Black Wall Street was the soul I imagine for the Generation, post-slavery utopia Breathing came easy 'cause God blessed the child that had his own And we own all of this Imagine that Negros running things Greenwood was a very wealthy Black community of 11,000 people. [Bradley] Greenwood happened because Black people can take America's worst and make it excellent. But the racism was thick and real. How dare these black folks go and build a community for themselves. They wanted to eliminate the Black town. The Greenwood district is completely destroyed. And they lost everything. [Bradley] Black Wall Street is important to the imagination of Black people. The trajectory could've been different. And now the promises of the past can become the social agenda of the future. [soulful music playing] [song playing] [Hill] The Greenwood district was one of the most prominent and affluent Black communities in the country. It was a symbol of what is possible for Black people in America. But to understand the story of Black Wall Street, we have to go back to the Trail of Tears. First Black people to come to Oklahoma were actually members of the Native American tribes. [Harjo] The five tribes, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole were slave-holding tribes. Some of them wanted to show that they were in allyship by mimicking what like the white settlers are doing. Indigenous people were affected by anti-Black racism. The process invited them into the slave-holder culture, even as they were subject to the worst forms of oppression and discrimination of themselves. When the Five Tribes signed a Removal Treaty, they had to remove their Black slaves too. [Harjo] The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly evicts Native American tribes in the southeast, and transfers their lands to white farmers to expand cotton plantations. Over 100,000 Native Americans and approximately 4,000 enslaved African-Americans make the treacherous journey to Indian territory, now known as Oklahoma. The over 5,000 mile brutal and deadly removal is known as the Trail of Tears and Death. [Grayson] When everybody got to Oklahoma, there were many different ways... Black people were still enslaved here. They still were property. And they had to rebuild what the Indian tribes had in the Deep South. After the Civil War, you had freed men living in Oklahoma. You have a freed Black population, able to live on tribal lands in a communal way. [jazz music playing] [narrator] The Dawes Act passed in 1887, allowing the Federal government to break up tribal lands into individual plots. [Luckerson] Black people in Oklahoma owned more land than any other part of the country. About two million acres of land were allotted to freed men. So when you think about forty acres and a mule, and that false promise after the Civil War, Black people actually got that in Oklahoma. [Hill] Those land allotments become the seeds of more than 50 Black towns that emerge in Oklahoma. More than any other state in the country. Once the five tribes received their allotment, then whatever was left, that was deemed surplus and the government opened it for sale to whoever wanted to buy it. OW Gurley was a Southerner who hailed from Arkansas, who came to Tulsa to purchase land. The land that Greenwood exists on, was not land that whites at that time deemed as valuable, but as land that could be sold to "a negro buyer." Gurley purchases an allotment of land. His goal was to incubate a Black community. [Luckerson] OW Gurley opened a grocery store on what would become Greenwood Avenue. He was really able to tap into a lot of dynamics happening throughout the state, where people would be travelling to meet different communities. And some of the freed men went up and set up on Greenwood. They were able to provide some of that nurturing wealth. [Hill] Land for recently enslaved people is everything. Because we have to imagine a world in which an enslaved person did not have property rights in themselves. OW Gurley determined that he would only sell that land to Black buyers. [Goodwin] My great-grandfather knew that in Mississippi, folks would limit you because of your skin color. He wanted to go to a place where his children could be better educated. And that's how they would come to Oklahoma. It was known, if you want to be free, come to this territory. So Black folks heard the call... "Come to Greenwood." There was a high level of independence and autonomy among Black folks in Oklahoma. It was a mixture of this freed-man wealth and freed-man land ownership. There was sort of an openness and they thought they would be able to chart their own new course. at the start of the 20th century. Black people went, "Wow! The Black people here are land owners. And they are prospering!" My great-great-grandfather took up camp in Tallahassee, Oklahoma, which is one of our states oldest Black towns. From there, some of the family members migrated to Tulsa. The funny thing is, when the government put Native Americans and freed-men on Indian territory, they had no idea what was on the land. They discovered oil in Glenpool, and that turned Tulsa into the oil capital of the world. African-Americans didn't work in oil businesses, but began working for the rich, white folks in the oil business. As more oil was found... Tulsa becomes this boom town. [soulful music plays] [Luckerson] Greenwood was on the ascent. It grew so rapidly and had so many people coming here, who were so