Black Wall Street (1992) | A Black Holocaust In America

three and a half years authors producers publishers Ron Wallace and JJ Wilson have gone underground in Tulsa Oklahoma tirelessly researching investigating and documenting one of the most significant historical discoveries ever brought to the forefront of either American or African American history they've written and published a new book called black Wall Street based on true historical facts about a small highly prosperous and very sophisticated african-american community that existed in Tulsa Oklahoma at the turn of the century presently American history instills into the minds of our the youth of all races that African Americans have no other history than that of slavery or civil rights this rich and very vital history of black Wall Street will instill instant pride the multicultural awareness improves self-esteem and build a strong character in our youth another very significant point should be made it is that when youths from other nationalities see the documented historical economical achievements of these african-americans in black Wall Street they will inevitably begin to view them in another light hopefully reducing the ugliness of racism so prevalent in society today 1921 one of the most devastating massacres in US history took place [Music] white scalded was completely burned to the ground in a mere 12 hour period over 1300 businesses and homes were destroyed and completely ruined 10,000 people were left homeless in the night and to this day no one knows how many people actually died accounts range from 500 to 1500 men women and children both black and white this Cessnas mass appeal of human life was very carefully covenant of high city officials from black Wall Street was destroyed a major economic movement that would have affected all the black communities and America was crushed it completely halted black Wall Street was the most prosperous and most thriving black community in America in these times they defined the word nepotism its ultimate form these highly organized blacks work together in the same manner the Jews Japanese and Iranians work together in this day and time black walls people so prosperous that white all men will come across to the black community develop more sons of cash in order to keep their businesses afloat this very powerful black movement would have had an effect on blacks all across America socially and economically but 3,000 card-carrying Clanton would not allow that to happen [Music] what you're about to witness will astound you it would most likely affect you very deeply no matter what race creed or color you are and just maybe this film will make us all take a second look at our fellow man and not hate him or her because of the color other skin [Music] this is an actual account of the worst race riot in United States history it's not a pretty story and it's not being told for its shock value to reopen any wounds this material is presented because it happened 70 years ago to a many generation whose story is pertinent to this contemporary generation the true facts were completely covered up and kept from the American public the date was June the 2nd 1921 the place after the bombing the Tulsa World headline read dead estimated at 100 City quiet [Music] one of the bloodiest race riots in the nations non military history had begun the sport of the tender was ignited on Monday May 30th 1921 here's the story [Music] Oh [Music] sure no movies long do the [Music] [Music] [Music] during the early 1900s Archer Street was intentionally designed to divide the cities north from the south side of Tulsa blacks were forced to remain on the north side and whites enjoyed their separatism on the south side laws were passed to make sure that whites and blacks remained separated coast-to-coast from hate discrimination and arrogance and those were probably the underlying reasons it manifested themselves and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan but you can't blame the riot on one or two or three specific incidents the environment is what caused it you have to keep in mind that in 1921 majority the Oklahoma Legislature were Klansmen almost every city and county official in Tulsa County Oklahoma was elected with either support of the Klan or they were Klansmen themselves in those days the Klan would have parades in downtown Tulsa wearing their white sheets and their pointy little hats to fit their pointy little heads that would last four to five hours in length now visualize the number of people that were involved in a parade that would last four to five hours and all these people came from Tulsa well you have a parade and tell us a lot of people come in from other counties but you also have to remember that 1925 there were five million card-carrying Ku Klux Klansmen in this country so what was going on in Tulsa was probably the same thing was going on an awful lot of other cities and if the ride hadn't happened in Tulsa it probably would have happened someplace else the difference between Tulsa and some other city is that we know how bad it got and where we've gone since then has been a mark of our progress as I sit here I wonder with blacks fighting for equal rights and integration in other parts of the United States at that time was it really a good idea for blacks living in Greenwood to integrate what happened by 1921 was not so much what happened on the black side well what happened on