Every year in February, we celebrate Black History Month. It is a time to celebrate the sacrifices and success of black people have faced in America. As a young black student taught by predominantly black teachers, I thought I had advanced knowledge of black history. I knew nearly all black elected officials in D.C and could name at least ten modern-day inventions created by a black person. But I was shocked to learn about the massacres that black people had faced in America. None is more overlooked and under talked about than the killings that occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in an area called Black Wall Street.
In history textbooks, Harlem is the center of black success, and rightfully so, Jazz’s birth led to an increase in musicians like Duke Ellington and a rise of black authors and poets like Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen. Harlem was the centerfold for black people who wanted a better life. During the Harlem Renaissance, a district in Tulsa, Oklahoma named Greenwood or Black Wall Street was home to a population filled with black affluent and wealthy families. Black people owned everything in the Greenwood district, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, and even the newspapers. Greenwood was even home to the largest hotel for black people in the country. Yet this efficient and wealthy area was written entirely out of textbooks and forgotten in history.
I happened to learn about black Wall Street when I stumbled across a documentary on YouTube. Black Wall Street legacy was once well known to millions of black people and white people. Yet, it has been reduced to a couple of thousand people on YouTube. At first glance, I wonder why a self-sufficient area filled by black people was not praised if not talked about more in American history. In May of 1921, a Dick Rowland black teenager was accused of raping a white woman. At the courthouse, an engaged mob filled with white men and women formed, and chaos soon grew. The mob set their eye on Black Wall Street, and for 16 hours, houses and businesses were set aflame, innocent black people were killed and beaten in the streets they paved. Have the smoke clear, Hundreds of innocent people were dead, and thousands were injured and homeless.
This racial act of hatred was more than setting flames to a neighborhood; it was a set reminder to other black communities in America what can happen when black people become too successful. The innocent lives lost and businesses burned received no justice, and the legacy of the most significant black town in America completely vanished from history. Black Wall Street’s dismissal is a constant reminder of the systemic discrimination black people face and the continuous threat our present holds in America.