ambitious. Greenwood was a district that had been founded by OW Gurley and JB Stradford. [Goodwin] They had a particular mindset. You come, you build and help the community grow. Mr. Stradford was a business incubator of sorts. He did the things that people today have to go to business school to learn how to do. Microloans, start-up capital, cooperative economics, he did that innately. They were able to build these businesses from the ground up in the Greenwood district. [Hill] Black people see Tulsa as the place where they can have prosperity, can support their family, have education in relative safety, as opposed to the Deep South. Because Oklahoma did not have statehood. [Luckerson] You're in the Deep South, you're living under the boot of Jim Crow. Where in Oklahoma territory, the laws hadn't quite been settled yet. Oklahoma had to decide what kind of city we're gonna be. Are we going to be a new kind of state? Or are we going to be an extension of the Jim Crow South? [Hill] Ambitious African-Americans who wanted the territory to join the Union, asked that it be admitted as a Black state. [Luckerson] Black people actually travelled from Oklahoma to the White House to meet with Teddy Roosevelt, asking him not to allow Oklahoma to become a state with Jim Crow policies. But the powers that be chose Jim Crow. [news reporter] President Teddy Roosevelt addressed a proud population after officially signing the document which brought Oklahoma into the Union. [Hill] The first laws that are passed in Oklahoma in 1907 segregate the state. Making it clear that Black people and white people were gonna live in two societies. You've got sundown towns, where Black folks can't be there after dark. Policies and laws walled Black people out. But walled them in with each other, and they were able to create an economic center for Black Tulsa. Black people could not shop anywhere else in Tulsa besides that 35-block area! The Greenwood district gets incubated by these captive Black buyers. [Harjo] You know, folks made it work for them. "Fine, then. Actually, you're walling us in and you're walling our money in. We'll keep our dollars circulating and we'll build ourselves up." We're able to build out and develop our communities to the fullest extent that we desire. [Davis] The development of that vibrant community with its businesses and with its cultural dimension, that was certainly part of the way in which we learned how to inhabit a system of segregation and racism. And at the same time, assert our own dignity. [Hill] And so, when you have aspiring Black people who want the nicest goods and services of the day... you get businesses, you get fine establishments, 'cause you have not just a small Black elite, but you have a significant Black middle-class. [Goodwin] Not only did you see the doctors, you got your pharmacists. And along with it now, understand... Greenwood wasn't all upwardly mobile. You had your bootleggers, you had folks that were running the numbers, you have all of that going on. It was a community. [Ross] So you had numerous restaurants. You had movie theaters, law offices, photography studios, all bunched up in this one little area. And many would call it "Little Africa." They would dress in their finest apparel. And they would go to the jazz clubs and blues clubs up and along Greenwood. And kinda parade for each other. It's simply amazing when you look at the list of the the Black-owned businesses that existed here. [Ross] My great-grandfather, Isaac Evitt, he had a business on Greenwood called the Zulu Lounge. It wasn't a fancy place. It was get that choc beer and that dead-eye whiskey, and have camaraderie among friends. It was the 1921 Greenwood version of Cheers. There was a Goodwin building. And in the Goodwin building was a Union grocery, a Duncan Clinton restaurant and a rooming house. Then you had the Stradford Hotel. One of the finest hotels owned by a Black man, JB Stradford, that would rival any white hotel in terms of the decor. Crystal chandeliers, etc. There were many businesses owned by Black women in the Greenwood district. Black women were just as much entrepreneurs as their male counterparts. They were savvy business owners. There were restaurants, and beauty shops, and clothing stores. They contributed to the success of the Greenwood district. Loula Williams is a founder of Black Wall Street. She and JD Williams owned the Dreamland Theater. They owned an autobody shop. These were industrious people who figured out a way out of no way to make a Black life in America. She is an exemplar of Black Wall Street and what was possible. [Jennings] My great-grandparents had two other theaters too, but Dreamland was the main one. Dreamland was a gathering place. They had vaudeville shows and featured the latest movies. [Hill] The Dreamland theater was the finest Black entertainment establishment And this is a 700-person theater! In 1921! There's not a theater like that in Oklahoma today! [laughs] [Williams] They were setting their standards. It was important to have a venue where Black art and Black artists could be featured. [Hill] There was a level of cooperation in the Greenwood district that was less about capitalism, and more about cooperative economics. It was an energetic community that was self-contained, yet self-determined. When Booker T. Washington visits Oklahoma, there's this kinetic energy that's there. And he's able to say this is a model for other Black communities to follow, to