the white side of the city because you had a lot of veterans coming back from bellow wood and chateau-thierry and they are gone forests and they couldn't find jobs and a lot of these were white uneducated lower economic class folks and when they came back to Towson the Klan milked that resentment that they held for those black prosperous businessman and the Klan did the same to them but the Nazis did in Germany in 1933 the matter of fact is kind of interesting you can make an analogy here that is historically profound we had a microcosmic experience with the Nazis the Nazis in Germany in 1933 blamed the Jews and they persecuted the Jews and they segregated the Jews and they created ghettos for the Jews and that's how they built their power but they built their power on the disenfranchised and the disenchanted Germans well the Nazis took over an entire country the Ku Klux Klan in this case largely took over an entire city and for that matter to some degree the entire state and maybe the region of the country in which they were strong but they played on the hate and the fear and the envy and the jealousy of many of these whites who had felt that the country owed them something because they had fought in World War one and here you have blacks who possibly didn't fight World War one and were very prosperous and you had the seeds for that kind of of conflict economically now socially you had a different situation Oklahoma is a very unique state in the sense that it's the only state in the Union that was settled the way it was this was Indian Territory it wasn't even a southern state in the Civil War for that matter wasn't even northern state it was a state that was fought over by both sides in fact there were 69 battles fought in Oklahoma largely between northern and southern Indians but when the state was settled it was settled settled by land runs Benjamin Harrison opened up chunks of the state and people just ran over this land and brought it out there portions now why is that significant in terms of the ride it's significant because an awful lot of those folks that made those land runs were southerners whose farms and lands and plantations had been burned by Sherman and the Union Army when they went through the South they had no homes left so they came West and when they made those land runs they brought in southern culture with them as a result what you have here in Oklahoma is a microcosm of the United States the northern half of the state is more metropolitan in fact politically more Republican the northern half of the state was settled by farmers from Kansas which was largely Union Territory the southern half of the state was largely settled by folks in the south Louisiana Arkansas Texas and the state pretty much splits that way in terms of politics and economics and Social Development but when you add that extra economic jealousy and envy to it the Ku Klux Klan had a breeding ground and that's the reason they were able to hold parades that lasted four to five hours in a shot there were an awful lot of people that were more than willing to hate blacks as they represented something they wish they had little Africa was possibly the most prosperous area that blacks had ever collectively developed any place in the world Oklahoma was regarded as one of the cleanest states in the nation and cherished his reputation as being called God's country or the Bible Belt of America nothing could be further from the truth well as our 4 stated my husband predicted this that Sunday night at church them days we had BTUs they bought cut a mountain and we don't have him be to you but he made a public statement and told him that this was going to happen but we didn't know we hadn't seen no sign but after church and after we went home several men young men and stuff you know they get all all shook up and everything we had a good dear policeman at that time but we call them more bonnet cleaver antibiotic he was down there trying to corral them because the trouble was their horizon and we didn't even know that with this black man and it's quite them and babes down that show not down to police station in Ireland and he was through riding this big old horse and he was telling you know it wasn't gonna be none of that but they had guns and everything and some of them come clear out as far as live in the street that's where we lived and running by that man get your guns get you go get your guns a very nice feeling to see to live in a role model community in other words you could see people doing on every level that looked like you so you could set your sights anywhere that you wanted and you felt secure I don't really remember seeing any other cultural group except Native Americans and Mexicans right I don't ever remember seeing them you didn't have much interaction with whites then no absolutely not but your dad did yeah yeah I told me all right and and and so they would come to the store to sell product right and and and so that that was the extent of pretty much what you had to do with with the white community the folks ever talked about the problems that existed well my mother did talk about religion sometimes because my mother had been brought up in the Episcopalian Church and when she came to Muskogee to teach she was told that she could come to church but she couldn't commune and that was outrageous to her because she had been born in Brownsville Texas and they allowed her to community work sure so she