Black WallStreet
Little Africa has provided this reference to provide an historical
example of how African-Americans, working together, can make a
tremendous difference in their lives and community.
Black Wallstreet was physically destroyed by jealous whites, the
message here; however, is not about anger or revenge--It is a simple
plea to recapture that thriving community's pride and spirit.
Moreover, we hope that this example encourages you to replicate its
cultural and economic success.
The highlighted (blue) passages focus attention on the success of our
people and provides additional perspective that you should keep in
mind as you think about the opportunity that the Block IV Corporation
articulates in the Village GoldMine. The Block IV Corporation has
also injected additional comments (red) throughout the text.
Black Wallstreet
The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wallstreet," the name
fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in
America, (This was not the only thrinving black community.) was
bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious
whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-
Block business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--A model
community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement
resoundingly defused.
The nights carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over
600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21
restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a
hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a
half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have
been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux
Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other
sympathizers.
In their self-published book, Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream, and its
companion video documentary, Black Wallstreet: A Black Holocaust in
America!, the authors have chronicled for the very first time in the
words of area historians and elderly survivors what really happened
there on that fateful summer day in 1921 and why it happened. Wallace
similarly explained to BE why this bloody event from the turn of the
century seems to have had a recurring effect that is being felt in
predominately Black neighborhoods even to this day.
The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was
also known, would be liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the
golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it
proved that African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's
what Black Wallstreet was all about.
The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for
currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the
Black community in 15-minutes. (Black economic success depends on us
spending our money with us.) As far as resources, there were Ph.D.'s
residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor
was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a
day, a hefty pocket change in 1910. (We provided for ourselves the
same services that we currenly rely on others to provide.)
During that era, physicians owned medical schools. There were also
pawn shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, 21 churches, 21
restaurants and two movie theaters. It was a time when the entire
state of Oklahoma has only two airports, yet six Blacks owned their
own planes. It was a very fascinating community.
The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a
population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic
Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many
of them were jealous. When the average student went to school on
Black Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and
respect they were taught at a young age.
The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. Nepotism
was the one word they believed in. And that's what we need to get
back to in 1995. The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it
was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in
each of those three names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the
renowned R and B music group The Gap Band got its name. They're from
Tulsa.
Black Wallstreet was a prime example of the typical. Black community
in America that did businesses, but it was in an unusual location.
You see, at the time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian
state. There were over 28 Black townships there. One third of the
people who traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" along side the
Indians between 1830 to 1842 were Black people.
The citizens of this proposed Indian and Black state chose a Black
governor, a treasurer from Kansas named McDade. But the Ku Klux Klan
said that if he assumed office that they would kill him within 48
hours. A lot of Blacks owned farmland, and many of them had gone into
the oil business. The community was so tight and wealthy because they
traded dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one
another as a result of the Jim Crow laws.
It was not unusual that if a resident's home accidentally burned
down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was
the type of scenario that was going on day- to-day on Black
Wallstreet. When Blacks intermarried into the Indian culture, some of
them received their promised '40 Acres and A Mule' and with that came
whatever oil was later found on the properties.
Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a
banker in the neighboring town who had a wife named California
Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the
Mississippi [River]. When California shopped, she would take a cruise
to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.
There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the
largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he
would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the
same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five
children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids
or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.
On Black Wallstreet, a lot of global business was conducted. The
community flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. That's
when the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of
this country took place, and it was lead by the Ku Klux Klan. Imagine
walking out of your front door and seeing 1,500 homes being burned.
It must have been amazing.
Survivors we interviewed think that the whole thing was planned
because during the time that all of this was going on, white families
with their children stood around the borders of their community and
watched the massacre, the looting and everything--much in the same
manner they would watch a lynching.
In my lectures I ask people if they understand where the word
"picnic" comes from. It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday
evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch.
They would lynch a Black male and cut off body parts as souvenirs.
This went on every weekend in this country, and it was all across the
county. That's where the term really came from.
The riots weren't caused by anything Black or white. It was caused by
jealousy. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I and
they were poor. When they looked over into the Black communities and
realized that Black men who fought in the war had come home heroes
that helped trigger the destruction.
In 1910, our forefathers and mothers owned 13 million acres of land
at the height of racism in this country, so the Black Wallstreet book
and videotape prove to the naysayers and revisionists that we had our
act together. Our mandate now is to begin to teach our children about
out own, ongoing Black holocaust. They have to know when they look at
our communities today that we don't come from this.
Excerpt from Black Elegance Magazine (issue unknown)
Title: Ron Wallace Co-Author of Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream
Chronicles a Little Known Chapter of African-American History in
Oklahoma
By line: As Told To Ronald E. Childs
http://www/littleafrica.com
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