build an America in which Black people have independence. This community becomes known as Black Wall Street. [jazz music playing] "Whenever there is a will, there is a way. We must double our determination. We must work incessantly to see our hopes realized and our labor crowned with success. I hope the day will soon come, when our city will be more liberal with our colored citizens." JB Stradford in a letter to AJ Smitherman. Tulsa really begins to become a boom town after oil is discovered. Much of it was drilled on land owned by indigenous and Black people. Backed by the government, white settlers tried to seize control of the land. [Williams] Oklahoma passed a law where white guardians were appointed to children whose land allotments had struck oil. Guardians handled the money that was being brought in from the oil. We're talking about millions and millions of dollars. And not in today's money, in that day's money. Warrior Rentie, his family's land had struck oil and they had appointed a white guardian to his children. The argument was that the parents were incompetent. AJ was there. They went over and spoke to this newly appointed guardian. And Warrior told him, "The day that you are a guardian of my children is the day you will die." Warrior was arrested. Thus the expose of the guardianship racket began. AJ not only managed to prevail in the case, so that Warrior was awarded guardianship over all of his children. They started the Negro Guardianship League so that they could help others who were part of this awful racket. [instrumental music playing] AJ Smitherman, he met with JB Stradford. He told him his intention of starting a Black newspaper. And JB offered a $200 loan. Fortunately, AJ found right away a press plant and two employees. And began The Tulsa Star. The rest is history. At that time, white newspapers weren't covering Black lives in any kind of comprehensive way. And so it fell on Black journalists to be able to tell those stories. AJ Smitherman brings some of the conscience of Greenwood across the United States. AJ Smitherman was the president of the Negro Press Association. He was the original Black social media. He was the Black Twitter. The pen warrior. He had the first Black female cartoonist. A staff of Black women who sold advertising for his paper. He made his wife, my big mommy, the social editor. He constantly reported on women organizations. I just love him for that. [chuckles] Dr. AC Jackson... is maybe the most incredible story of Greenwood. He was a stellar student and graduated from Meharry Medical School. He moved to Greenwood and opened his practice at the corner of Greenwood and Archer. Dr. AC Jackson was recognized by William and Charlie Mayo of Mayo Clinic, as being the finest Black surgeon in the country, if not the world. I actually trained at Mayo. I remember as a resident, reading about the most famous physicians of modern times, knowing who he was. I can't imagine how good he had to be to get to that point then. It's pretty powerful to think about. Black Wall Street gains the consternation of whites who were worried about the strivings of Black people. Who don't just want to be economic equals, they want to be social equals. And this becomes a threat. [Davis] When Black communities are successful, and when they exhibit a community spirit, they will certainly be targeted. No Black person ended up in Oklahoma by chance. You had a very specific group of people who had come out to this place. Asserting their own independence, their own equality and their own human worth. [Williams] Augusta Stradford was JB Stradford's wife. And she refused to give up her seat on a train. JB Stradford and his wife, Augusta were travelling from Kansas to Oklahoma. Kansas did not require Jim Crow cars. At that time, Oklahoma did. They were asked to move to a Jim Crow car when they were past the state border, and they refused to do so. And were removed from the car for insubordination. JB ends up suing the rail road company, asserting that this policy was racist and against the constitution. Collective resistance was absolutely necessary. One cannot be free without spreading that freedom and encouraging the development of that freedom. What we have to understand about America in the 1920s is that racial violence against Black people gets justified by this idea that Black people, specifically Black men are criminal. And there needs to be spectacular violence done to them, in order to control the Black population. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson called for a screening in the White House of Birth of a Nation. And it was the emergence of a white-supremacist United States of America. It legitimized even the most violent forms of white supremacy... lynchings. The visual representation of lynchings was actually key to the racist violence as the only way to guard against Black leadership. [Hill] And Black Wall Street, they were striving. Not just for economic independence. Not just for prosperity. But for equality. This was understood. And therefore, created resentment and trepidation amongst whites in Tulsa. Can you imagine, you're a white man from Mississippi, in a age where the white man was superior to negros, but you see that Greenwood is full of wealthy people. There was a lot of animosity going on. There was a sense of jealousy in the air. How dare these Black folks go and build a community for themselves. How dare there be Black folks that are roaming around