Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Greenwood is a predominantly black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the south end of Greenwood Avenue.
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[edit] "The Black Wall Street"
During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished—including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street")[1]. The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires.
In northeastern Oklahoma, as elsewhere in America, the prosperity of minorities emerged amidst racial and political tension. The Ku Klux Klan made its first major appearance in Oklahoma on August 12, 1921.[2]
[edit] The Tulsa Race Riot
One of the nation's worst acts of racial violence—the Tulsa Race Riot—occurred there on June 1, 1921, when 35 square blocks of homes and businesses were torched by mobs of angry whites. Although the official death toll claimed that 26 blacks and 13 whites died during the fighting, most estimates are considerably higher. At the time of the riot, the Red Cross estimated the toll to be at 300. However, some maintain that as many as 3,000 African Americans were killed.
Over 600 successful businesses were 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.[3] Property damage totaled $1.5 million.[3]
Despite the devastation, the community mobilized its resources and rebuilt the Greenwood area within the next five years. The neighborhood fell prey to an economic and population drain in the 1960s, and much of the area was leveled during urban renewal in the early 1970s to make way for a highway loop around the downtown district. Several blocks of the old neighborhood around the intersection of Greenwood Ave. and Archer St. were saved from demolition and have been restored, forming part of the Greenwood Historical District.
The neighborhood was a hotbed of jazz and blues in the 1920s.[4] Count Basie himself claims the first big band he heard—Walter Page and His Blue Devils—was in Greenwood in 1927.[5]
[edit] References in popular culture
- Originally hailing from Greenwood, music group the Gap Band's name is a shortening of their original name, the Greenwood, Archer and Pine Street Band, after three of Greenwoods major roads.
- Rapper The Game's record label is named The Black Wall Street Records; he's said that he wants to bring back the spirit of the original.
[edit] References
- ^ A Find of a Lifetime. Silent film of African-American towns in Oklahoma. 1920's. Rev. S. S. Jones for the National Baptist Convention. American Heritage magazine. Retrieved September 16, 2006.
- ^ Charles C. Alexander, Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965)
- ^ a b White, Walter F. "The Eruption of Tulsa", The Nation, June 29, 1921.
- ^ Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame
- ^ Basie, Count; Albert Murray [1986-01-12] (04 2002). "The Blue Devils: 1927–1929", Good Morning Blues—The Autobiography of Count Basie, Reissue edition, Da Capo, pp. 3–7. ISBN 0-306-81107-3.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Alfred L. Brophy, Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation, foreword by Randall Kennedy. Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed (February 14, 2003) ISBN 0195161033
- Hannibal B. Johnson, Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District. Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum (September 1998) ISBN 157168221X
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