immediately joined the African America the African Methodist Episcopal Church which was all black mm-hmm and we knew that because mother had told us about that incident so we knew there was friction somewhere but we never experienced didn't there were people working in the neighborhood there was a Brickyard right across the street from up there were many Rights that worked in the Brickyard across from our home right but they were milk men who drove Gray's you know with a horse and so forth and so on there were five why'd you know if there was a fire they didn't put it out of course they didn't have what they have now so we saw them and the was a little train that came in their Sand Springs train that came every day those fellows were right but there wasn't any friction but you loved I'm sure things happen but they didn't happen to us what you see here is the very famous Mount Zion Baptist Church a congregation that survived the 1921 riots and managed to rebuild on the exact same location where it was bombed and completely destroyed exactly 70 years ago in 1921 the man's word was his bond he measured the masculinity of a man by how much he kept his word the congregation of the Mount Zion Baptist Church sticks in my mind because the year before the riot a black congregation took out a 20-year mortgage and built this brand-new church and the Klan burned it to the ground but instead of running out on their mortgage instead of telling the bank you're just gonna have to take your losses that congregation took out another 20-year mortgage and paid off both mortgages simultaneously that's character there were other heroes too many of the whites in the southern part of the city had black employees and those employees had become almost extensions with their family in fact a lot of Tulsans were raised by black domestic employees and when the riot erupted many of those families hid those blacks in their basement at great jeopardy to themselves because of the climate ever found out that a white had hidden a black in their basement the white family would have been persecuted if not horsewhipped probably the two most singular heroes out of the ride was the Tulsa County Sheriff and the Tulsa County black deputy sheriff Willard McCullough the Tulsa County Sheriff at that time and he was the only sheriff in the whole state that had black deputies his chief black deputy was Barney cleaver and you got to keep in mind when that right erupted around Tulsa County Courthouse there weren't more than maybe a dozen deputies in that building and Willard McCullough stood on the south steps of the Tulsa County Courthouse and told a mob of several thousand Ku Klux Klansmen who were heavily aren't that he was not going to release dick Rowland Barney cleaver stood on the north steps of the County Courthouse and told a black cloud that they want kind of release dick Rowland well you put yourself in the position of a white county sheriff in a southern state in 1921 facing several thousand Ku Klux Klansmen and you don't have more maybe a dozen deputies to back you up and Barney flavors on the north side of the courthouse tell them a black cloud the same thing I don't know much about Barney cleaver Willard McCulloch before since that but I can tell you this on May 31st 1921 they became maybe earned the right to become world class cops sort of a happenstance what happened was that my father owned the moles were safe and everything in the store was destroyed but he was down there in the weather one day and he kicked the safe and it seemed to be all right so he worked the combination and opened it and everything was intact and because it was the only safe in the neighborhood that was that safe a lot of people who live by various means that weren't me not even mentally ill used to bring their money to pop to keep so he and they always put a put their name on a paper and he went around and gave everybody their money back and they said ah you don't mean that I'm running still good and there were quite a few people who had left their money was bad right it was safe and then he had a little money in there of his own and so that was okay he had some bonds and then those were okay and that's what he used to make a tour of the United States with mr. Grady the Secretary of the why they went to black churches in Washington played a sailing races like that to tell people what had happened because the Scripps Howard newspapers had decided to keep it quiet so they didn't get out there to tell the story but they did only two black churches however yep yep and so it takes it till now to get this to people in general to let them know and that's really what happened Scripps her and her sisters were so powerful so they had people following mr. Gregg and dad when they went on the speaking tour and I guess they probably would have done something to them but they were clever enough to just read quotations when they got to the place where they were describing all these dastardly things that had gone on they would quote what somebody had written in a magazine or a newspaper instead of telling it as a as a first-person story and so that the I you know are whatever preceded the FBI in those days wasn't able to say their inciting to riot because they were quoting from a paper well he told miss a week acted and I said no I don't wanna go I don't want that he said yeah you got to go so you remember he had told people he couldn't hardly get me out of