Black Wall Street
Black Wall Street had 31 restaurants and 24 grocery stores in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It all started with 40 acres and a grocery store. Ottawa W. Gurley, better known as O.W. Gurley was one of Tulsa’s earliest settlers. In 1905, Gurley left Arkansas for the oil-rich city of Tulsa, where he bought 40 acres of property on which he would later construct the People's Grocery Store and a one-story rooming house. The rooming house and grocery store owned by Gurley paved the way for the subsequent explosion of Black-owned companies. Restaurants, motels, pool halls, shoe stores, tailor shops, and other businesses soon sprang up all over Greenwood.
The district's business-minded citizens created their outlets for Black people, who were frequently turned away from or given subpar service at the surrounding White companies. Greenwood wasn’t just a place, but a state of mind. They had built this place, and they had created it. It wasn’t a gift from anyone, it was their own community. In Greenwood, everybody knew they were just as good as anyone else. Scott Ellsworth, historian and author of "The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice."
As Oklahoma became a state in 1907, strict segregation rules were put into place. According to historians, this opened the door for Greenwood to develop into an island center for the circulation of the Black dollar. Several Black residents made all of their income and spent all of their money in Greenwood. The end consequence was one of the richest and most prosperous African-American communities in the nation.
But, not everything in Greenwood was going smoothly. Residents of Tulsa, both Black and White, have begun to become more antagonistic. According to Mechelle Brown, director of activities at the Greenwood Cultural Center, Whites had grown envious of the riches and success of the Black people of the Greenwood District. The tension culminated on May 31, 1921. The race massacre was a part of American culture and lynching culture of the time. However, the scope and the scale of the violence and destruction was unprecedented.” Karlos K. Hill, associate professor and chair of the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Oklahoma says: “It all started after an elevator encounter between a 17-year-old White woman named Sarah Page and a 19-year-old Black man named Dick Rowland. It was alleged that Rowland had assaulted Page in the elevator, which he denied. But it didn’t matter. News of a Black man’s alleged assault of a White woman spread like wildfire throughout the White community of Tulsa and tempers flared.”
Black residents rushed to the Tulsa County Courthouse to prevent Rowland’s lynching, while White residents were deputized by the Tulsa Police and handed weapons. A White mob, estimated to include some 10,000 people, descended upon the Greenwood District. Over the next 12 hours, the city of Greenwood experienced an all out assault of arson, shootings and aerial bombings from private planes. By the morning of June 1, 1921, Greenwood had been destroyed.
It would eventually be known as the Tulsa race massacre.
