Dreams of Black Wall Street

Journalist, podcast host and producer, Nia Clark, traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. In this episode, she shares her experience attending many of the centennial commemorative events as well as the people she interviewed and met along the way while visiting Tulsa. Listeners will also hear a sneak peak of Season 3, which will take a deep dive into...

In studying the systemic devaluing of Black life, it is important to understand how Black life is also - and often - devalued even after death. Like victims of other similar racially motivated or violent atrocities, the victims of Rosewood never had the proper burial that is custom in Black communities. This was not uncommon during the era of the Jim Crow South. Efforts are underway to discover wh...

When Rosewood descendant, Arnett Doctor, began looking for an attorney to help him seek legal recourse for the survivors of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre he encountered brick wall after brick wall. He could not find a single lawyer to take on the case for several years, until he met attorney, Stephen Hanlon, who was featured in ep. 10 Rosewood: Justice for All. That encounter would change the course...

In America, citizenship implies the ability to enjoy the full rights of freedom. This question of who belongs to American society, who is a real American citizen, has been a central problem since the time of the Revolution. Rosewood is but one example of the enormous cost African Americans have had to pay for pursuing the promise of full citizenship in America. Those who terrorized Rosewood d...

Despite the symbiosis shared by the communities of Rosewood and neighboring Sumner as well as the relative peace that made that symbiosis possible, research shows racial tensions simmered between the two communities long before the Rosewood Massacre. In hindsight, the moderate prosperity enjoyed by Blacks in Rosewood coupled with the animosity generated by those who did not believe African America...

It has been 98 years since Rosewood, Florida was destroyed. The first week of January marked the 98th anniversary of the tragedy. Rosewood, represented what was possible when Black people pooled their resources and knowledge to build a community even in the Jim Crow South. It was a economically diverse community made up of houses, industries, turpentine stills, saw mills, orange groves, market gar...

Like atrocities of a similar nature, the tragedy of the Rosewood Massacre draws attention to the community of Rosewood. It makes us take notice. But once that attention is fixed on these communities, we begin to discover worlds that many of us had little to no knowledge of previously. Too often, the stories of these worlds have been hidden or distorted and the narrative. They've been controlled by...

Throughout much of the 20th century, Florida had been a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. Klansmen found friends in government who occupied offices on local, state and federal offices. By 1925 the Klan had about 3 million members nationwide. Three years later, their ranks began to shrink. In Florida, however, the Klan grew. Their strongest factions could be found in Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando....

Michigan state University English Professor, Julian Chambliss, explains that the idea of town or community creation is not an exception for African Americans. The idea of creating ones own community because one isn’t able to get a fair shake was actually a common response to conditions such as the end of Slavery, the end of Reconstruction...

A continuation of the exploration of the 1920 Ocoee Massacre. The Ocoee Massacre occurred three years before the Rosewood Massacre and followed a massive Black voter registration and get-out-the-vote movement in Florida. The movement was perceived as a threat to those who wished to keep Black Americans subjugated and as a result, many Black Americans who participated in the movement, who voted or...

Exactly 100 years ago, what is known as the bloodiest election day in American history left a grave and everlasting stain on Florida’s history. On Election Day 1920, a number of Black residents who lived in the town of Ocoee, Florida attempted to vote and were turned away. They included a man named Moses Norman who became very angry. Norman was one of the most prosperous Black men in the Orange Co...

The predominantly African American Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was not the only so-called Black Wall Street in the early part of the 20th century.   There were a number of thriving Black communities in the early 1900’s. Some were also known by the moniker, Black Wall Street. These were communities that were very much made up of working people, which some say resembled midd...

In order to understand how an incident such as the Rosewood Massacre could occur, it is important to understand the history of Africans and African Americans in Florida. In this episode S t. Augustine Historical Society and University of North Florida Historian, Dr. Susan Parker , tackles the accuracy of how this history has been told by pointing out that, contrary to the popular belief that the y...

An overview of this podcast and this season. Dreams of Black Wall Street examines the course of once-thriving predominantly Black communities that are both known by the moniker, Black Wall Street, as well as those that fit such a description. This was a period in which African Americans - only several generations removed from slavery - were on a quest for community and the promise of full cit...

For decades, a number of scholars and experts have been at the forefront of efforts to tell the story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. During this time the tragedy remained largely unknown among most Americans. In recent years however, great strides have been made in the effort to bring more attention to the event and help those who would listen understand that the Massacre is emblematic of the Bl...

In the nearly 100 In the years since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, particularly the Greenwood District, has undergone a considerable and slow transformation. Although Greenwood, experienced a regeneration between the 1920’s and 1950’s after the community was rebuilt following the Tulsa Race Massacre, that economic boom did not last. When legal segregation began to be dismantled in the 1950’...

A significant number of African American residents of Tulsa’s predominantly black Greenwood District disappeared during and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Some researchers and experts believe there could be hundreds of the missing residents. These were people who not only had never been heard from again but whose bodies could not be located after the Massacre. Many loved ones presumed missing...

Up until the later part of the 20th century, there were sustained and concerted efforts to suppress the full truth of the Tulsa Race Riot, which is now acknowledged as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In the decades that followed, the attack was treated as taboo by both whites and blacks, by residents of Tulsa and government officials, by survivors of the massacre and their descendants. If it was addresse...

While some African American survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre left Greenwood for good, surprisingly, many stayed even though most returned home to ashes. However, of the black Tulsans who decided to remain in their community and rebuild, most had virtually none of the advantages that they had when Black Wall Street was first developed. For example, after the Massacre, black Tulsans had ver...

Despite thousands of potential perpetrators of numerous crimes and potentially hundreds or thousands of witnesses to these crimes, law enforcement officials did not pursue any of them with any real vigor in search of the truth. As a result the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre never got their justice.  The life of one of the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 is an example of the conseque...

Over the last nearly 100 years, there has been speculation about whether or not the Tulsa Race Massacre was a planned attempt to launch an attack on Tulsa's Greenwood district. While there is no direct evidence of this, experts point to why this claim may or may not have any validity. Additionally, following the Tulsa Race Massacre there were concerted efforts to push African American property own...

When the mayhem ceased, and the smoke cleared, Black Wall Street laid almost completely flattened. In less than 24 hours, according to a Red Cross estimate, more than 1,200 houses were burned; 215 others were looted but not torched. Two newspapers, a library, a school, stores, hotels, churches and many other black-owned businesses were among the buildings damaged or destroyed by fire. Histori...

According to A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 , “Not all black Tulsans, however, countenanced surrender. In the final burst of fighting off of Standpipe Hill that morning, a deadly firefight erupted at the site of an old clay pit, where several African American defenders were said to have gone to their deaths fighting off the white invaders. Stories also hav...

The episode is Part 2 of a deep dive into the Tulsa Race Massacre, which occurred between May 31st and June 1st of 1921. Hundreds of people are believed to have been killed. Thousands were left homeless. And the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma - also known as Black Wall Street - was completely destroyed. Some witnesses and survivors reported seeing and hearing bombs dropped on the community...

A recap of everything covered in episodes 1-6. Between May 31st and June 1st of 1921, what the Oklahoma Historical Society calls quote, "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history," claimed the lives of potentially hundreds of people and left an entire community in Tulsa, Oklahoma completely decimated.  That community, known as Greenwood - an African American distri...