The Tulsa Massacre Pt.1 - The History of Black Wall St.

Greenwood was named the town after another town called Greenwood, Mississippi. The first store was a grocery store on the corner of Archer and Greenwood ave. The community continued to grow along Archer st. attracting a real estate developer, a dentist, a black physician and a even ministers. Little by little JB Stradford's vision of a black business district took shape along Archer st. In 1905 the first school for black children opened in a Baptist church and by the time Oklahoma was a state Greenwood had two physicians, a newspaper and three grocers. The Greenwood area would be annexed in to Tulsa in 1909. It's residents believed greenwood represent a new freedom from the oppressive economy of the old south. A new life where whites were too busy making money to worried about putting blacks in their place. JB Stradford become the richest black man in Tulsa owned the largest black owned hotel in America. Between the 1910 and 1920 Tulsa black population surged from 2000 to 8873, and the black population resented only about 13 percent of Tulsa's total population.

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Sources:
Riot and remembrance
by James S. Hirsch
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921
https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/racemassacre/tulsa-race-massacre-in-aftermath-no-one-prosecuted-for-killings-and-insurance-claims-were-rejected/article_3ba23c3c-886d-5821-9970-02153261960a.html