Black History Month: Black Wall Street

By Jaliyah Suggs, Library Research Assistant

After the Civil War in 1865, previously enslaved men and women settled in Native American territory comprised of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Tribes. This historic freedom colony became the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. From then to 1921 around 10,000 Black residents created a self-sustaining place with over 600 businesses for its community to work, live, learn, shop, and worship. Greenwood was known as where the wealthy Black Americans resided, and beyond its borders they were unwelcomed, unless working.  

The plan was to continue to prosper with generations to come, but all changed on Memorial Day in 1921, when a shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, allegedly stepped on a young woman’s, Sarah Page, foot, causing her to scream while riding an elevator downtown. Page did not want to press charges, but the court decided to go on with the case, charging Rowland with alleged assault. On May 31^st, while many decided to show their support by protecting Rowland from a potential lynching, they were also about to experience further disrupting news. For the next 24 hours, an angry white supremacist mob decided to loot, torch up, and rain down bullets and inflammables with low flying planes on Greenwood. The mob destroyed about 1,000 homes and businesses and 300 Black residents were killed. In 2020, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology estimate that the amount of property that destroyed would be valued at $200 million today.  

After the massacre, the Black citizens that survived had their claims of commissions that they needed to rebuild denied, and many were arrested and detained by officials, deeming them to be “the primary threat to law and order.” No member of the mob was convicted for their violent crimes. In 2001, Oklahoma approved the funds to redevelop Tulsa and build a memorial.  

Learn more about the history of Black Wall Street and Black entrepreneurs who have and continue to prevail despite racial violence perpetuated against Black communities, by exploring our curated list of books, podcasts, documentaries and more.