[narrator] ...on The Legacy of Black Wall Street.
[Karlos] In Tulsa in 1910,
there's less than 10,000 people.
Ten years later, there's a hundred thousand people.
And 10,000 of those people are Black people.
They make a way for themselves in Tulsa
and build a community that becomes
known as Black Wall Street.
You had numerous restaurants,
movie theaters, law offices,
all bused up in this one little area.
And it was known, if you want to prosper,
come to Greenwood.
[Raven] They were beginning to show
the White leaders that they did have power
and that was a threat.
So the way to eliminate
the Black threat
was to get rid of the Black town.
[Victor] What was said by the police was,
"Get a gun, get busy,
and get a nigger."
The trajectory could have been different,
and the promises of the past
can become the social agenda of the future.
[upbeat music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Drusilla] The Negro is sleeping
over a volcano today.
He has done enough running.
This is not a White man's country.
It is as much ours by right of toil.
[Regina] The shooting began that night
down at the courthouse and people actually thought
that it might settle and that was it.
[Raven] The White mob mobilized with the government.
They met at the sheriff's offices
and deputized thousands of armed men
to obliterate the entire district.
The police commissioner would say
he didn't even know the names of everyone
that was deputized, so they were truly random
White men in Tulsa being given
the power of law enforcement.
[whistle blows]
They'd blow a whistle at about 5:00 the next morning,
that's when they went all-out attack.
It was war on the Greenwood community.
[people clamoring]
[Eldoris] And I was awakened by my mother,
I was real frightened.
I just got up and was real afraid.
And she says, "We have to go out. Get out."
I say... She says the White people
are killing the colored people.
Over the track off [indistinct]
was a small chicken coop.
The bullets were just raining down over us.
Airplanes was up and I could see them,
and I heard them,
and I was still trying...
I pull away from my parents and ran
into this chicken coop with all the other people.
And I got into the corner of that,
just scared as I could be.
[Raven] My great uncle Toussaint
saw White men coming down the street.
And he told his mother they're coming.
Her husband wasn't there to protect them.
He was off fighting to protect the community.
So the next best bet for them was to hide.
Just in the nick of time they made it
and my great aunt, she was eight at the time
she describes how her mother got her dressed
and ushered them all into the basement.
They had to be absolutely silent
and muzzle my grandmother.
They had to control her screams
and make sure they weren't discovered.
And you can just imagine
just how frightening that would be
to hear men come into your house
with the intent to kill you and your children,
trying to pray to God
to protect you.
But then to hear them
ransacking through your belongings,
playing a phonograph of a song,
and then seeing that coal oil
drip down from the top down to the basement
so that they could set the house on fire.
Only by the grace of God
did my family escape that flaming house.
And only by the grace of God
am I here to describe it right now.
[Michelle] Our survivors have spoken
of machine guns that were used
and bombs being dropped from the air.
There is an oil company here in Oklahoma
that allowed riders to use at least one of their planes.
[Regina] BC Franklin, Buck Colbert Franklin,
he was an attorney.
He was an eyewitness to the planes
that were flying overhead.
And he watched them drop turpentine balls
on top of the buildings,
and the buildings would begin to burn
from the top down.
[Jerica] To hear of family members
being shot dead in the middle of the street
for no reason,
how do you process that?
[woman] This was clearly not about Dick Rowland.
This was a deliberate and calculated
ground and air attack
to destroy the Greenwood community.
[Michelle] Our community was outnumbered
and outgunned.
The sheriff's department was joined
by thousands of White rioters
who eventually invaded and killed
innocent men, women, and children.
[Raven] Through the streets we all were driven
at the point of sword or gun.
Women, men, and little children,
scarcely clothing on their backs.
[Michelle] They began to incarcerate
every single African-American person
in the Greenwood district.
The entire population of the Greenwood community
was between 10,000 and 12,000 men, women, and children.
6,000 people were arrested
and detained at one of three
internment centers in the City of Tulsa.
It left their homes and businesses defenseless
so that White rioters could go in
and take whatever valuables they wanted
and then set everything on fire.
By the following day, more than 1,000 homes
had been burned to the ground.
More than 300 Black-owned businesses
completely destroyed.