the house so I give him a little augment about it but I had to go and have to sell my barefoot sandals and had a head bag on me and he said let's go we can't stay here it said we got to keep moving so he got out then he went to preaching to the people see we was very thickly settled in on both sided streets and all the houses was burnt down and my side when I'm on this side in that side but to house my house and enough all the rest I was burned down see all those other people have a chance they've got they would stick fried to the house and I wanted I was burning and folks is hauling some of them in running and my husband told me said no run so walk and stay out in the open and where they'll see you and so when nobody gets shot know what had happened to our Father and our brother you see they don't worry to know when you went home no and they're just the ladies yes the children and things were very much upset disturbed and the thing that bothered me the most was but I had seen them set fire to my doll clothes and I thought that was the last straw the dolls were hanging on the line because the lady that used to help us had washed all the clothes my grandmother was a fine seamstress and she had made the doll all kinds of good things and then to see them take a torch and set them on fire you know on the line so said yes I mean children you know cherish their possessions and a child needs never seen any hatred yep right the Klan was extraordinarily powerful in Tulsa in 1921 but then again it was too extraordinarily powerful throughout Oklahoma as a matter of fact during the 20s Oklahoma in and convicted two governors allegedly of course for other charges but it was an open secret that one of the principal reasons they got impeached and convicted was that they were antique land majority the Oklahoma Legislature were either Klansmen are supported by the Klan but then Oklahoma was not unusual states all across the country had that kind of influence on them but in Tulsa County itself there was a rather unique situation that developed in the late teens the Glanville oilfield was roaring that's just west of Tulsa County an awful lot of money poured into this city and the whites who were the big oil men lived on the east side of the Arkansas River the Roughnecks who worked the rig's lived on the west side well it wasn't enough housing on the Westside so a lot of the Roughnecks would come over to the east side and live in rooming houses on 12-hour shifts a lot of people said that was do the housing shortage a great degree it had to do with the working cycle of a roughneck on a rig his Roughnecks worked 12-hour shifts on rigs the point here is that a lot of the money that poured into Tulsa that helped build Tulsa into the beautiful city it became was also poured into the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan became extraordinarily well financed with that sound financing that they received from those oral men who was sympathetic to the Klan and who were in fact effectively manipulating the lower widening economic classes to their own benefit the Klan in Tulsa had a lot of money to do a lot of things that other Klan flaperons didn't have that kind of support to do for example they had a building the headquarters here in Tulsa it was called Beno Hall now what did Beno stand for stood for be no Jew be no [ __ ] be no Catholic I think it's ironic the bino Hall eventually evolved into a pig barn who are not only lynchings but there are other forms of persecution the Ku Klux Klan was real big on providing character guidance attitude adjustment and behavior modification on anybody they disagreed with not only including blacks but whites who they regarded as violating their standards it wasn't uncommon for a white person for example who might have been going out on his wife to be hauled out of his house one night and tied to a tree and flogged by man dressed in sheets many blacks however were lynched they were lynched by such organizations is not only the Ku Klux Klan but the Knights of the white camellia there were all kinds of super secret little organizations that were self-appointed vigilantes as a matter of fact that Justice Department itself created the American Protective League during World War one and made it function under the FBI which at that time was not the FBI we know today it was a politicized FBI but the American Protective League was largely an organization of volunteers civilian white men designed to ferret out any individuals of Germanic descent in Tulsa County and watch them to see if they conducted any espionage or pro Kyser activities during World War 1 the American Protective League was formally disbanded after World War one but that will give you an idea of the kind of mentality that existed then but to address your question yes there were lynchings and to give you an example several weeks before the Tulsa Ryan in Wagner which is a small town east of Tulsa a black man had been arrested on a minor charge and incarcerated in the wagon County Jail and that night the sheriff or the guard or deputy whoever was responsible for the jail conveniently went out to get a sandwich just as a crowd of people dressed in white robes entered the jail took the man out put a noose around his neck wrapped the other end of the rope around the bumper of a Model T Ford and dragged him down the middle of Wagner Main Street and that sort of thing didn't just happen in Oklahoma that sort