urban Renewal bulldozers have flattened much of Greenwood. However in 1965, Edward Goodwin Sr., founder of The Oklahoma Eagle newspaper, opted to purchase a few spared blocks of land in order to preserve some of Greenwood’s history. Building the Greenwood Cultural Center and rehabilitating the block of land has led to a new life for the district. The cultural center has hosted eight Jazz and Juneteenth festivals and helped to not only reintroduce the community’s culture but also spread the history of Greenwood.
SUBJECTS:African American History, PlacesTERMS:20th Century (1900-1999), United States - Oklahoma, United States - Arkansas, Laws and Court Decisions, Racial Conflict - Race Riots, Racial Conflict - Segregation/Integration, Business-Newspaper
 
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The Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Massacre was one of the worst urban racial conflicts in United States history. Two days of violence by whites against blacks left an estimated 50 people dead, hundreds injured, and more than 1,000 black-owned homes and businesses destroyed.
The riot, which began on May 31, 1921, was initiated by an incident that happened the day before. On the morning of May 30, a black man named Dick Rowland stepped into Tulsa’s Drexel Building to use the restroom. The elevator operator was a young white woman named Sarah Page. A scream was heard from inside the elevator, and Rowland ran out. While there was no conclusive evidence, but whites in Tulsa believed that Rowland attempted to assault Page.
Rowland was arrested, and subsequent headlines in local newspapers stirred up the white and black populations of Tulsa. Talk of lynching arose among whites, and a crowd of whites and blacks gathered outside the courthouse where Rowland was being held on the night of May 31. A gun discharged while a white man was trying to disarm a black man, causing the incident to erupt into a much larger racial conflict.
By the early morning of June 1, the wholesale burning and pillaging of black Tulsa had begun. Blacks were greatly outnumbered, and the police were not effective in controlling the riot. The National Guard declared martial law throughout the city at 11:29 am, bringing an end to most violence. The Guard then began rounding up blacks for internment. Most white rioters returned to their homes the night of June 1, while much of Tulsa’s black population was imprisoned.
The total number of people killed during the riot is debatable – estimates range from 27 to over 250. It is generally believed that the number of deaths has been under-estimated.
It took nearly a decade for Tulsa to recover from the physical destruction it endured from the riot. Despite its significance, both black and white Tulsans claim the incident has been “hushed up” and not adequately recognized. It was scarcely mentioned in history books, especially Oklahoman history books.
In 1996, Oklahoma formed a commission to investigate the riot and prepare a historical account. The Tulsa Race Massacre Commission issued its report in February 2001. It recommended restitution for African American survivors and their descendants; a scholarship fund for descendants; economic development in the Greenwood district; and a memorial for the victims.
SUBJECTS:African American History, EventsTERMS:20th Century (1900-1999), United States - Oklahoma, Racial Conflict - Race Riots
 
"Arriving at the courthouse, this group of armed blacks, numbering about seventy-five, was greeted by a white mob numbering in the thousands. The level of tension and hysteria was rapidly rising. Representatives of the black group were allowed to enter the fortified courthouse where Sheriff McCollough assured them no lynching would take place. Apparently assured by the Sheriff’s defensive preparations they left the building and were preparing to go back to Greenwood when the spark was lit.

According to the version heard by Robert Fairchild, the white approached a tall black veteran who was carrying an Army issue .45-caliber and said

, what are you doing with that pistol?”

“I’m going to use it if I need to,” came the reply.

“No, you will give it to me.”

The white man attempted to disarm the veteran and a shot was fired. Sheriff McCullough stated from that moment “the race war was on and I was powerless to stop it.” (7)

A prolonged gun fight broke out as the blacks withdrew toward Greenwood and Archer. Block by block the fighting continued into the wee hours of the morning. At one point the battle raged around the train station, which was held as a fortress by black defenders for an extended period of time. With the bodies of white attackers scattered through the streets, the blacks retreated into Greenwood. This overnight fighting is usually ignored or skimmed over in the stories of the Tulsa “riot.” Far from being helpless victims, Tulsa’s black population fought with brutal efficiency against the white invaders. It is not hard to imagine this defense was pre-planned, or at least theorized before the shots began firing. Regarding the “helpless victim,” mythology,

W.D. Williams has disputed this assumption, citing as evidence the large number of whites which he saw get shot by black snipers as they attempted to invade “Deep Greenwood.” The Oklahoma City ‘Black Dispatch’ of 10 June, 1921, reported it had received a letter from “a prominent Negro in the city of Tulsa” who stated that “from what he could learn on the ground, about one-hundred were killed, equally divided between the two races.” (8)

Scattered fighting occurred throughout the night as thousands of white men gathered at several points in the city. They exchanged and distributed ammunition among themselves and the word was passed on: they would attack at dawn. Some were too excited to wait and five men in an automobile tried spur the crowd to action in early morning darkness.