Several thousand people unaccounted for
and we believe at least 300 people murdered.
[Karlos] What occurred in Tulsa
was the deadliest,
most destructive attack
on a Black community in American history.
Black Wall Street
is completely destroyed.
[Regina] The Goodwin building
burned to the ground.
[Karlos] The Stratford Hotel, the Gurley Hotel,
and the Dreamland Theatre burned to the ground.
[Gloria] My main thought when I see
all those photographs and the devastation
that everyone shows is,
how did they ever make it out of there?
It is horrendous
the way that African-American residents were murdered
and their bodies left in the street.
The entire Greenwood community
was to live out of tents
that had been distributed by the American Red Cross.
And it was the first time that they had ever responded
to an incident that was not caused
by a natural disaster.
They were forced to wear green identification badges.
But the bottom states who was responsible for them,
it's a badge that basically gave them
permission to be in public,
to be on the streets.
[Venita] People need to understand
that there was a highly traumatic event,
one of the worst incidents of racial violence,
maybe the worst in the history of our country.
And that we today
are a product of that.
[woman] We have nothing to lose but our chance.
-What do we want? -[crowd] Justice!
-[woman] Where do we want it? -[crowd] Now!
[Victor] This is a quote from AJ Smitherman
in The Tulsa Star.
Mob law is dangerous and will undermine
the foundations of any government that permits it.
Unless this monster is subdued in this country,
serious trouble is sure to follow.
His words still ring out true today.
Watching those people storm the capitol
reminded me of the massacre itself
and this notion that what they were doing
was not going to be punished.
They really felt like they were in control
of that situation in the same way that the mob
in Tulsa thought they were in control of Greenwood.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jabraan] First thing I think about is the stress,
the anxiety, the depression,
that takes a toll mentally and physically.
And then the fact that they might not know
where their next meal is gonna come from,
they might not know where they're gonna lie
their head down that night,
let alone finding support and food for the family
that they're responsible for.
Months later when African-Americans
were released from those internment sites,
they returned to what remained
which was nothing.
[dramatic music playing]
[Karlos] 10,000 people were made homeless.
$26 million in Black wealth
went up in flames in 1921.
[Onikah] We have to figure out
how to calculate that loss.
One of the things that isn't considered
is the compound benefit of homeownership
or compound benefit of owning a business
over generations.
Recent economic analysis
of the massacre suggests
dampened innovation among Black people,
lowered rates of Black patenting,
multi-generational effects
of income loss and status loss.
You see declines in homeownership,
occupational downgrading,
impacts on educational attainment,
and you see a big increase in labor force participation.
There's this ripple effect
and it echoed and resonated.
[dramatic music playing]
[Raven] They wanted the Blacks in Greenwood
to lose everything
including their finest citizens
and they were very successful.
My family lost The Tulsa Star
which was destroyed and burned to the ground.
They had other property,
more than just a house or a press plant.
They lost everything.
They drove out JB Stratford,
they drove out my great grandfather,
AJ Smitherman, OW Gurley eventually left,
and they just shot AC Jackson cold-blooded.
[Jabraan] It is so hard to imagine the success
that Dr. AC Jackson had in his time.
The Greenwood community felt upset
and concerned and scared
to know that someone who had reached
the epitome of success
can just be gunned down in the streets.
[Karlos] The photos that White Tulsans took
in 1921
were meant to tell a story of conquest.
We successfully put down
a Negro rebellion.
If you look at the postcards
and the inscriptions,
many of them are celebratory.
It was the opinion
by many Whites in Tulsa
that Blacks have brought this upon themselves,
that this was in some way our fault.
[Raven] People who interpret it as such
were the ones who were trying to protect themselves
and so they put the finger
on my great grandfather, AJ Smitherman,
and 55 others.
[Michelle] JB Stratford was one of those
who fled Tulsa who went to Chicago
where he had family.
He was charged with inciting a riot.
[Raven] AJ Smitherman reached out to the NAACP.
He had to figure out what his next moves would be.
So they're advise was for him to flee
and go to Canada.
He knew he would never face a fair trial
had he come back to Tulsa
and that he would most likely be
the next potential victim of a lynching.
The City of Tulsa is at fault
for failing to protect its citizens.
