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there were pix attached to the article too......
any one heard of this piece of history ...
MAY WE NEVER FORGET!
The date was June 1, 1921 when "BLACK WALLSTREET", 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 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.
The best description of BLACK WALLSTREET, or little Africa as it was also
known, would be to compare it to a mini-Berverly Hills.
It was the "golden door" of the BLACK community during the early 1900s, and
it proved that African Americans could create a 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 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
such person was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was
$500 a day,...hefty pocket change in 1910.
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
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. The main
thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue , and it was intersected by Archer and
Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three street 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 had its own 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 and 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, they would kill him within 48 hours. Lots 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 would be rebuilt within a few weeks by
neighbors.
This was the typical day-to-day scenario 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.
On BLACK WALLSTREET, a lot of global business was conducted. The community
flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. Then, the largest
massacre of nonmilitary Americans in the history of this country took place.
It was led by the KU KLUX KLAN. Imagine walking out your front door and
seeing 1,500 homes burning. It must have been a terrifying sight. Survivors
who were interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because while
all of this was going on, white families, with their children, stood along
the borders of the community and silently watched the massacre, the looting
and everything--much in the same manner they would watch a lynching.
The riots weren't caused by any Black-White incident. It was caused by
jealousy. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I to poverty.
They looked over into the thriving BLACK communities and saw that BLACK men
who had fought in the war were being welcomed home with great and joyful
ceremony and celebrated as heroes. That envy helped trigger the
destruction. It cost the BLACK community everything, and not a single dime
of restitution, no one insurance claim-- has been awarded the victims to
this day.. Nonetheless, they rebuilt. It is estimated that 1,500 to 3,000
people were killed and it is known that a lot of them were buried in mass
graves all around the city. Some were thrown into the river. As a matter of
fact, at the corner of 21st street and Yale Avenue , where now stands a
Sears parking lot, there used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the
bodies into the shafts.
UNMARKED GRAVES
TULSA, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Beulah Smith and Kenny Booker, two elderly
Oklahomans, lived through this, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history,
a rarely mentioned 1921 Tulsa blood bath that officially claimed lots of
African-American lives, likely hundreds, perhaps even thousands. The Tulsa
Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what
happened, will consider next week the controversial issue of what, if any,
reparations should be paid to the known survivors of the riot, a group of
less than 100 that includes Smith, now 92, and Booker, 86. "The gun went
off, the riot was on!"
On the night of May 31, 1921, mobs called for the lynching of Dick Rowland,
a black man who shined shoes, after hearing reports that, on the previous
day, he had assaulted Sarah Page, a white woman, in the elevator she
operated in a downtown building. A local newspaper had printed a fabricated
story that Rowland tried to rape Page. In an editorial, the same newspaper
said a hanging was planned for that night. As groups of both Blacks and
Whites converged on the Tulsa courthouse, a White man in the crowd
confronted an armed Black man, a war veteran, who had joined with other
blacks to protect Rowland.
That fabricated newspaper story would trigger the violent riots that may
have left hundreds, if not thousands, dead. Commission member Eddie Faye
Gates told CNN what happened next. "This White man," she said, asked the
black man, "what are you doing with that gun?'" "'I'm going to use it if I
have to,'" the Black man said, according to Gates, "and the White man said,
"No, you're not. Give it to me!", and he tried to take it. The gun went off,
the White man was dead, the riot was on." Truckloads of Whites set fires
and shot Blacks on sight. When the smoke lifted the next day, more than
1,400 homes and businesses in Tulsa 's Greenwood district, the prosperous
area known as the "Black Wall Street," lay in ruins.
Today, only a single block of the original buildings remains standing in the
area. The official death toll is listed below 100, most of them Black, but
there was always doubt about the actual number. Some experts now estimate
that as few as 300 people, and perhaps as many as 3,000, died.
"We're in a heck of a lot of trouble!" Beulah Smith was 14 years old the
night of the riot. A neighbor named Frenchie came pounding on her family's
door in the Tulsa neighborhood known as "Little Africa " that also went up
in flames. "'Get your families out of here because they're killing '[censored]
uptown,'"
she remembers Frenchie saying. "We hid in the weeds in the hog pen..." Smith
told CNN.
People in a mob that came to Kenny Booker's house asked, "'[censored], do you
have a gun?'" he told CNN. Booker, then a teen-ager, hid with his family in
their attic until the home was torched. "When we got downstairs, things were
burning. My sister asked me, "Kenny, is the world on fire?" I said, 'I don't
know, but we're in a heck of a lot of trouble, baby.'" Another riot
survivor, Ruth Avery, who was 7 at the time, gives an account matched by
others who told of bombs dropped from small airplanes passing overhead. The
explosive devices may have been dynamite or Molotov cocktails --
gasoline-filled bottles set afire and thrown as grenades.
"They'd throw it down and when it'd hit, it would burst into flames," Avery
said. Only a single block remains of the 1,400 homes and businesses that
made up the area known as the "Black Wall Street".
Many of the survivors mentioned "bodies were stacked like cord wood," says
Richard Warner of the Tulsa Historical Society. In its search for the facts,
the Commission has literally been trying to dig up the truth. Two headstones
at Tulsa 's Oaklawn Cemetery indicate that riot victims are buried there. In
an effort to determine how many, archeological experts, in May, used
ground-piercing radar and other equipment to test the soil in a search for
unmarked graves. The test picked up indications that dozens, if not
hundreds, of people may have been buried in an area just outside the
cemetery.
any one heard of this piece of history ...
