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Black Wall Street: The True Story

If anyone truly believes that the last April attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was the most tragic bombing ever to take place on United States soil, as the media has been widely reporting, they're wrong -- plain and simple. That's because an even deadlier bomb occurred in that same state nearly 75 years ago. Many people in high places would like to forget that it ever happened.


Searching under the heading of "riots," "Oklahoma" and "Tulsa" in current editions of the World Book Encyclopedia, there is conspicuously no mention whatsoever of the Tulsa race riot of 1921, and this omission is by no means a surprise, or a rare case. The fact is, one would also be hard-pressed to find documentation of the incident, let alone and accurate accounting of it, in any other "scholarly" reference or American history book.


That's precisely the point that noted author, publisher and orator Ron Wallace, a Tulsa native, sought to make nearly five years ago when he began researching this riot, one of the worst incidents of violence ever visited upon people of African descent. Ultimately joined on the project by colleague Jay Wilson of Los Angeles, the duo found and compiled indisputable evidence of what they now describe as "a Black holocaust in America."


The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.


The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.


In their self-published book, Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream, and its companion video documentary, Black Wallstreet: A Black Holocaust in America!, the authors have chronicled for the very first time in the words of area historians and elderly survivors what really happened there on that fateful summer day in 1921 and why it happened. Wallace similarly explained to me why this bloody event from the turn of the century seems to have had a recurring effect that is being felt in predominately Black neighborhoods even to this day.


The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's what Black Wallstreet was all about.
The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the Black community in 15-minutes. As far as resources, there were Ph.D.'s residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, a hefty pocket change in 1910.
During that era, physicians owned medical schools. There were also pawn shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, 21 churches, 21 restaurants and two movie theaters. It was a time when the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six Blacks owned their own planes. It was a very fascinating community.


The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many of them were jealous. When the average student went to school on Black Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age.


The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. Nepotism was the one word they believed in. And that's what we need to get back to in 1995. The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the renowned R and B music group the Gap Band got its name. They're from Tulsa.


Black Wallstreet was a prime example of the typical Black community in America that did businesses, but it was in an unusual location. You see, at the time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state. There were over 28 Black townships there. One third of the people who traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" along side the Indians between 1830 to 1842 were Black people.
The citizens of this proposed Indian and Black state chose a Black governor, a treasurer from Kansas named McDade. But the Ku Klux Klan said that if he assumed office that they would kill him within 48 hours. A lot of Blacks owned farmland, and many of them had gone into the oil business. The community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws.
It was not unusual that if a resident's home accidentally burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was the type of scenario that was going on day- to-day on Black Wallstreet. When Blacks intermarried into the Indian culture, some of them received their promised '40 acres and a mule' and with that came whatever oil was later found on the properties.


Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a banker in the neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi [River]. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.
There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.


On Black Wallstreet, a lot of global business was conducted. The community flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. That's when the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of this country took place, and it was lead by the Ku Klux Klan. Imagine walking out of your front door and seeing 1,500 homes being burned. It must have been amazing.


Survivors we interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because during the time that all of this was going on, white families with their children stood around the borders of their community and watched the massacre, the looting and everything--much in the same manner they would watch a lynching.


In my lectures I ask people if they understand where the word "picnic" comes from. It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch. They would lynch a Black male and cut off body parts as souvenirs. This went on every weekend in this country, and it was all across the county. That's where the term really came from.

what
goes around
comes around
what goes up
must come down


it's called karma baby

I've seen the documentary of this. Unbelievably chilling.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was PBS.

The people interviewed in it had been mostly children when it happened. There are a lot of before, during and after scenes. It is really sickening stuff.

be more specific. okay when they can't understand why racism has flourished then maybe they can think back to when they planted the seeds of racism and nurtured it

I know somebody who is from Tulsa and their granparents told them all about it.

I wish they developed a forum to discuss why this was hidden from the american history

Marv how about this:

During the Red Summer Riots of 1919, a common characteristic in every case was the Black American was alone when it came to protecting or defending himself and his community. Many had assumed then, as we do now, that our government is supposed to protect us from invaders from within our borders and from foreign nations. THEY WERE DEADLY WRONG! After studying White Race Riots for 9 years, collecting relecs, investigating reports, newspaper reports and first hand testimonials, I have determined based on the circumstances that Black Americans must protect and defend themselves from invaders within these United States. This assumption is based on the following findings:

1. No government military branches where there to protect them. The National Guardsmen would join the rioters and shoot Blacks too. Many just looked the other way because they hated "niggers" too. Or they came in time to put out fires, mostly in the white sections of town, or white owned rental properties in the Black neighborhood only.

2. The local Police joined or aided the white rioters. Policemen burned out women and children and took target practice for sport and wager, as the killed Blacks and threw them back into the flames that they attempted to escape. They disarmed Blacks and stud back to let the white rioters do what they wanted without fear of justice or the law. In the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, police flew airplanes and dropped nitroglycerin and dynamite on 600 Black businesses, burned 1500 homes and destroyed a 35 square block area of the Black community of Tulsa also known as the Greenwood District. It was so prosperous it was nationally known as Black Wall Street. The riot was intended to put Blacks back in their place.

