Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District - Oklahoma Black History

Before the streets of the Greenwood District ran red with Black blood, the district was a promised land, and the realization of the African American dream.

They called it: Black Wall Street.

“Black Wall Street.” That’s what they called the Greenwood District, and with good reason. This Black community on the northeastern outskirts of downtown Tulsa was unlike any other place in Oklahoma, America—or for that matter, the world. Here, Black business owners, professionals, and families were finally free to chart their own destinies, carving an oasis in the wild west that was liberated from racism in the south and discrimination in the north. But like every dream, it would not last forever. This dream ended in a blood-soaked nightmare.

Oklahoma, A Black Paradise

People of African ancestry moved west to Oklahoma and the surrounding states during Indian Removal in the 1830s and 1840s, largely as enslaved persons. Decades after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the federal government forced tribes to grant allotments to those persons whom they formerly enslaved. In addition, during the Land Run of 1889, eager Americans, both white and Black, staked out homesteads in Oklahoma Territory.

The Black population swelled further as word spread that pre-statehood Oklahoma (then divided into Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory) was a land of opportunity and freedom. All-Black towns began to spring up throughout the state at a time when race relations were mostly amicable. Black migrants to Oklahoma considered it a “promised land.” However, white migrants from the Deep South and a growing and economically successful Black population adversely affected race relations.

Nevertheless, the Black Oklahomans experienced opportunities they never had in the North, and possibly never could in the Deep South. With their newfound freedom, these Black trailblazers established businesses and bought land to start their own farms. While Oklahoma held the promise of being a Black paradise, the tensions grew more intense.

The Birth of Black Wall Street

The African American dream in Oklahoma is well illustrated through the personal vision of one man: Ottowa "O.W." Gurley, the self-made, self-educated, Arkansas-born son of former slaves, who resigned an appointment by President Grover Cleveland to strike out west, lured thousands of other westward-bound settlers by the promise of land, which had previously belonged to indigenous peoples. Gurley claimed his plot in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1899 in Perry, Oklahoma, some 80 miles west of Tulsa, and built a quiet life for himself and his childhood sweetheart as general store owner and school principal. But by the turn-of-the-century, the entrepreneurial Gurley saw opportunity in Tulsa after oil was discovered in nearby Red Fork.

Gurley moved to Tulsa in around 1906, just prior to Oklahoma statehood. He purchased land in what is now the Greenwood District, some of which he sold to others. He imagined a place that would be a sanctuary for a people who had known little more than struggle since arriving on America’s shores. Alongside other Black entrepreneurs, Gurley helped build “Black Wall Street.”

The Greenwood District

A natural-born entrepreneur, Gurley understood demand needed supply, and he helped provide it. Oklahoma’s Jim Crow laws and the racial climate meant Black Tulsans could not shop in white-owned establishments. No worries. The shops and professional service outlets in the Greenwood District filled the void. Segregation inadvertently and ironically inspired an unparalleled surge in Black business and entrepreneurship.

Starting in 1913 and through the rest of the decade, the Greenwood District thrived, and was home to numerous Black-owned establishments: the law office of Buck Colbert “B.C.” Franklin; the practice of surgeon Andrew Cheesten “A.C.” Jackson; Dunbar and Booker T. Washington schools; Vernon AME and Mount Zion Baptist churches; the Stradford Hotel; the Williams’ Dreamland Theatre; Mann’s Grocery Stores; and numerous Black-owned drugstores, barber shops, beauty salons, and restaurants.

While many Black people still worked in the white sections of Tulsa, they called the Greenwood District home. Dollars circulated within the confines of the community. Black Tulsans prospered, with the wealthiest able to afford grand pianos and even private planes. The Greenwood District’s national reputation drew African Americans to Tulsa by the thousands, with census reports showing 8,878 African Americans called Tulsa home in 1920, a number that jumped 21% in just one year to nearly 11,000 people in 1921.

The 1920s were roaring for America, and for the first time Black people were part of the boom, at least in the Greenwood District. But while the decade began with jubilation, it descended in flames, for in the hot summer of 1921, Black Wall Street burned to the ground.

The Massacre

Within 15 years, Black Wall Street blossomed from one man’s dream to a beacon of hope for an entire race. Thirty-five square blocks beckoned Black Americans from coast to coast, who hoped to sip from the wellsprings of opportunity that other Americans took for granted.