MAY WE NEVER FORGET!
The date was June 1, 1921 when "BLACK WALLSTREET", 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 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.
The best description of BLACK WALLSTREET, or little Africa as it was also
known, would be to compare it to a mini-Berverly Hills.
It was the "golden door" of the BLACK community during the early 1900s, and
it proved that African Americans could create a 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 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
such person was Dr. Berry who owned the bus system. His average income was
$500 a day,...hefty pocket change in 1910.
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
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. The main
thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue , and it was intersected by Archer and
Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three street 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 had its own 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 and 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, they would kill him within 48 hours. Lots 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 would be rebuilt within a few weeks by
neighbors.
This was the typical day-to-day scenario 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.
On BLACK WALLSTREET, a lot of global business was conducted. The community
flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. Then, the largest
massacre of nonmilitary Americans in the history of this country took place.
It was led by the KU KLUX KLAN. Imagine walking out your front door and
seeing 1,500 homes burning. It must have been a terrifying sight. Survivors
who were interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because while
all of this was going on, white families, with their children, stood along
the borders of the community and silently watched the massacre, the looting
and everything--much in the same manner they would watch a lynching.
The riots weren't caused by any Black-White incident. It was caused by
jealousy. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I to poverty.
They looked over into the thriving BLACK communities and saw that BLACK men
who had fought in the war were being welcomed home with great and joyful
ceremony and celebrated as heroes. That envy helped trigger the
destruction. It cost the BLACK community everything, and not a single dime
of restitution, no one insurance claim-- has been awarded the victims to
this day.. Nonetheless, they rebuilt. It is estimated that 1,500 to 3,000
people were killed and it is known that a lot of them were buried in mass
graves all around the city. Some were thrown into the river. As a matter of
fact, at the corner of 21st street and Yale Avenue , where now stands a
Sears parking lot, there used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the
bodies into the shafts.
UNMARKED GRAVES
TULSA, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Beulah Smith and Kenny Booker, two elderly
Oklahomans, lived through this, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history,
a rarely mentioned 1921 Tulsa blood bath that officially claimed lots of
African-American lives, likely hundreds, perhaps even thousands. The Tulsa
Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what
happened, will consider next week the controversial issue of what, if any,
reparations should be paid to the known survivors of the riot, a group of
less than 100 that includes Smith, now 92, and Booker, 86. "The gun went
off, the riot was on!"
On the night of May 31, 1921, mobs called for the lynching of Dick Rowland,
a black man who shined shoes, after hearing reports that, on the previous
day, he had assaulted Sarah Page, a white woman, in the elevator she
operated in a downtown building. A local newspaper had printed a fabricated
story that Rowland tried to rape Page. In an editorial, the same newspaper
said a hanging was planned for that night. As groups of both Blacks and
Whites converged on the Tulsa courthouse, a White man in the crowd
confronted an armed Black man, a war veteran, who had joined with other
blacks to protect Rowland.
That fabricated newspaper story would trigger the violent riots that may
have left hundreds, if not thousands, dead. Commission member Eddie Faye
Gates told CNN what happened next. "This White man," she said, asked the
black man, "what are you doing with that gun?'" "'I'm going to use it if I
have to,'" the Black man said, according to Gates, "and the White man said,
"No, you're not. Give it to me!", and he tried to take it. The gun went off,
the White man was dead, the riot was on." Truckloads of Whites set fires
and shot Blacks on sight. When the smoke lifted the next day, more than
1,400 homes and businesses in Tulsa 's Greenwood district, the prosperous
area known as the "Black Wall Street," lay in ruins.
Today, only a single block of the original buildings remains standing in the
area. The official death toll is listed below 100, most of them Black, but
there was always doubt about the actual number. Some experts now estimate
that as few as 300 people, and perhaps as many as 3,000, died.
"We're in a heck of a lot of trouble!" Beulah Smith was 14 years old the
night of the riot. A neighbor named Frenchie came pounding on her family's
door in the Tulsa neighborhood known as "Little Africa " that also went up
in flames. "'Get your families out of here because they're killing '[censored]
uptown,'"
she remembers Frenchie saying. "We hid in the weeds in the hog pen..." Smith
told CNN.
People in a mob that came to Kenny Booker's house asked, "'[censored], do you
have a gun?'" he told CNN. Booker, then a teen-ager, hid with his family in
their attic until the home was torched. "When we got downstairs, things were
burning. My sister asked me, "Kenny, is the world on fire?" I said, 'I don't
know, but we're in a heck of a lot of trouble, baby.'" Another riot
survivor, Ruth Avery, who was 7 at the time, gives an account matched by
others who told of bombs dropped from small airplanes passing overhead. The
explosive devices may have been dynamite or Molotov cocktails --
gasoline-filled bottles set afire and thrown as grenades.
"They'd throw it down and when it'd hit, it would burst into flames," Avery
said. Only a single block remains of the 1,400 homes and businesses that
made up the area known as the "Black Wall Street".
Many of the survivors mentioned "bodies were stacked like cord wood," says
Richard Warner of the Tulsa Historical Society. In its search for the facts,
the Commission has literally been trying to dig up the truth. Two headstones
at Tulsa 's Oaklawn Cemetery indicate that riot victims are buried there. In
an effort to determine how many, archeological experts, in May, used
ground-piercing radar and other equipment to test the soil in a search for
unmarked graves. The test picked up indications that dozens, if not
hundreds, of people may have been buried in an area just outside the
cemetery.
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