Entrepreneurial Appetite

Black Wall Street: A Conversation with Hannibal B. Johnson and Luc Cadet

• Season 6 • Episode 16

Share episode

The remarkable saga of Tulsa's Greenwood District—known as "Black Wall Street"—stands as one of America's most compelling yet overlooked stories of entrepreneurial triumph, devastating racial violence, and extraordinary resilience. 

In this powerful episode, historian and author Hannibal Johnson reveals surprising truths that challenge common narratives about this iconic Black business district. While most accounts focus solely on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Johnson unveils the community's astonishing rebirth, explaining how Greenwood actually reached its entrepreneurial zenith in the 1940s—two decades after its destruction.

Johnson takes us deep into Greenwood's economic ecosystem, where entrepreneurs like Simon Berry operated jitney services (early versions of Uber), bus lines, hotels, and even charter plane services for wealthy white oil executives. We learn how Oklahoma's unique history gave many Black citizens land allotments through tribal connections, creating economic foundations that fostered business development across the state.

The discussion explores difficult truths about what caused the massacre—from land lust and Klan activity to inflammatory newspaper reporting and the jealousy of poor whites seeing successful Black entrepreneurs. Yet the most powerful revelation may be how the community responded to this devastation, with businesses rebuilding "even as the embers still smoked." The story of Mount Zion Baptist Church spending 30 years to repay its mortgage rather than declaring bankruptcy exemplifies the community's extraordinary integrity.

Perhaps most thought-provoking is Johnson's analysis of how desegregation ironically contributed to the district's eventual economic decline by creating a one-way flow of Black dollars into white businesses without reciprocal white spending in Black establishments. This insight, combined with the devastating impact of urban renewal projects, offers crucial lessons about maintaining community wealth.

For today's entrepreneurs facing their own challenges, Greenwood's legacy provides profound inspiration: "If your forebears 100 years ago did incredible things against odds you will never face, that should be inspirational." Discover how this history continues to inspire a new generation to build economic power with the same determination and excellence that defined Black Wall Street.

Support the show

https://www.patreon.com/c/EA_BookClub

Speaker 2:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's good everyone.

Speaker 2:

I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. Welcome to another throwback episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite. I'm excited because we also have an opportunity to spotlight a Black business, a Black tech business, from a young brother named Luke Cadet, who started his own version of Audible. It's the Black Audible, and we want to help make that the primary go-to space that people go to to hear and listen to Black literature, and so Luke will be facilitating our conversation with the author of Black Wall Street, from Riot to Renaissance, hannibal B Johnson, who is here with us today as well, and so I'm going to turn it over to Luke. He's going to take some time and talk about his business, and then we'll get into the conversation Once again. Thank you all for being here.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. Appreciate that, langston, and again thank you for the invite. One of the reasons why we built the Bantu Audio was for that exact reason which you mentioned, which is to broaden the intellectualism within our community. And so you know, as Langston mentioned, I'm the founder of Avantu Audio and the goal of Avantu Audio ultimately is to share our stories, our narratives and, ultimately, our history.

Speaker 3:

Oftentimes, when we look at the education system, when we look at the publishing industry, our narratives and stories are at times pushed to the back. When you look at the publishing industry in general, you're talking about an 80 to 90 something percent culturally and racially monopolized industry, and we're hoping that with our platform, we can change a lot of that by not only having a space for us to share our stories and share our narratives and have our history heard, but also a place that is a change agent and change. It enforces each diverse changes within certain industries, as well as providing opportunities and helping to connect our diaspora globally, not only just the black community, but also within the brown community, because we do also want to share the stories of our brown brothers and sisters and bring a lot of these narratives and highlight intellectual titles to help us grow as a community. So again, thank you, langston, for putting this together and, without further ado, I would love to jump into the conversation with the author of what you all here listen to, which is Black Wall Street, from Riot to Renaissance.

Speaker 3:

Now, I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the story of Black Wall Street. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with how things took place and what you know, what's been highlighted essentially now, such a prominent community ultimately was destroyed. But within that book as me myself I actually was the one producing that book myself with the narrator, and as we listened to that book and, you know, digested a little bit during the production process there was so many key points to it that really at times really made us upset but almost made us cry. It was somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster. This book was producing it, and so it's an honor to get a chance to speak to Mr Hannibal D Johnson, the author of this book, and actually get some of his thoughts. So, without further ado, I guess the first question I'd have for you, mr Jonathan, is what inspires you to actually write this book?

Speaker 4:

So I moved to Tulsa in the mid-1980s out of law school at Harvard and came to work for a private law firm. But I've always been engaged in the community. So one of the things I did initially was to become a guest editorialist for the Black News paper called the Oklahoma Eagle. They asked me ultimately to do a series on the history of the Greenwood District, which is a traditional African-American community in Tulsa. I did that. I discovered a lot of really interesting information that I didn't know and I grew up in Arkansas, 100 miles from here, and I didn't know anything about the history of Tulsa and its promise within the context of the history of the United States. So I did this four-part series, became really really interested in telling the story of the community.