of thing happened across the country and there were many lynchings before the riot and I'm sorry to say there were many lynchings after the riot but there weren't any lynchings in Tulsa County after the riot that I'm aware that my mother had actually shed tears I had never seen her cry and I had never heard her speech in that louder tone and a little thing like burning down the town was quite small to me in comparison with my shock to see this absolutely strong immobile in beautiful invincible right person with tears rolling down her cheek that was really the riot to me yeah seeing you know and and so then coming back home that was the determination to to make things to get things back to where there were well we naturally hope because we didn't know how we would because you know it's a store with the store completely destroyed at that time thought I didn't know that the insurance wasn't going to pay I mean everybody assumed their fire insurance that was an act of God with their firing would you know cover at least you know the basics but I had many nightmares after that I couldn't sleep at night and they they were really worried about me because it was such a shock to me I think I read them less than knew about prejudice but I didn't write right the interesting thing that happened during the riot was that the ride lasted almost all night of May 31st 1921 and into the early morning hours of June 1st 1921 before law enforcement authorities were able to get anything under control the city police didn't want anything to do with trying to control the Ku Klux Klan as a matter of fact the chief of police a man by the name of Gustafson confiscated black vehicles gave them to two of his crony police officers on the Tulsa Police Force which I might point out with some justification was a politicized police force at that time not the police force that Tulsa has today which is first class department but the point was in those days he gave those confiscated vehicles to those two police officers who went out and sold them to whites and then they shared the profit chief Gustafson was later indicted for this and removed from public office in June of 1921 but there were many other indictments too many of these indictments with a byproduct of National Guard boards of inquiry now what happened in the riot and this is fascinating was that here you have a major war going on in a in the downtown portion of Tulsa that erupted and moved north into the north part of the city eventually wiping out the north part of the city devastating it totally and yet the mayor none of the city commissioners called the governor now at that time we only had 140 man ambulance company in the Oklahoma National Guard stationed in Tulsa the governor at that time didn't know that was a riot in Tulsa until the next morning because no city or county official notified him with the exception of the County Sheriff the County Sheriff one of his black deputies through the north part of the city toward Sand Springs he got the Sand Springs to a telegraph keeping in mind the telephone lines were down the telegraph lines were down the railroad tracks were torn up there were two Klux Klansmen standing on roadblocks trying to catch blacks who trying to escape the city and there were refugees as far away as Kansas City in Wichita and Muskogee Oklahoma that deputy got to that Telegraph and telegraphed the governor on behalf of the County Sheriff that there was a riot in Tulsa and law and order had broken down JB a Robertson who was governor at the time sent the adjutant general who is the top military officer in the National Guard in Oklahoma to Tulsa the adjutant general arrived and immediately sized up the situation as being exactly what the governor had told them had been told by that deputy and the adjutant general mobilized the Oklahoma National Guard and they sent in Guard units from as far away as Enid and Lawton Oklahoma City and Muskogee in places like that and a lot of people attribute the troops that arrived were federal troops they weren't federal troops federal troops were never deployed here this was the Oklahoma National Guard that came in many of the survivors who I interviewed when they were still alive told me frankly the black survivors they told me frankly they wouldn't been alive that day if it hadn't been for Oklahoma National Guardsmen because the guardsmen came in and the very first thing they did was declare martial law and threatened to shoot anybody who was found armed they set up interment compounds to protect black refugees because black refugees were scattered all over the city their homes were burned they had no place to go and so they set up in terming compounds around the city in various parks and places like this so but I didn't tell you one of my husband's best friends was killed that day probably was in that race see he told him not to run and don't get in close places because they'd just shoot in that bunch this fellow was named Willie Lockett he and my husband were great friends and until I said to him said where are you going with him he said I don't know man I'm just going in he was on a horse and they said this was one of their favorite horses of a locket family so T I told him to be careful and stay out and open it but he was killed that day every single insurance company that had a policy covering any kind of damage to homes or commercial businesses or industry cut and ran on their insurance policy