3. The American Legion and the KKK were also used against the Blacks. These whites were made up of white military veterans and fraternal organizations that offered their services in tracking down and killing Blacks. They often lead in mobs and initiated the riddling of many of their Black victims. Even ROTC cadets assisted in hunting, dragging, burning, killing and maiming during post war times.

4. In all cases, not one white person was ever convicted of murdering a Black person regardless of how horrible their crimes. In some cases, the KKK had nothing to do with this attitude. It was in the fabric of white American society that they protect their status at all cost. Blacks had no value and no souls. Blacks had no rights. Blacks weren't people. To whites, ALL Blacks were niggers. Blacks were de-humanized so whites could commit any heinous act without guilt and with impunity. It's hard to kill one human being, but easy to kill a thousand niggers.

5. In Detroit 1943, 4300 Federal Troops wounded 2500 Blacks after the last of the great white race riots. Police, local whites, National Guard and Federal troops turned on Black Detroit. Blacks were beaten openly in public by literally thousands of whites chasing and beating blacks while police searched and disarmed Blacks, to make them easy prey. The Detroit Police Department participated in many murders and freely participated in mayhem towards Black American. Every Black person in sight was searched and even their pocket knives were removed. Then they were left to the white rioters who in turn, maimed or murdered a totally defenseless victim. Police were rerouting Blacks in motor vehicles to dead ends where white rioters where waiting to beat and murder them. Many Blacks had placed their faith in the hands of Police for protection, only to have that trust betrayed.

6. The forms of murder in white race riots were also similar in each case, which included but not limited to: Lynching, burning, castration, stoned to death, riddled, just plain shot, dragged in the street, drowned, beat, punched, hit with blunt objects, heads split with an axe and more than can imagined only by a ungodly person. It was common for a single Black victim to incur all of the above forms of punishment from his fellow American. Bodies have been subjected to this type of treatment with as many as 100 plus individual whites to 1 Black victim. Many bodies were reported to be punished for hours after the victim was already dead.

7. They cut up the victims bodies into parts for resale as, souvenirs, mementos, and mantle pieces. Black victims had hearts, lips, ears, fingers, spleen, liver, lungs, intestines, penis, hands, heads, scrotum and all other body parts and even the Black fetus was not spared. A poor Black pregnant woman had her unborn child cut from her womb as she burned at the stake. While she was inflamed a white man stepped from the crowd, slit her stomach with his pocket knife, and when the fetus fell to the ground, he stomped it and said "One less nigger". Thousands of curbside spectators slapped their knees and laughed in amusement. The Black woman's crime: She had disputed the word of a white man that accused her husband of raping a white woman. For her protest after they lynched her husband before her eyes, they tied her to a tree, poured gas on her, oil and set her on fire.

In the terms of property damage. Whole city blocks in Black communities have been burned to the ground and many Black property owners had to abandon their homes while running for dear life, with only the cloths on their backs, if they were lucky enough to live through home invasions, hails of bullets, and fire bombs during the initial attack. Many of the aftermaths resemble ground zero of a nuclear blast. In the Tulsa riot, you could see from one end of the Black business district, and see clear to the opposite side without the obstruction of your view by any physical objects. The land was totally leveled for 3 miles through Black Tulsa.


The first report, “The History of The East St. Louis Race Riot”, was written by Ida B. Wells-Barnett (The "real" mother of civil rights) on the 3rd day of the riots. She was sent to investigate after the Colored Citizens of Chicago got word of the atrocities against innocent Black men, women and children. The details covered in her report are so vile, so gross that the United States Military Intelligence Division on Negro Subversives, confiscated the report and locked it up classified “TOP SECRET” and sealed it until 1986, in the vaults of the War Department in Washington DC.

Even though her report was spirited away by US Army soldiers a week after it was written, it was sent to the 65th Congress as requested by the Colored Citizens of Chicago. The 65th Congress created a sub-committee to investigate the massacre and the results were even more hideous than Mrs. Barnett’s independent report. So embarrassing to America overseas, that from over 6000 pages of sworn testimony and evidence produced by its hearings, Congress only allowed a 24 page summary of its work to be published. They intentionally refused to disclose the results of the full investigation. It was sealed and never mentioned again. "Until now."





[Edited by - playa2 on 01/18/2005 06:29:02]

So Marv tell me this, why can't some other agenda be hidden by our govt today.


I believe there are more like the illinois dept of correction got busted by DNA samples on guys who were falsely on death row.

Marv give me a % of people who have knowledge of the link we are talking about in America.

i would say about 14% of the people in the United States have knowledge of the tulsa riots.
I wonder what the survey would be on this forum?

My question is , does america really wan to remember?