Tolson shows that Africans, both Moors and Angolans, free and enslaved, accompanied Coronado’s expedition, which crossed the Oklahoma panhandle in 1541. At the time, Greenwood was very likely the most prosperous Black community in the country, and Tulsa, the “Magic City,” was one of America’s fastest-growing cities, an oil boomtown, following the 1905 discovery of the Glenn Pool Oil Reserve 15 miles south of town.Īfrican Americans had been around Oklahoma for a long time. The destruction of Greenwood and the assault on its citizens, beginning on May 31, 1921, was called the worst public disturbance since the Civil War. The name Greenwood still evokes the possibilities and history of Black entrepreneurship, but talk of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre reminds the world of the centuries-long struggle of Black people against white mob violence and its greenlighting from white authorities.
In the fall, rapper, activist, and entrepreneur Killer Mike, who extols the values of Black self-determination and independent institution-building, cofounded a Black and Latinx digital bank called Greenwood. Even before Watchmen (which premiered in fall 2019) and Lovecraft Country (fall 2020), Black social media and public lectures promoted the hashtag #BlackWallStreet.
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