Orange Mound Collaborative

Black Wallstreet

Feb 25, 2000

Black Wall Street

Before John Singleton made the movie Rosewood, many Americans had not heard of the Rosewood community or the Rosewood Massacre of 1923. These days, more is being written about another African-American community - "Black Wallstreet" in Tulsa, Oklahoma which was the site of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

It all started when Dick Rowland, a black man, was accused of grabbing the arm of Sarah Page, a white female elevator operator. As rumors flew, people said he raped her. A newspaper further fanned the flames with an editorial talking about a lynching.

This resulted in Blacks and Whites gathering at the Tulsa courthouse. Armed Blacks had come to protect Rowland from the lynching. While at the courthouse, a gun went off and the result was burned businesses and homes, and hundreds of innocent Black people being killed in the Greenwood District of Tulsa.

Over the course of 12 hours, this affluent all Black business district was destroyed. Angry White mobs burned and looted the area while killing hundreds of innocent Blacks. Survivors and researchers have compared the riot to a war and the after effects to Hiroshima. The official death count is 36 (10 Whites and 26 Blacks.) Different resources report varying number of deaths during the attack, ranging from 300 to as high as 3,000.

Black Wall Street was an affluent all Black business district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Approximately 15,000 people lived in the area encompassing 36 square blocks, home to 600 businesses. The district had churches, grocery stores, movie theaters, libraries, law offices, a bank, a hospital, schools and a post office.

According to a book written by Ron Wallace entitled Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream at a time when there were only two airports in the state of Oklahoma, six blacks in the area owned their planes. It is said that Booker T. Washington labeled Greenwood Avenue, the Black Wall Street because of the area's prosperity.

Survivors feel that resentment of this prosperity was also the reason for the attack which they believe was planned. After the riot, many of the survivors left the town and their history. On the 75th anniversary of the riot, Tulsa erected a memorial. Today, only one block of the original community remains.

Many believe that the fact that community members did business among themselves, made the area strong and prosperous. It is said that a dollar in the Greenwood District circulated 36-100 times before leaving the community. Of course because of laws supporting segregation, they had little choice other than to do business with each other in the community.

Businesses in Greenwood were Black owned, operated and patronized. In this respect, Greenwood was no different that many other Black communities of its time.

Today much of the purchasing power of communities such as Orange Mound leave the neighborhood. Often without choice because the goods and services are absent but sometimes because we choose to spend money elsewhere. Entire paychecks get spent outside of the community. If we desire to have businesses in the neighborhood, we must support those that choose to locate here.

The Greenwood community was able to rebuild but in recent decades has been faced with the same challenges that other urban communities have. This month as we think about Black History, let us remember the individuals that made our communities thrive and the practices that aided us in surviving.

It should be noted that Dick Rowland was later released jail and Sarah Page dropped her charges.