because ur a riot wasn't included the federal government and the state governments didn't have programs in place to compensate citizens for being the victims of a breakdown of law and order so effectively the citizens who lived in little Africa took the entire loss the problem was that when we're talking entire laws were talking everything there was no FDIC that they might have had their money in a bank and if the bank was burned at the money stolen there was no way to recoup it Jewelry stories in little Africa which trip plane furniture was taken out of homes everything was gone and the homes were burned to the ground so when we're talking about refugees we're talking about refugees that had nothing left except what they carried on their back yes it was a good friend of mine she and her husband Dave they gave birth to a little baby that night and you know I guess it didn't have nothing to put it in because there was no conveniences they put it on a shoebox no going baby and but some people you know some people that day you couldn't stop them from her on it we had to walk because that was our safe this way but these people was running and Seema's old that they set this box now who had this big world and the rest of people got awfully tired and they couldn't find it it was stillborn already dead but they didn't want to go to wait I'm gonna take it home and then have a chill and what they didn't get to and there was so many things that take place that day then we lost our our best doctor the next morning but they told me that he had oh he stood somewhere then one of those building down by don where they looked three cardinal places on the Greenwood you know it's the rooming house on that side yes I'm like that on this siding in the Brickyard well they said he stood long Danny he just mold quite a few of them down by 1925 you you you couldn't tell while there was still some rubble or artistry but for the most part you couldn't really tell that it had been a completely devastated community and they didn't buy it built houses and they built stores and they built hotels and put back in elementary school the elementary school had been completely bombed out but they so they were mad with their schools and back with their pride and but yeah and nothing was gonna stop them that's the way they don't know they had a lot of trouble building because somebody thought of the idea of making an ordinance that no one could build a one-story house if you built you had to build two stories on a certain amount you see that was a zoning that was passed surreptitiously right to keep them from building back on that spot because the town really wanted to expand out there but there was an attorney BC Franklin and a couple of other lawyers like lawyers who went to court and won that case that the people own their land they could build back on their land whatever they chose and that they didn't have to live by these specifications that the zoning people had put in that were really artificial you know this is over 70 years right yeah since the fire been long what do you what do you think now about the fire about being in Tulsa as a little girl then well I guess looking looking back I'm very glad I had that kind of start where I never had to wonder whether or not you could do something or accomplish something yeah there were so many people who had and did and knowing people when you're a child and you know people who look like you who own airplanes yeah it does something for you you know that it was in many ways a very privileged we weren't rich but it was a very privileged kind of experience it never occurred to me to think that Mexicans or Native Americans were inferior or different or that we shouldn't because I had always been brought up you know where they ran around and sure that's art so it wasn't a matter of talking about it I think it has been a very good investment because there's been so much hate and dissension now that if I had understood more I would be a much different first of them less meaner person all right there were witnesses that an airplane crossed the black community by air and something was thrown out of it there were explosions the problem is that you don't have a cause-and-effect direct relationship because Tulsa was hiked by natural gas in those days as it is today and many of the homes were already burning so from a more precise perspective there isn't hard proof that a plane came over the black community and dropped bombs on the black community however there have been a couple of things we've been able to establish there was a plane over the black community there were things thrown out of it there are some interesting conclusions you can reach from some of available evidence first wasn't a government plane there were only about a half dozen planes in the state at that time that belong with the government there was no Air Force then the Air National Guard didn't exist and there were about a half a dozen biplanes at Fort Sill none of them took off the ground during this period but this was the period of Barnstormers it wasn't uncommon for a pilot who learned how to fly in World War one to have a biplane and to fly around the country and do tricks at state fairs and maybe take somebody up for a couple of dollars that in all likelihood was what happened then then a Barnstormer had his own airplane actually flew over the black community now if he threw out anything and if it was about it's