AMERICA’S WORST RACE CRIME
It came to be known as ‘Black Wall Street’ – a 35-block district called Greenwood neatly segmented from the neighbouring areas of Tulsa by a rail line – and it was a beacon of African American entrepreneurship and culture. In the era of Jim Crow laws and segregation, Greenwood had thrived. It had its own schools, hospital, stores (that served Black customers, unlike the ones across the tracks), two newspapers and two movie theatres. Of the 10,000 or so African Americans who lived in Tulsa (out of a population of around 100,000), about 80 per cent of them lived in Greenwood.
But by early morning on 1 June 1921 Greenwood had been razed to the ground. Over 1,400 homes had been destroyed, businesses had been looted and as many as 300 people had been killed. Thousands of white invaders had stormed the district, armed with machine guns and even using a plane to firebomb the town. While at the time it was referred to as a riot, the word massacre seems far more appropriate and is more commonly used today. It was a horrific crime, yet not a single person was convicted. How did it happen? And why?
First, we need to understand a little more about Greenwood, the wider experience of African Americans in this era
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