in drop-tops, when white folks have not amassed that same amount of wealth at all levels. [Ross] They did not like that these uppity negros were able to make all this money, have nice fine items, have nice cars, nice furniture in their homes and silverware and clothing. They despised that. [Brown-Burdex] Initially, when African-Americans began to build their homes and businesses at the corner of Greenwood and Archer, the city of Tulsa wasn't too concerned. But as that wealth trickled into the Greenwood district, there was an interest in having African-Americans sell their land in the Greenwood district and relocate farther north. They were approached and asked to relocate. And they refused to do so. [ominous music plays] "The Tulsa Star's synonymous with any term meaning the civil and political rights of the American colored man. In this, we are not compromising." AJ Smitherman wrote that in The Tulsa Star. In the State of Oklahoma, AJ Smitherman was the first registered Black Democrat. At that time, it'd be very hard to find other Black Democrats registered throughout the United States. The vast majority of Blacks would always vote Republican. Republicans could take for granted the Black vote, because Lincoln had been Republican. AJ started noticing that Republicans were voting against Civil Rights. It was a huge risk, but he was on a mission to help diversify the Black vote in America. [Hill] He's the quintessential race man taking issue with discrimination and inequality that Black people experience in Tulsa. He was a crusader against lynching. In many ways, he represented the manhood. I see him as the guardian of Black Tulsa. [Williams] In the seven years that he had that newspaper in Tulsa, he turned the Black vote to over 50% Democratic. Here we are 100 years later, and Blacks are primarily Democrats. That movement was started by my great-grandfather in the early 1900s. The people of Greenwood were beginning to show the white leaders that they did have power in numbers and the power to vote. And that was a threat. So the way to eliminate the Black vote... was to get rid of the Black town. [ominous music plays] Just like today, there was a strategy that had been taking place in the south. Where white women accuse a Black man in order to incite violence. They keep following me. They're threatening me. I'm in trouble. There's an African-American man threatening my life. Sir, I'm asking to stop recording me. [man] Please don't come close to me. Whiteness and white supremacy gets threatened if folks of color gain power. Greenwood was a threat and you have to squash threats. [Goodwin] The people of Greenwood knew that racist white folks were envious of this prosperous Black community. But they didn't know the degree of the devastation that would visit Greenwood. It all started with Dick Rowland. [Brown-Burdex] Dick Rowland was a shoeshine boy in downtown Tulsa. He had dropped out of Booker T. Washington High School to shine the shoes of rich, white oil men. He made so much money that he wore a diamond-encrusted belt-buckle, and his nickname was Diamond Dick. Dick Rowland needed to go to the restroom and the restroom was on the fourth floor of the building. [Brown-Burdex] There was a young white girl named Sarah Page. And it was her job to operate the elevator from one floor to the next. [elevator dings] Everyday, Dick Rowland would enter the Drexel Building to go upstairs to use the restroom. He encountered Sarah Page on numerous occasions. [Luckerson] At some point in the elevator, Sarah Page screamed and Dick Rowland ran from the Drexel Building. No one can say with 1000% veracity what happened. [Williams] Dick Rowland went into an elevator and came out a man that was falsely accused. [Brown-Burdex] Dick Rowland was arrested. And he was taken to the jailhouse located above the courthouse. [Williams] The Tulsa Tribune published an article saying, "Nab the negro." [Hill] Rumors began to spread that it wasn't just that Dick Rowland had attacked Sarah Page, he raped her. [Luckerson] The rape allegation whips up a lot of excitement on both sides of the tracks. This becomes fodder for white men in Tulsa to say, "We have to stand up against this community in which this attack emanates from. And if you are a white man worth his salt, you would do what you could to defend white people, white society and particularly, white women from Black criminality." A second inflammatory article came out that says, "Looks like there is going to be a lynching in Tulsa tonight." [Williams] This was inciting a violent mob to gather before the courthouse and to remove Dick Rowland from the custody of the officials in order to lynch him. [Brown-Burdex] Whites had begun to gather in front of the courthouse, angry and upset about what had happened, and determined to take matters into their own hands. They had hung a white man few months before. So they know if they hung a white man, they sure enough would hang a Black man. [Williams] In front of The Tulsa Star, AJ Smitherman gathered World War I veterans, Black men who had fought overseas and had been trained, with the intention of going to protect Dick Rowland from a mob. Some accounts say a thousand white people were outside of the county courthouse. Later, those people would say that they were there to observe what was going to happen. But, you know... What are you expecting to happen if you're outside of a courthouse in the middle of the night, May 31st, 1921? [Cooper] Wasn't