The Black community had every right
to protect Dick Rowland from being lynched.
They risked their lives.
That speaks to an unbelievable courage.
[Onikah] What is most atrocious about
the destruction of Black Wall Street
was the concerted efforts to prevent the rebuilding
of Black Wall Street.
Putting in a place policies
that were supposed to prevent redevelopment.
[Michelle] The ordinances that the City of Tulsa passed
said that, if Blacks were gonna rebuild,
they had to rebuild
using fire retardant materials.
And yet building supply companies here
often refused to sell those materials
to African-Americans.
It was called a riot
and that served to hold the narrative
of the White folks who perpetrated the violence.
It also served to ensure that Black folks
couldn't actually access their insurance.
[Michelle] Nearly $2 million in insurance claims
were filed by homeowners and business owners.
[Karlos] And not a single penny
has ever been repatriated
to the Black survivors
and descendants of those survivors
who lost it.
[Regina] My grandmother was fierce enough
to go into the courtrooms
after Black folks have been murdered.
And she wanted to make claims,
wants insurance companies to pay.
The suits were thrown at a court outright.
I just love that she had the audacity
to go and say, "You took something
that we worked for, that belonged to us."
The insurance companies paid out the pawnshops
where the guns were stolen to arm vigilantes,
those are the folks that actually got reimbursed.
[Karlos] The Tulsa Race Massacre
is not just about death and destruction,
it's about the liquidation of Black wealth
and the transfer of their wealth
to White people.
White people not only burned down Black Wall Street,
they looted it as well.
They carried away Black wealth.
[Stefan] They did everything
that this country asked them to do.
And they were punished for it.
Respectability can't save you,
no matter how good you do,
all it takes is racist behavior
to cut the legs out from all of this progress.
[people clamoring]
[Onikah] Even though Black Wall Street
was destroyed,
we have resilience,
Greenwood lived again.
BC Franklin and his team of lawyers
refused to accept the City of Tulsa's
rezoning ordinance that would have made it
prohibitively expensive
for Black residents to rebuild.
They fought it, they won,
and that paved the way for the community
to be rebuilt.
[Regina] My great grandmother,
my great grandfather said, "We're gonna rebuild."
Well, some folks never came back,
and can you blame them?
[Michelle] The Blacks that survived the massacre
were forced to exist
with thousands of White rioters,
who had destroyed their community.
Blacks would see
a White woman wearing her hat,
her gloves, something from her home.
There was at least one woman
that saw a White woman wearing her hat
and demanded that she return it.
It's one of the aspects of the massacre
that makes their ability
to move forward so incredible.
The fact that they knew some of the people
that participated in the massacre
and knew that there would be no consequences.
[Gloria] Our great grandmother suffered
a lot of mental issues
because of all the devastation
and the massacre.
She never got back to being quite the Loula
she was before.
But she did rebuild the Dreamland Theatre,
used the income from her other two theaters
to supplement the rebuilding.
But she still pulled through,
served her city,
and tried to help those less fortunate.
To think that your entire community is bombed
and not only did you have this level of destruction,
of death, of property looting,
but there was a huge effort on the part of the state
to pretend that it didn't happen,
and to silence everyone who dared to speak about it.
People from all over the country
were offering Oklahoma
and the City of Tulsa help,
which they refused.
And they were denying the dead bodies,
diminishing the damage
to hide the story
of what had happened here in Tulsa.
Survivors did not talk
about the massacre,
not to each other, not to their children,
there was a silence.
[Regina] People didn't talk about it because they knew
their lives would still be threatened
because of the very White folks,
including the police,
including the state, including the city,
they're all complicit in murder.
So who you gonna run to if you need help?
So either you're gonna talk about it and risk your life,
or you gonna be quiet about it
and try to get on with your life.
[dramatic music playing]
[Angela] It has to do with the kind of fear
that is connected with giving voice
to something.
Black people remained silent about this
because they didn't want the next generation
to have to undergo the same violence.
They didn't want the past to become the present
and the future.
[man] By 1942, the number of businesses had grown,
it was a larger community,
it was a much more affluent community
than it had ever been in 1921.
[upbeat music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Bobby] Oh, boy.