When the crowd did not budge the men tore off alone toward Deep Greenwood. A few hours later, when the attack finally came, their five bodies were found slumped inside their car, rifles still pointed out the windows, the bullet-riddled carcass of the Franklin smoking in the middle of Archer street. (9)

A large number of casualities among the white invaders is very much in line with what the ABB Tulsa post Commander wrote in “The Crusader”: the majority of black deaths were noncombatants, people who burned to death in their houses or the unarmed who were shot by the white mob. On the “front,” however (which is approximated by the train tracks at Greenwood and Archer), it was another dynamic entirely. The Commander wrote:

The defense of Greenwood may be overlooked in the history books, but it has entered black folklore. The story is told how “Peg-Leg” Taylor, another veteran of World War I, had spent the afternoon shoplifting ammunition from downtown hardware stores. Armed with a .30-30 rifle and a shotgun he had assumed tactical positions throughout the night -fighting, keeping the white combatants at bay while stores were looted for arms and ammunition by his comrades. As dawn broke and a whistle sounded, a mass of white attackers charged across the tracks into Greenwood. While the ABB snipers shot it out with the white mob around the church, Taylor held a defensive position on a hill, six blocks from First Street on the north side. “He shot round after round of bullets for six hours. He did so much damage that the whites figured the Negroes had reinforcements.” The story of Taylor is still well-known in north Tulsa, and completely forgotten in the rest of the city."
HARD CRACKERS- The African Blood Brotherhood and The Short-Lived Civil War in Tulsa

More on Pegleg Taylor

www.angelfire.com/ab7/tulsa/intro.html
 
That is tragic and all but it's not good to dwell on it and just feel sorry for what has been done to you. Look at the Chinese they have been fucked by the US government in the past as well but they were able to quickly make something of themselves and rise above their oppressed conditions. Now they are more successful than even white Americans.
 

greyhound stone

The Boss💎
VIP
You guys are owed by the usa government. Y'all got to fight for your rights. There's 50m black Americans why do yal'l not fight not physicality bur econamocly and legally. What can the informing of somali people do for you.
 
Cadaans are a xaasid race, they dont like to see other people suceed more than them

Thats why they making up bullshit about China etc.
 
That is tragic and all but it's not good to dwell on it and just feel sorry for what has been done to you. Look at the Chinese they have been fucked by the US government in the past as well but they were able to quickly make something of themselves and rise above their oppressed conditions. Now they are more successful than even white Americans.

China was given loans from the Rothschild following Mao's "revolution", and was essentially the World "basket case" for the second half of the 1900's or do you not know that?


You can research how China who as recently as 65 years ago was poorer than Somalia. Do you honestly believe that the Western power allowed them to simply rise up like that?

Bootstrap argument is cruel to use when you're talking to a people who have been deliberately made bootless.

It's kind of messed for people to see the most dominant military power on Earth dominating and overtly mistreating an unarmed unnnationalized group of people simply because of our skin color, and for those others who are not under that sort of heavy antagonistic pressure (not saying that others don't have problems) to tell us how to get free. Especially when they do not themselves offer help to those whom they see are in need.
 
While it is terrible what happened.

This is Somali Spot

What does that mean? We talk about all African issues on our forum "thecoli". I see that there is a big misconception of African Americans among some here on this forum who get there information through anti black white supremacist American ran propaganda. I feel the need to correct this misconception for the honor my own people and ancestors.
 

Lostbox

「Immortal Sage」| Qabil-fluid
VIP
What does that mean? We talk about all African issues on our forum "thecoli". I see that there is a big misconception of African Americans among some here on this forum who get there information through anti black white supremacist American ran propaganda. I feel the need to correct this misconception for the honor my own people and ancestors.
I hope you succeed with your mission
 

greyhound stone

The Boss💎
VIP
What does that mean? We talk about all African issues on our forum "thecoli". I see that there is a big misconception of African Americans among some here on this forum who get there information through anti black white supremacist American ran propaganda. I feel the need to correct this misconception for the honor my own people and ancestors.
No we don't care about africans only somalis if u ain't it. Then your an outsider. Honor your people is fighting for you rights. Not coming on the Internet and spreading your views about other africans we Do not care about
 

Mukhalas

Macawiis, dacas iyo AK47.
Where has that spirit of entrepreneurship gone?

It's as if your community has completely changed after the civil rights movement
 
No we don't care about africans only somalis if u ain't it. Then your an outsider. Honor your people is fighting for you rights. Not coming on the Internet and spreading your views about other africans we Do not care about

If you don't care then you can ignore this thread. I didn't put this in general, it was moved here by the MODS. Apparently they feel that some of you are misinformed, and need this information. YOUR OWN said this with their actions not me.
 

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