By Emmet McGeown
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is a strip of land known as Greenwood. In the early 20th century, it was renowned as a bustling business district with a prosperous and self-sufficient economy. Such a pre-Depression boomtown, still thriving off the discovery of oil in 1901 and still harnessing the energetic drive of frontierism, was not uncommon. Yet, Greenwood was exclusively Black prompting Booker T. Washington to dub it “Black Wall Street.”
Due to staunch segregationist sentiments, African Americans constructed “Black Wall Street” as an oasis of social and economic mobility amidst the sand dunes of bigotry. The vibrant and animated nature of the business district was a testament to the American dream; despite crippling adversity, these business owners and professionals had created an innovative community dedicated to serving their own people’s needs. Black attorneys, doctors, and businessmen formed the nucleus of Greenwood around whom a middle-class utopia was established. Black-owned newspapers and movie theaters catered to the residents’ social perspectives and colloquialisms while Black schools and real-estate agents educated and housed their fellow man.
However, on May 30th, 1921, 19-year-old shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, shared an elevator from the 1st to the 3rd floor of the Drexel building with Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator. Sarah Page accused Dick Rowland of assault; she later dropped the charges, but it was too late. Dick Rowland was arrested the following day. An angry white mob arrived at the courthouse and began demanding justice. Their anger was fueled by the prevalent dogma that white womanhood was a sanctimonious virtue that ought not to be violated by the savagery of the Black man.
As the mob gathered around the courthouse, a few Black men from Greenwood arrived to defend Dick Rowland, one of them being his father, a prominent Black businessman. As Black and white citizens faced off, there was a struggle over a gun and a shot rang out injuring a white man. The match was struck. The Black residents retreated and set up a barricade at the railroad tracks in an attempt to prevent the white mob from invading their district. The barricade did not hold, and violence engulfed “Black Wall Street.” 35 blocks of Black property was set aflame with “the fires becoming so hot that nearby trees and outbuildings also burst into flame.” – Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot.
Yet this massacre was not limited to flames. The white mob dropped nitroglycerine bombs from private airplanes, there were reports of decapitations and white children were armed and sent scavenging the neighborhood, told by their parents that they were at liberty to murder Black folk. The Greenwood District burned for 2 days as the Governor of Oklahoma and the federal government engaged in ambivalence. Eventually, the national guard was called in and martial law was declared but it was too little too late. The “Black” in “Black Wall Street” no longer stood for African Americans rather, proceeding the massacre, it alluded only to the dark ash that coated the wreckage left behind.
Every single insurance claim was denied as the Black community was prohibited by established financial forces from rebuilding their community. The claims totaled over $2.7 million. An opinion piece in the Tulsa Tribune Editorial condoned the violence and expressed no remorse over the barbarity unleashed upon Greenwood.
In a 2018 Vox documentary, when asked, “Do you think life is better for black folks in America?” Hazel Jones, the last living survivor of the massacre at the time replied, “Nah. Some places, it is some places it’s not.” The legacy of this horrific event lives on 99 years later. Whilst things have undoubtedly gotten better for African Americans in terms of civil rights legislation, employment opportunities, and education, why is it so that people like Ms. Jones believe that Black America is just as subjugated and abused as it was in 1921? The sentiments of Black individuals who concur with this feeling must be acknowledged and better investigated in order to begin attempting to rectify the injustices which have plagued the African American community since this nation’s inception.