But it would not last.

Beneath the surface, much of Tulsa seethed at the affluence happening in the Greenwood District. Racism trumped patriotism. While the Greenwood District affirmed America’s reputation as an engine for groundbreaking prosperity, it also contradicted deeply held white supremacist notions. Racist violence was on the rise nationwide, with hundreds of people, most of them Black, dying in “race riots” across the United States during Red Summer (1919). Tulsa was a powderkeg. Social, economic, and racial tensions were the gas; all it needed was a spark.

On May 31, 1921, Black shoe-shiner Dick Rowland rode in an elevator with a young white woman named Sarah Page. Reports vary, but Rowland either stepped on Page’s foot or fell into her, causing Page to scream and a bystander to call the police. The afternoon edition of The Tulsa Tribune got wind of the incident and published a false narrative suggesting that Rowland attempted to rape Page.

An angry white mob marched before the city courthouse where Rowland was jailed. There they encountered Black men on scene to defend him. A fight broke out and a shot was fired, the first but not the last. Black Tulsans escaped home, while groups of white mobs attacked any Black people they saw, eventually making their way to the heart of Black Tulsa: the Greenwood District.

In the early morning hours of June 1, a thousand white people stormed the Greenwood District, assaulting, looting, and even shooting residents. Armed with firearms and torches, they burned Black Wall Street to the ground. The National Guard arrived the next morning. By then, the destruction was near total. More than 1,200 homes had been destroyed, leaving 10,000 people homeless, while somewhere between 100 and 300 people lost their lives.

This event was and remains the worst act of racial carnage in American history. For decades, it was called the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, perhaps because a “riot” would not have required insurers to compensate the Black Tulsans who had lost everything. Today, it is more commonly called the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The Aftermath

Gurley lost his $200,000 fortune (equivalent to $2.7 million today) in the fires and moved to California, where he died in 1935. Rowland was exonerated, while no white residents were charged for the massacre by an all-white grand jury. Insurance companies refused to pay claims to Black property owners, citing Mayor T.D. Evans and police chief Gustafson, who blamed Black Tulsans for inciting a riot. Meanwhile, Tulsa’s City Commission quickly rezoned the Greenwood District from residential to industrial, and redrew fire code restrictions to state buildings had to be brick, not wood. The Commission unveiled a new master plan: Move the Black neighborhood up north and free up the valuable land for development.

Second Destruction - Urban Renewal

Black Tulsans lost their homes, but not their spirit. The Greenwood District was only temporarily stilled. In defiance of the Tulsa City Commission’s edict, Black people rebuilt the Greenwood District under the cover of night. Meanwhile, attorney B.C. Franklin sued the city, among others, and won the suit, with three Tulsa County judges ruling that the city did not have the right to stop property owners from rebuilding. Hundreds of structures were rebuilt by the end of 1921, and by the early to mid-1940s, the Greenwood District was home to well over 200 Black-owned and operated businesses. Following the massacre, the Greenwood District experienced nearly a half-century of prosperity. However, its second destruction, while not as dramatic, was no less devastating. It came not from a mob, but from a series of laws.

The Federal Highway Acts of 1965 and 1968 resulted in the construction of the Inner-Dispersal Loop, or IDL, a tangle of four highways that circled the downtown area, and cut right through the Greenwood District. The IDL was completed in 1971, causing a second destruction as Greenwood District residents and business owners were forced out by eminent domain and compensated at below-market rates.

Meanwhile, integration meant that Black Tulsans could patronize other businesses, not just those in the Greenwood District. This undermined the financial foundation of this insular sub-economy.

For the second time in 50 years, the Greenwood District fell prey to forces that overwhelmed it.

The Greenwood District Rising Again

The Greenwood District has suffered two calamities over the course of a century — the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and, 50 years later, the construction of the Inner-Dispersal Loop in 1971 coupled with the demise of de jure segregation. Neither calamity delivered a death blow.

The story of Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District is both tragic and heroic. The community simply refuses to stay down. This was true during the early decades of the 20th century; it was true following the Massacre; and it is true, once again, today.

In recent years, the Greenwood District has seen a revival in Black-owned businesses, from restaurants, to bars, to barber shops, and more. While a far cry from what it once was, the community has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of despair, serving not only as a testament to Black resiliency, but entrepreneurialism, imagination, and grit, too.