Greenwood, Tulsa: The Black Wall Street

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Before it was destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood was one of the most affluent black communities in the country. It was known as “Black Wall Street” because of its concentrated wealth.

“We lived like we were Wall Street,” remembered Otis Granville Clark, then a 105-year-old survivor of the massacre, in “Before They Die!,” a 2008 documentary. “A lot of folks would come in from New York and Chicago. We had a big time here on Greenwood. This was oil country.”

Greenwood’s past is back in the news after Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum (R) announced last week that the city would reopen its investigation into whether victims of the century-old race massacre were buried in mass graves.

[‘They was killing black people’ In Tulsa, a century-old race massacre still haunts Black Wall Street]

Before the massacre, Greenwood had a population of more than 100,000 black people, according to the Greenwood Cultural Center’s history of the community. It was home to luxury shops, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, a savings and loan, a post office, three hotels, jewelry and clothing stores, two movie theaters, a library, pool halls, a bus and cab service, a nationally recognized school system, six private airplanes and two black newspapers.

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