‘We have to be part of the solution’: building the Black Wall Streets of tomorrow
W hen most people hear the words “Black Wall Street”, their thoughts tend to dart straight to Greenwood, the prosperous Tulsa enclave that rose to prominence in the early 1900s and lay in ruins after the 1921 Tulsa massacre. In a horrific flashpoint of US history, a white mob descended on the north Tulsa neighborhood, looting and burning down Black-owned businesses and killing approximately 300 people.
Phil Armstrong, a Tulsa resident and the president and CEO of the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice, says that the ruinous massacre is only half the story. In fact, the city of Tulsa began rebuilding the Greenwood district almost immediately after the riots. By 1942, one year after the devastation, the zone was home to 242 Black-owned businesses including bowling alleys, hotels and boutiques – double the amount there had been 12 months prior.
“The focus was to get the economy of Greenwood up and running again as soon as possible,” Armstrong says.
The legacy and resilience of the Black Wall Street of Tulsa is inspiring a new generation to rebuild Black business districts across the nation. From St Louis to Chicago, urban citizens are working to put Black commercial districts back on the map.
Inspired by the efforts to rebuild the Greenwood district of Tulsa, St Louis organizer Farrakhan Shegog founded Young Voices With Action (YVWA), a St Louis nonprofit dedicated to the revitalization of the Wellston Loop corridor that runs along Martin Luther King Boulevard. Shegog was motivated to re-create the glory days of the Ville, a predominantly Black enclave of St Louis that was home to Arthur Ashe, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry and Josephine Baker, among others. Though most of the businesses in the Ville were not Black-owned, the
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