You may have read this already, but just in case you haven't, here it is. If
you have just think of it as a reminder!
This would make a wonderful Christmas gift for yourself and a family member
especially with children who may not be able to purchase a copy of
this...Pass this along to all your friends...Keep the info going...I have
used this book and many others to loan to those who are misinformed as to our
peoples and accomplishments....
Excerpt from Black Elegance Magazine
Title: Ron Wallace Co-author of Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream Chronicles a
Little Known Chapter of African-American History in Oklahoma
By line: As Told To Ronald E. Childs
BLACK WALLSTREET
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 decent. Ultimately joined on the project by college
Jay 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 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 36-Black business
district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--A model community destroyed, and
a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The nights 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 BE 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 has
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 nonmilitary 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.
The riots weren't caused by anything Black or white. It was caused by
jealousy. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I and they were
poor. When they looked over into the Black communities and realized that
Black men who fought in the war had come home heroes that helped trigger
the destruction.
It cost the Black community everything, and not a single dime of
restitution--no insurance claims--has been awarded the victims to this day.
Nonetheless, they rebuilt. We estimate, that 1,500 to 3,000 people were
killed and we know 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 21st
Street and Yale Avenue, where there now stands a Sears parking lot, that
corner used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the bodies into the
shafts.
Black Americans don't know about this story because we don't apply the word
holocaust to our struggle. Jewish people use the word holocaust all the
time. White people use the word holocaust. It's politically correct to use
it. But we Black folks use the word, people think we're being cry babies or
that we're trying to bring up old issues. No one comes to our support.
In 1910, our forefathers and mothers owned 13 million acres of land at the
height of racism in this country, so the Black Wallstreet book and
videotape prove to the naysayers and revisionists that we had our act
together. Our mandate now is to begin to teach our children about out own,
ongoing Black holocaust. They have to know when they look at our
communities today that we don't come from this.
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