I got the latter part of Greenwood.
We used to go into the Rex Theatre,
to King Park and swim,
and there was so much joy, so much fun,
so much innocence, you know.
And it was still a thriving community,
you know, back in those days.
[upbeat music playing]
[man] Democracy was on the march in Washington
as 200,000 people converge on The Capitol
-to rally for civil rights. -[Ellora] In the 1960s,
the Civil Rights Movement was demanding
economic and political rights.
Black Americans in Tulsa were addressing inequality,
poverty, and segregation.
[Bobby] My dad was the first Black man
during the Civil Rights Movement
in North Tulsa, Oklahoma who got arrested
and went to jail, for standing for rights.
He was just like a soldier.
He was what I call the Malcolm X of Tulsa,
you know, that's what he was like.
[upbeat music playing]
[Michelle] Black Wall Street thrived
until the end of segregation.
When African-Americans were able to spend their money
outside of their community, they began to do so.
It wasn't that the product or the services
was any better, it was simply
that now they have the right
to walk into a White-owned establishment,
and they wanted to experience that,
not understanding how those businesses
on Greenwood would suffer.
As a young person who never experienced segregation,
Black Wall Street revealed to me
that there were positive aspects about living
in these all-Black enclaves.
But I think we need to sort of to look at the success
of many of these Black entrepreneurs
and the independence they were able to have at that time,
and how hard that is to recreate
in a White-controlled society.
You see that there are some drawbacks.
[indistinct chatter]
[Lyndon] Our task is to help
replace their despair
with opportunity.
And this administration today,
here and now,
declares unconditional war
on poverty in America.
[crowd applauding]
There are some forms of inequality
that are so influenced by history
and the wealth gap is actually one of those.
The so-called war on poverty
was really a war on Black folks.
And that war had many expressions
including tearing down of historical habitations
that has happened in Greenwood.
[upbeat music playing]
[Michelle] Urban renewal came through
with the promise to help rebuild
the Greenwood district,
and that's not exactly what happened.
[James] It was something called urban renewal,
which means moving the Negros out,
getting... It means Negro removal.
That is what it means.
And the federal government
is an accomplice to this fact.
[Michelle] The City of Tulsa would build the expressway
through the heart of the Greenwood District,
which caused property values to decline.
[indistinct chatter]
[man speaking]
Yes [indistinct]
[man] Yeah.
[man] I see.
If the attacks on Black communities
by White supremacists
did not push back the resistance,
then they would use city governments
and zoning laws and freeways
to guarantee that this community
did not continue.
[J. Kavin] I-44 sits upon the footprints
of my great grandfather's business.
And I was starting to believe
that was a message that was sent out,
"You better not try to rebuild this Greenwood again
or we'll come back and tear it up again."
[upbeat music playing]
[Bobby] Gap Band stands
for Greenwood, Archer, and Pine Street Band.
The Wilson brothers,
Charlie, Robert, and Ronnie Wilson.
They grew up right here in Tulsa,
they made a lot of platinum and gold records.
* You were the girl for me*
[Bobby] I witnessed some of those songs being made.
* I stand accused*
* You were the first for me*
* But you Turned me out, baby*
You dropped a bomb on me, baby.
* You dropped a bomb on me*
[Bobby] And that's what happened here
on Black Wall Street.
[singer] * You were my pills*
[Bobby] That's what it's in reference to.
And a lot of people didn't know that.
When that song came out, they looked at it,
"Okay. It's just a jamming song,"
that had some hidden meaning to a lot of people
back in those days.
* Then you turned me on*
* You dropped a bomb on me*
[dramatic music playing]
We are still trying to, a hundred years later,
recover from the trauma of the past.
[Raven] Our family has sued for reparations and lost.
The City of Tulsa,
the State of Oklahoma
sent my great aunt a medallion.
That was their way of saying sorry.
[dramatic music playing]
[Raven] A healing cannot take place
without an accountability.
So my appeal to the leaders of Tulsa
and the State of Oklahoma,
to say how long is it going to take?
We've been fighting for a hundred years.
It's on you.
[Venita] There's not enough consequence right now
for what has happened.
They were supposed to receive reparations, the families,
and they never received those reparations.
