give.salvationarmyusa.org has been visited by 10K+ users in the past month
Give to local organizations and support their work. Your contribution makes a difference. Find and support local non-profit charities. Make a donation to help those in need.
Want To Help Children? Your Gift Can Support Full Treatments For Children With Clubfoot. Donate To Hope Walks Today And Help Us Provide Quality Clubfoot Treatment For Children!
Popular Links:
Search results
Was the only Black man invited by Governor Williams to meet President Woodrow Wilson upon his visit to Oklahoma City in 1919; Worked with other Black Tulsa leaders, like J.B. Stradford and Dr. R.T. Bridgewater, to prevent racial violence in Tulsa and nearby towns
May 21, 2021 · (Washington, DC, May 21, 2021) – The failure by city and state authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to provide comprehensive reparations has compounded the harms of the May 31, 1921, Tulsa race...
- Overview
- Black Wall Street
- The third wave
100 years after a racial massacre, new city initiatives shine a light on the revitalized Greenwood community.
The Tower of Reconciliation rises in John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 25-foot-tall memorial by Ed Dwight tells the history of African Americans’ struggle, and honors early Black leaders in Tulsa.
At the start of the award-winning television series Watchmen, there’s a three-minute-30-second scene of destruction and terror, as a racist mob destroys a Black town. Civilians are shot, homes are bombed from planes overhead, and stores are set on fire. While Watchmen is fictional, this story is true.
“That really did happen,” says Phil Armstrong. “They just put visuals to what it must have been like, based on eyewitness accounts.”
Armstrong is project manager of a commission charged with commemorating the 100th anniversary of one of the largest racial massacres in American history, a two-day rampage by a white mob that devastated the all-Black community of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission is also the guiding force behind Greenwood Rising, an interactive history center scheduled to open later this year. Created in partnership with Local Projects (the design firm behind the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, in New York, and the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum, in Alabama), Greenwood Rising will tell the story of the historic neighborhood before, during, and after the carnage.
Before the massacre, Greenwood was a place of economic opportunities, with theaters, groceries, confectionaries, and restaurants lining its main street, dubbed Black Wall Street. “By 1880, there were 30 all-Black towns in Oklahoma,” says Armstrong. “They actually began having discussions with the government to just declare Oklahoma to be an all-Black state.”
(For Black Americans, landownership has a ‘long and complicated’ legacy.)
The “Black Wall Street” moniker derives from a comment made by Booker T. Washington on the proliferation of Black Oklahoma towns (Muskogee, Langston, and Boley, among them), a year before Greenwood was established. On the other side of the tracks from downtown Tulsa, Greenwood was founded on segregationist beliefs and cemented with Jim Crow laws. But while racist ideas set the soil, Black businesses did the planting, and success quickly took root.
By 1921, an estimated 12,000 African Americans were living within the 35 city blocks of the neighborhood. Homes and businesses were all owned and operated by Black people, says Armstrong.
But over the course of a few days in 1921, all of it disappeared. Most homes were destroyed, along with dozens of buildings, including churches. An estimated 300 people were killed (although unmarked graves still being uncovered suggest the number could be much higher). When it was over, the Black community was financially and physically decimated.
Since the massacre was labeled a “riot” at the time, insurance claims were denied, and courts dismissed all cases without hearings or reviews, says Armstrong. To date, there have not been any reparations.
Urban renewal programs in later decades (including the routing of Interstate 244 through the heart of the community) and eventual gentrification continued to change the community makeup. Today, the neighborhood includes the Greenwood Cultural Center, whose mission is to preserve African American heritage in the area and promote cultural exchange. The center is partnering with Gathering Place park on the Tulsa Riverfront this summer to co-host the Kinsey African American Art Collection—one of the largest collections of historic art and artifacts of its kind.
Left: The Kinsey family’s collection—one of the largest troves of African American artworks and artifacts in the world—is also on display at Tulsa’s The Gathering Place riverfront park.
Photograph by Graceson Todd, Gathering Place
Right: More than 700 objects—from rare documents to paintings—tell the history of African Americans from 1595 to today.
Greenwood Cultural Center
Although there is only one commercial building remaining on Black Wall Street that is Black-owned, the strong heartbeat of the community continues. This is where Fulton Street Books opened in July 2020, “a space where children and adults can walk in and see themselves reflected on the shelves,” according to owner Onikah Asamoa-Caesar. Also here, Venita Cooper founded Silhouette Sneakers & Art, a vintage fashion and high-end sneaker shop and art gallery, which recently raised enough through community donations (including their own) to pay the rent for more than 25 local families who were in need. Other Greenwood Black businesses include spas, cafés, and galleries.
- Heather Greenwood Davis
The Nonprofit Resource Center at Tulsa City-County Library provides visitors with free public access to the tools needed to form a nonprofit organization, search funding opportunities, write grant proposals, and learn about the world of philanthropy.
Since its beginning, the program has awarded cash grants between $5,000 and $10,000 to exceptional Oklahoma Nonprofits. As of 2021, the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits has given more than $2 million to more than 200 Oklahoma nonprofits through the ONE Awards.
Tulsa race massacre. Part of African-American history, mass racial violence in the United States, terrorism in the United States, the nadir of American race relations, and racism against African Americans. Homes and businesses burned in Greenwood.
People also ask
Are Oklahoma schools underfunded?
Who founded Black Tulsa?
Should the city of Tulsa expand the scholarship program?
Did black Tulsans know the law would not protect Rowland?
May 29, 2020 · In what is now known as the “Tulsa Race Massacre,” the mob destroyed 35 square blocks of Greenwood, burning down more than 1,200 black-owned houses, scores of businesses, a school, a hospital, a...
Every Child Deserves A Chance. Donate Today! Providing Disadvantage Youth With A Safe Environment. Promoting A Opportunity For Change.
