[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! -[crowd] Breonna Taylor! -[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]