And that's part of the trauma, right,
of like never seeing your perpetrators
be held accountable,
the devaluing of your life.
[suspenseful music playing]
There are direct parallels between 2021 and 1921.
We're still talking about police misconduct.
Police were a part of the group,
the mob, who shot and killed, right,
defenseless Black people.
[Stefan] I recognize this clearly
on the streets of Ferguson
when people weren't allowed to be on their own lawns,
the collusion of state violence and racism.
And in Greenwood, this was what was at stake,
this collusion of police,
of politics, of culture,
neighbor against neighbor.
All of these things came to mean in the destruction
of what was otherwise
a most beautiful American story.
[Jabraan] I actually remember the very moment
I learned about Greenwood. It was actually in school.
Our teacher took us to the Tulsa City County Library.
We spent one full day
learning about the atrocities
that happened on Greenwood.
And I have never heard of it.
And look at all of the old
newspaper clippings.
The newspaper had no record
of the race massacre.
The first several pages of that newspaper
had been removed as if it never existed.
I will never forget how strange
that idea was to me even as a seventh grader
that someone would want to remove
such a profound point
in history.
[upbeat music playing]
[Venita] I wanted to be on Black Wall Street
for a variety of reasons.
Obviously, the history
is very compelling to me.
I didn't know about Grier Shoe Shop
until actually we had opened
and a journalist came and interviewed me
and, you know, she was like,
"How does it feel to be where the Grier Shoe Shop was?"
And I was like, "Oh, my God. That's crazy."
We have a framed photo of an advertisement
for the Grier Shoe Shop from The Tulsa Star.
[Onikah] Being a Black entrepreneur
requires a level of defiance.
And I'm proud of the shoulders
that I stand on.
Lulu Williams for having been a teacher,
also creating space where folks could gather,
where folks could watch cinema,
engage in discussion,
it's a similar vein in terms of what I wanted
to create in Fulton Street.
The parallels are very strong.
And that's the beautiful thing
about being a Black business owner now
is knowing that there is precedent
for what I'm building.
But there's also an anxiety
because if you took it out the first time
and you took it out again,
if I look toward the horizon,
I'm worried about what is that next thing
that's coming to destroy this again?
[Jerica] The fact of the matter is,
is that Greenwood is what humanity looked like
for those that had to stretch to find it.
The matter is that, Greenwood understood
that Black Lives Matter before it was an it thing
and yet ironically enough, Black Lives Matter
can even be placed boldly in the heart of the space
so I guess the more things change,
the more they stay the same.
[Onikah] When I think of gentrifying neighborhoods,
gentrification and noise complaints
go hand in hand,
noise complaints serve as a means
to police Black and Brown bodies.
You have White folks moving in to communities,
calling police on their "neighbors"
and those neighbors being over-policed.
[Jerica] The Black Lives Matter mural,
it was a beautiful experience.
The community came together.
But then the city then began
receiving complaints.
As a result, that street was repaved.
The energy and the expediency
put in place to remind us that your Black life
does not matter in Greenwood District,
not now, not never.
That was a slap in the face.
[Onikah] It's hard to be something
or aspire to be something
in which you don't see yourself reflected.
In the Greenwood District,
it is becoming harder and harder to see ourselves
in a space that used to be...
us.
[woman] There are efforts to rebuild Black Wall Street.
But today's entrepreneurs are facing the same issues
that Black communities in cities
have faced for decades.
When you look at who owns the physical spaces
our businesses inhabit, or accessing capital,
those are not Black folks.
We are digging ourselves out of a ditch
that we did not create for ourselves.
I was in Vail and walking down,
you know, kind of the shopping area,
one of the folks we were with said,
"Hey, that's my uncle's ski shop."
You know, I had just one of those moments
where it hit you like a ton of bricks.
There is nowhere in this country,
in this world, right, that I could walk by
and be like my, insert whoever, owns this.
[upbeat music playing]
[Jerica] I was parking my car
and a White man came up to my window.
He knocked on it and he said,
"Uh, you can't park here,"
not knowing that I had access to the space.
And I got completely enraged,
"Why can't I park here?
We used to own all of this." Like...
[upbeat music playing]
[Angela] Land, it's so important
because without land,
there's no possibility of sustenance.
