The Black Wall Street

By Immanuelle Agyare (TBEN) and Nichola Dixon (History Retold)

As a closing to Black History Month, we are exploring the key figures and events of Black Wall Street that built and left a legacy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. We hope this post can inspire ownership, collaboration and economic prosperity within today's global black community.

Dubbed ‘Negro Wall Street’ by the renowned African American educator Booker T Washington, Black Wall Street was a thriving self sufficient business district within Tulsa’s African American community. Created in 1906, it housed a variety of businesses including black owned newspapers that majorly contributed to African American politics. As affluent black families and individuals populated the area, Tulsa’s African American neighbourhood became known as Greenwood. As the community grew to have 10,000 residents, doctors and communities

Key figures

There were fundamental figures who played a significant role in the success and prominence of the district through planning their success and a prosperous black owned district.

Ottawa W. Gurley is known as one of the richest men in Black Wall Street. Born to freed parents and self educated, he became a teacher and later joined the postal service. In 1905, Gurley and his wife, Emma, purchased 40 acres of land in North Tulsa and established the first business in what was later to become the Greenwood district. He subdivided his plot into residential and commercial lots. Between 1910 and 1920, the Black population in the area he had purchased grew from 2,000 to nearly 9,000 in a city with a total population of 72,000. The growth of the community led to prosperity for Gurley and his peers. This allowed him to finance a range of businesses from brickyards, theatres to a chartered aeroplane company. His other endeavours included the Gurley Hotel at 112 North Greenwood where he rented out spaces to smaller businesses; a two-story building at 119 North Greenwood where the Masonic Lodge and a Black employment agency were located; the co-founding the Vernon AME Church; and a grocery store.

Gurley pictured (blackpast.org)

Following the Tulsa Massacre Gurley and his wife fled to Los Angeles, California where they ran a small hotel. Gurley died 14 years later at the age of 67.

Amongst Greenwood’s first residents were John Wesley and Loula Tom Williams. When the couple arrived in Greenwood Tulsa in 1903. John opened an auto repair shop where he made a respectable profit. These profits allowed Loula to leave her teaching job, and open Williams Confectionery which attracted teens of all races. The store was on the third floor of a three storey building, the family lived on the second floor and they rented the third floor spaces as offices for attorneys. Journalist Tim Madigan writes in his book The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 that the word around Tulsa was that there were more proposals for marriage that happened at Williams Confectionery than any other place in the city.

By 1914, the Williams were prosperous from all their businesses as they opened Williams Dreamland Theatre, which had a 750 seating capacity, and tickets cost 15 cents. 1919 saw the first all black cast in a US film by Norman Studios. Additionally, across the USA all black film production companies such as Lincoln Motion Picture Company and Micheaux Film Corporation were gaining success. As the film industry boomed, the theatre quickly became as popular an attraction as the confectionary store.

Unfortunately, the Tulsa massacre saw their endeavours burnt to the ground, and although they managed to salvage them, they never returned to its former prosperity

Mabel B. Little, the granddaughter of former slaves, came to Tulsa in 1913. Little opened her first beauty shop ‘Little Rose Beauty Shop’ in 1917 which served the community for over 50 years.

During the Great Depression, she took a job at McDonnell Douglas and followed the aviation industry from Tulsa to Wichita, Kansas, to Los Angeles.

Between 1918 and 1927, Little also adopted 11 children with her husband, Presley Little, between 1918-1927. Most of whom were the children of their family members. Presley died a month after the last children came to live with them, leaving her to raise the children alone. Nonetheless, in the mid 1940s, Little adopted her 12th child. Little was dedicated to helping other disadvantaged children in Tulsa.

In her life story, "Fire on Mt. Zion: My Life and History as a Black Woman in America," Little tells of growing up in a segregated society and recounts the massacre’s destruction.

Little pictured (tulsaworld.com)

Massacre

By 1920, the success in the community was recognised by white residents of Tulsa. For example, the white owned newspaper Tulsa World reported: “Residents in the Negro section of the city have proven themselves no less enterprising than the white people. In all of the Negro additions numerous dwellings are to be seen”

The 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre widely known as the Tulsa Riot was a race riot that is believed to have been ignited by an alleged incident in an elevator with a young black man Dick Rowland and white woman Sarah Page, on the 30th May 1921. Following rumours of this incident being altered and spread throughout Tulsa, Rowland was arrested the following day and inciting reports in the Tulsa Tribune sparked tensions between black and white crowds congregated outside the courthouse. Thus, early on the 1st of June 1921, white rioters began their 24 hour attack, looting and damaging black businesses and homes within the Greenwood area. Around 300 are thought to have died as a result of the massacre.

At the time the atrocities were deemed a riot to alleviate insurance companies from the responsibility of paying compensation for the homes and businesses that were destroyed. The attack was only later considered a massacre. It was - perhaps still is - common for racial clashes to be categorised as a riot.

Beyond the massacre

Despite the massacre and the Great Depression, the Greenwood district black community rebuilt their homes and businesses and maintained a middle and upper class African American population. Investing in income in African American communities outside Tulsa, helped them to not only survive but thrive in times of national economic hardship.

Generational legacies continued. JB Standford’s daughter, Jewel Stradford Lafontant Mankarious, became the first black graduate of University of Chicago’s Law School, was appointed US attorney for the northern district in Illinois by President Eisenhower, an official in the George H. W. Bush administration and a potential nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States as considered by President Richard Nixon. Jewel’s son, John Rogers graduated from Princeton University in 1980 and in 1983 created the US’ first black owned mutual fund company.

The opening of the Greenwood Cultural Center in the 1970s has ensured the preservation of Black Wall Street’s legacy till present.