perfectly understandable how it could have worked because it doesn't take very much to make a bomb particularly if you're a veteran of a recent war that had just ended Greenwood was soon labeled the black Wall Street of America it consisted of highly educated black doctors lawyers PhDs merchants oilman and entrepreneurs the interesting thing about this particular situation is that in north Tulsa in 1921 prior to the riot there existed an area called little Africa and that was a mark of respect the black business community was extraordinarily prosperous as a matter of fact possibly the best minds in black America had migrated to North Tulsa in the late teens and early twenties they built a commercial and business establishment so prosperous that it rivaled any place in the world in fact the main street of little Africa Greenwood was utha mystically referred to as a black Wall Street they were millionaires that lived there and some of the architecture of some of the old homes in north Tulsa did any representative period what do we tell people today about and in reacting to that what did we learn from it well I think two things one is that the newspapers were able to keep it secret in fact to perpetrate the lie that everybody got restitution nobody's got any restitution of anything but they could they could fabricate a lie and and it would be accepted as truth and nobody worried about it true and yet the people survived but not because you know they got any kind of justice and I think one thing that we might have learned but what's that if people really have a strong will and a strong feeling for each other but it's amazing what can be accomplished and I'm particularly grateful for the education I got in Tulsa when we went back to Brooklyn Washington High it was a fantastic school the teachers were so well trained they couldn't get jobs anywhere else of course and so they taught there and when I went to Columbus yeah uh I was going to say well into Columbus the teachers did not believe that I had been taught all I had been taught you know because they thought South you know and I remember even in math the teacher said community quadratic equations this is a ninth grade I said well which method would you like and she said what how many do you know and I said well for she said in ninth grade you can do four ways of what we were talking about had been talking about black Wall Street the fact that it existed let's talk just for a minute about the nature of the book what is the book about the book is about the most prolific and world is black community in America and we tell that story through the eyes of an african-american Ohio man and a Jewish merchant we thought it was very important that each one of these characters represent ten people that you read in this book we wrote a book very visual we wrote the book the way kids think we put on the tones in the book to make them turn the pages and that's what exciting about the book the book tells you the story as though you're right there and it does - and by the way more than the book you have a videotape we have a videotape alcohol black go through the Holocaust is fifty five minutes long it tells you the store that did that ride June 1st 1921 tell our viewers briefly about the children's book the children's book is a black Wall Street a city made ago that was written by my wife and I Ned Wilson which my wife is Latricia Wallace and it gives positive images and we're after positive images in this story an old man about 80 years old told me is that if you write the story wrong please do not write about the hate because the person you may be writing about may be your cause all over the country our inner-city communities are suffering we're asking 1 million African Americans to stand up and take back your community to book a black Wall Street town hall meeting give us a call at one eight hundred five to seven seven to nine nine call today I wish we had more time and we don't sorry we have to close on behalf of Ron and Leticia Wallace and the black wall street team I want to thank you for being here with us it was wonderful thank you for the important role that you played in the in American history we salute you for what you've done for your country the story that you've told and thank you for those of you who have been watching remember that we can begin to change the world but we can only do it by changing ourselves and then passing it on to those around us so pass it on and God bless you till we meet again what words of wisdom could you give kids what what in terms of following somewhere you are a part of their patterns and perspectives about discipline to keep them out of harm's way what could you do what could you lean the young kids I'll say this directly to the camera if you're young and you live in America whether you're white black red green or whatever you have a lot of adversity and you know what those adversities are because you're the one that's young you're the one that's suffering all the pains of degradation as for being young if you want to make a difference figure out what it is you want to do where it is you want to go and don't let anybody under any circumstances deny you [Music] Ryan [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah I must be [Music] [Music] [Music] and have much today

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Length: 56min 58sec (3418 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020