something that happened out of nowhere. This is years of racial tension and racial violence. [Goodwin] On that evening, my grandfather, Ed Goodwin Senior, he was a senior at Booker T. They were supposed to be preparing for their graduation. While they were engaged in what they were doing, someone came to them and they said, "There's troubles coming." [Luckerson] A very large group of white men were out there and then armed Black men come driving down from Greenwood to the courthouse. And I would imagine that the white people there, probably felt a mix of surprise, anger and fear at what they were seeing. This is not how they expect society to function. [Hill] The ways in which the white mob encircle the county courthouse was part and parcel of lynching culture in America. [Goodwin] There were white folks saying, "We're looking to lynch Dick Rowland tonight." Black World War I veterans said, "Listen, we're not gonna allow this young, Black man to be hung. He needs to have his day in court." The tensions are high. Black man had a gun. The white man said, "What are you gonna do with the gun?" Black man says, "I'mma use it if I have to." They attempt to take the gun from the Black man. A shot rings out. [gun fires] From that point... all hell broke lose. [crowd screaming] [gunshots firing] [Davis] All of the major steps in democratizing the United States of America have happened as a result of the struggles of Black people. And the efforts to prevent this, of course, are extreme and they are violent. And one sees that after the Wilmington, North Carolina massacre, the Red Summer in 1919, and then of course, Greenwood. [Luckerson] White people tried to loot the National Guard armory. They broke into a hardware store to take as many weapons as they possibly could. They were attempting to be deputized by police. This man names Laurel Buck was at the courthouse shortly before Black men came in the cars, sees everything unfold, and he just makes a beeline for the police department. What was said by the police was, "Get a gun, get busy and get a nigger." [gun cocking] [Brown-Burdex] The Sherriff's department deputized over 500 white men who were joined by the police force. Who were joined by thousands of white rioters. The Black people who were in downtown had been pushed back into Greenwood. They were having skirmishes across rail road tracks with white groups. The way that the massacre has been portrayed often times in the media has been that Blacks were fleeing for their lives. And it... omits the part where African-American men armed themselves. And positioned themselves in some strategic locations. [Ross] A gentlemen by the name of "Peg Leg" Taylor, who stood upon what we know today as Standpipe Hill, he was a veteran of World War I. But he brought back as one of his souvenirs, a Gatling gun. And there he was positioned upon Standpipe Hill. And as the mobsters came into the Greenwood area, he would fire upon them, taking them out. One by one. [Jennings] My grandfather and great-grandfather were holed up in a room with guns for basically 24 hours. My grandfather would be reloading my great-grandfather's guns, and they were there the entire time. My great-grandfather ended up sending my great-grandmother to her mother's house. And at that point, they had no idea what was gonna happen to any of them. Along with these intermittent skirmishes happening, Black groups were trying to defend the community. The early morning hours of June 1st, the Blacks actually ran the mob off. People actually thought that it might settle. And that things would be okay. [Williams] The mob went and organized and galvanized, with the government's participation, they met the Sheriff's offices to carry out this mission to obliterate the entire district. [Luckerson] No one knows exactly the context of why what happens next happened, but around 5:00 am, an industrial whistle was sounded -[whistle blows] -and a mob stormed Greenwood. They came across the rail road tracks, came down Greenwood Avenue, and they began entering buildings and systematically burning them. White people would take all the furniture, clothing, put it in the middle of the room, douse it in kerosene and set it on fire. And they'd be going around in small groups doing this, building by building, throughout Greenwood and down Greenwood Avenue. The Tulsa Police deputized 250 to 500 white men to arrest and if need be, kill Black people who they believe were in rebellion against Tulsans. This was not a riot... This was a massacre. [ominous music playing] [narrator] Next week. Part Two... The Legacy of Black Wall Street. [Bradley] Black Wall Street was hundreds and thousands of the very best business owners and professionals who made the most of the least. Creating their best lives and they were punished for it. [Hill] It was the deadliest, most destructive attack on a Black community in American history. [Davis] For a very long time, Black people remained silent about this, because they didn't want the next generation to have to undergo the same violence. [Hill] By 1942, the number of businesses had grown. It was a larger community. It was a much more affluent community. than it had ever been in 1921. But they still faced discrimination and rigid segregation. A Black entrepreneur requires a level of defiance. There is also an anxiety. Because, if you took it out the first time, and you took it out again, what is that next thing that's coming to destroy this again.
