Nearly a century ago, thousands of Black Tulsa, Oklahoma residents had built a self-sustaining community that supported hundreds of Black-owned businesses. It was known as “Black Wall Street.” This summer marked the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, a tragic event perpetrated on Black Wall Street, which has been described as “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”
The incident, which is estimated to have claimed the lives of as many as 300 people (the vast majority being Black), devastated a neighborhood that had grown over the previous 15 years to become one of the wealthiest enclaves for Black Americans in the country.
Still, for many Americans, the June 1, 1921 massacre and the history of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” neighborhood represent a gap in their knowledge of American history.
In fact, when a depiction of the massacre appeared in the opening scenes of “Watchmen”, a popular fictional HBO series that debuted in October and drew from the real-life events of 1921, many viewers reported that they initially believed they were witnessing fictional events. Historians say the history of “Black Wall Street” and the massacre that occurred there (much like the Juneteenth holiday) have generally not been taught in U.S. schools over the past century, even in Oklahoma, where the racist incident was only added to statewide school curriculums in February.
Here’s a look at how Tulsa’s Greenwood District grew to become a haven for Black entrepreneurs at the beginning of the 20th century — and how 24 hours of racist violence destroyed much of what thousands of Black residents had built there, only for that tragic event and the people it affected to be unjustly ignored by history, for the most part, for decades afterward.
Entrepreneur O.W. Gurley and the founding of ‘Black Wall Street’
Tulsa, in general, began to flourish around the turn of the 20th Century, thanks to a huge oil boom in Oklahoma. The area also saw a major uptick in Black settlers around that time, and leading up to Oklahoma’s 1907 statehood, as land was readily available.
In 1906, a wealthy African-American land-owner, named O.W. Gurley, moved to Tulsa and bought 40 acres of land that he opted to only sell to Black settlers. Gurley had been born in Arkansas to former slaves and was mostly self-educated. Believing he was unlikely to experience success in the Jim Crow-era South, Gurley left Arkansas in the 1890s to join thousands of other homesteaders claiming land (which previously belonged to Native Americans but was made available by the federal government to westward traveling settlers).
Gurley initially established himself roughly 80 miles west of Tulsa, where he claimed a plot of land, became principal of the local school and ran a successful general store for more than a decade, according to Forbes. With the state’s oil boom bringing newfound wealth to Tulsa in the early 1900s, Gurley moved to the city and bought the 40-acre plot that he and other Black entrepreneurs named Greenwood.
Gurley “had a vision to create something for black people by black people,” author and historian Hannibal Johnson wrote in his book, “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District.”
In a recent interview, Johnson told Forbes that “Greenwood was perceived as a place to escape oppression—economic, social, political oppression—in the Deep South. It was an economy born of necessity. It wouldn’t have existed had it not been for Jim Crow segregation and the inability of Black folks to participate to a substantial degree in the larger white-dominated economy.”
Gurley loaned money to other black entrepreneurs looking to start their own businesses. This was important in establishing the Greenwood District as a center of Black business and wealth, as Black entrepreneurs would have otherwise had little to no opportunity to borrow money from white-owned banks during the Jim Crow Era. And, as Johnson points out, Gurley’s push for Black-owned businesses was also a necessity in an era in America where intense racial segregation meant that Black citizens were often barred from patronizing many white-owned establishments.
One of Gurley’s early business partners was J.B. Stradford, another son of former slaves who grew up to graduate from Oberlin College and obtain a law degree from Indiana Law School. After running a string of businesses in St. Louis, Stradford moved to Tulsa and built rental properties as well as the Stradford Hotel, which became a fixture on Greenwood Avenue.
The 54-room hotel was reportedly the largest black-owned and -operated hotel in America, and it featured a dining hall, gambling hall, saloon and regular Jazz performances for the neighborhood’s residents. Forbes notes that Stradford’s hotel, boosted by Greenwood’s rising success, would eventually be valued at roughly $75,000 (or over $1 million in today’s dollars) before it was destroyed in the violence of 1921.
Gurley himself also built a rooming house, multiple rental properties and his own hotel. He also ownd a Masonic Lodge and a successful grocery store, which he supplied with produce from his nearby 80-acre farm. According to Forbes, as Greenwood’s population grew, Gurley’s fortune was ultimately worth roughly $200,000, equivalent to $2.7 million today.
Other prominent Black business-owners in the area included John and Loula Williams, who owned a candy shop and built the neighborhood’s Dreamland Theater, a 750-seat movie theater. There was also Andrew Smitherman, a lawyer who also founded and ran the Tulsa Star, one of the area’s most prominent Black-owned newspapers.
The community even featured its own hospital and public library. Greenwood was a “modern, majestic, sophisticated, and unapologetically black” community, author Josie Pickens wrote for Ebony in 2013, adding that the neighborhood even had “a remarkable school system that superiorly educated black children.”
By 1921, Tulsa’s Greenwood District was one of the wealthiest Black communities in the U.S. and a center of Black wealth. The community of roughly 10,000 residents was thriving and supported Black-owned banks, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores and luxury shops, along with offices for Black lawyers and doctors. Because Tulsa was still very much racially segregated at the time, the Black residents mostly patronized Black-owned businesses, which helped the community thrive.
In fact, the community was so self-sustaining that it’s now estimated that every dollar spent in the Greenwood District circulated within the neighborhood and its businesses at least 36 times, according to historians.
The district’s success actually inspired Black author and orator Booker T. Washington to coin its nickname, which he originally called “Negro Wall Street,” but which later became known as “Black Wall Street,” according to the Greenwood Cultural Center.
That being said, the Greenwood District was far from a utopia. Even though many Black residents owned successful businesses and lived in relative luxury, historian Scott Ellsworth has pointed out that many others were poor and lived in “shanties and shacks.”
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