Black landowners have decreased
in such phenomenal numbers.
And that is another example of the assertion
of White supremacy.
[dramatic music playing]
[Bobby] It's sad.
When I go down Greenwood,
and look at the emptiness.
I can see some of the buildings
and some of the stuff that was down there
in my eyes.
But my children, you know,
they'll never know.
[dramatic music playing]
[Onikah gasps] It's the black sheep.
My daughter, Hodessa,
is a new form of inspiration for me.
What is she gonna see her mom build,
you know, throughout her lifetime?
Being in the seat to think about
those who are coming after me
and more specifically my own child,
gives me inspiration to go further.
[Venita] Right now there's this clot of land
in Greenwood.
The city owns it right now and they're trying to figure out
what to do with it. They wanna develop on it.
We're talking about land that was owned, you know,
commercial properties that were owned
by Black people.
The land needs to go to the Black community.
That's the answer.
To lean on the words of Malcolm X,
"If you stab me in my back nine inches
and you pull that knife out six inches,
that is not progress."
If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress.
The progress is healing the wound that the blow...
That the blow made.
[Onikah] We can't start to call it progress
until we've started to heal the wound
that was brought on this community.
-[crowd] George Floyd! -[man] Say his name!
-[crowd] George Floyd! -[man] Say her name!
-[crowd] Breonna Taylor! -[man] Say her name!
[Venita] It will be a hard and strenuous fight.
We have grown used to strenuous existence
and rather enjoy tackling
the big, difficult things of life,
especially when the necessary attending hardships
and sacrifice mean a step forward for the race.
[woman] We educate it, we mobilize, we organize,
and we got people out to the poles.
AJ Smitherman, 1918.
[upbeat music playing]
Black Wall Street is important to the imagination,
imagining what life would have been like
for Black people who made the most of the least.
I would put JB Stratford and OW Gurley
against the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers
and the Carnegies who did not have the barriers
to success that AC Jackson
or OW Gurley or JB Stratford had.
Their achievements need to be understood
in light up the barriers,
the everyday racial abuse
they were able to overcome
to achieve success and wealth.
[dramatic music playing]
[Venita] A beautiful community was built
on the backs of Black men and Black women
who have inspired in me the sense of possibility.
If there are more Black kids who could hear those stories,
we'd be setting more generations up for success.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jabraan] To be able to imagine yourself
being successful, it really helps to see people
who look like you be successful.
In Greenwood, our businesses have always been
more than about gaining capital.
It's more about how does this stand
to serve community.
You have a dream, I'm investing in that dream
instead of interrogating it
because I believe our community
is gonna be better for it.
The more business owners we have,
I think we'll start to slowly eat away
at some of those barriers that our young entrepreneurs
are facing.
The spirit of Greenwood is universal
and anyone can take that blueprint
and use it for their own success.
[Venita] Even though that physical location
no longer exist and probably will never return
to what it once was,
in many ways it's greater
because it's now in all types of places.
People all across the country
and all across the world can be inspired
by this story and create something.
[upbeat music playing]
[Ellora] We should elevate those stories
of Black possibility that we see so clearly
in Tulsa before the massacre
and in many, many points throughout US history,
so that we unlearn the idea
that we're in the place that we should be in.
There are voices that were waiting to be heard.
[Ellora] There's another kind of life
that we can live.
We're here for business and I'm really ready
-to get started. -[Ellora] As a society,
we need to work towards that vision
and that possibility.
[upbeat music playing]
[Raven] Generations of people realize
that it's not okay what has happened in the past
and so we're gonna do something different
in the future.
[Angela] Greenwood is about the flourishing
of the community.
And that should inspire us.
We can certainly reconnect
with that spirit and that impulse
100 years later
and try to fulfill the promises
of those who did the work
to generate such a powerful example
of what it meant to be free.
That is the task that is before us today.
Greenwood has always been the trendsetter.
The world is watching and waiting
and we are going to make it worth their while.
Greenwood,
rich with the heritage and a knowing,
got my heart swooning over the possibilities.
It's got me open to the probabilities
and I'm not the only one I know.
You know how I know?
My city told me.
[upbeat music playing]