Black Wall Street

Shout out to the victims of “Black Wall Street”—the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma that is the most successful and affluent black community in U.S. history through 1921.

The Tulsa race riot is solely responsible for the demolition and destruction of Black Wall Street, including the massacring of over 50 blacks. Commencing with a false rape allegation of a black man on a white woman on May 30, 1921 in an elevator on Black Wall Street, a white mob began setting ablaze over two dozen black-owned businesses a couple days later. An all-out assault on Greenwood ensued, including airplanes carrying white assailants firing rifles and dropping firebombs on buildings, homes, and families. In summary, 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, the only black hospital, and other businesses were destroyed.

These events were purposely long omitted from local and state histories, having rarely being mentioned in history books and classrooms.

The Greenwood neighborhood was intersected by Archer and Pine street, and these first letters were the origin of the Tulsa based group of the 1970s and 1980s, The Gap Band.

#BlackHistoryMonth™ #BHM

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