Speaker 4:

There had been a book, a really well-done book, about the massacre itself. It's a book called Death, A Promised Land. It's by Dr Scott Ellsworth. He's a friend of mine actually he's a professor at the University of Michigan, history professor white guy, who grew up here in Tulsa. His book again focused on the massacre called the riot at that time and I wanted to tell a more holistic story about the community in which the massacre occurred, Because contextualizing that event is key to understanding not only the event but the community writ large. And so I wrote this book, Black Wall Street from Right to Renaissance and Delsis's Sir Greenwood District. So I wrote this book Black Wall Street from Right to Renaissance at Elsassus Sir Greenwood District.

Speaker 4:

I wrote a couple of years later a book called Up from the Ashes, which is a pictorial illustrated book for kids, written on the third grade reading book, Because, remarkably, second, third, fourth grade kids, they're able to understand the rudiments of this history, which is grounded in sort of basic constructs like right and wrong, good and evil, et cetera, et cetera. They get it and they can discuss that. So, and subsequent to that, I did a couple more books specifically about this history. One is a pictorial narrative called Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District Images of America. And then, most recently, I had a book that came out really literally a couple of weeks ago, Black Wall Street 100,. An American City Grapples with Its Historical Racial Trouble and the point of the new book is to talk about how Tulsa has, or in some cases has not, worked to heal the wounds of its history.

Speaker 3:

That's beautiful. So this year is the 100th year anniversary of the Tulsa riot.

Speaker 4:

Well, next year actually. So the actual anniversary will be May 31st, june 1st 2021.

Speaker 3:

Got it Okay and that's the new book that you're working on right now or that's out right now.

Speaker 4:

It just came out a couple of weeks ago. Awesome. It's available on Amazon. Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. Available on Amazon, amazon. I always cite Amazon because it seems to be the easiest way and the quickest way to get books. So Right, yeah, awesome.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure, it's definitely easily accessible, that's for sure, and we definitely want to leave some room for you to actually elaborate a little more on that title as we approach the end of the conversation. So, with that being said, and thank you for that response, um, it's good to hear you know from the author specifically the reasons why they went about, you know, creating these titles and what, what, what they may have learned from it. So what are what are some of the things cause you say you you learned something that you weren't necessarily aware of. So what are, what are some of the things that you say you learn something that you weren't necessarily aware of. So what are some of those things that you did learn within the book?

Speaker 4:

Well, you know, early on I had no knowledge whatsoever that the massacre ever occurred. Then it would. You know. Just amazing, since I grew up 100 miles from here, a joining state, a joining state of Arkansas.

Speaker 4:

Number two, and I think this is still an issue with respect to people who learn about the massacre. They don't understand that what's really remarkable here is the indomitable human spirit. It's the fact that these black folks here in Tulsa, they build something remarkable. So they had vision. They suffered through an unspeakable calamity, yet they vowed we shall not be moved and they rebuilt the community. And the community as a business community, as a business and entrepreneurial community, comes back bigger and better than ever in relatively short order, I tell people. They started rebuilding even as the embers from the massacre still smoke. So in 1925, just four years after the conclusion of the massacre, this community in Tulsa hosted the annual meeting of the National Negro Business League. The National Negro Business League was Booker T Washington's black chamber of commerce. They held their national meeting here in Tulsa in 1925, in part as a show of solidarity with the community. But it's also a testament to the level of the rebuilding.

Speaker 3:

In remarkably short order after the devastation the community peaks as a business community, as an entrepreneurial community in the early to mid 1940s, when there are well over 200 documented black owned and operated businesses in the Greenwood district and post. Learned, while not only producing the book but going back and listening to it was that, from what I hear and what I read is that the height of it was actually in the forties not necessarily at the time that it it got, you know, burnt down, and that that really shocked me. It surprised me because, again, you know, the, the. What's always talked about is, like I said, the, the riot, and how it got burned down, but the aftermath of what that looked like and what that rebuilding looked like, that regeneration, to use your, your words, look like, is never really touched or talked about. And I definitely want to, I want to get into that part a little little later on during the conversation, cause I think there's again, there's a few key points that I got from that that I think, overall, as we walk away from this, I think it's going to be important for us as a, as a community, as a people, to really sit and ponder on, as as we, as we, you know, go into the weekend.

Speaker 3:

But but so when they began building. How was it that they even established something like that no-transcript, innovative way that they were able to create these companies? In fact, as I was listening to the book, I was like, so basically black people could create an Uber before there was an Uber? You know what I mean, because you had these black taxicabs in the ways that they were being innov stations to the theaters, to the taxi cabs, that like how how was it that this black community, not so long, not so far, removed from slavery, was able to build such a massive amount of businesses?

Speaker 4:

Well, you know, one thing I like to tell people is that, as a practical matter, this was much more of a black Main Street than it was a black Wall Street. People when they hear the term Wall Street, they associate it with Wall Street in New York City, which is sort of about banking and investment, and then such this was not in that. This was a community that was rife with sole proprietorships, small businesses and service providers. So you had concentrations of doctors, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, furriers, dry cleaners, movie theaters, jitney services, rooming houses, boutique hotels, garages, confectionaries and on and on and on All types of small business enterprises. And entrepreneurial concerns is what the rural community consisted of. Now, if we back away from that a couple of steps, and entrepreneurial concerns is what the rural community consisted of. Now, if we back away from that a couple of steps, I think it will help us understand how the community was able to become successful. First and foremost, it's imperative that we remember the rural community. Black Wall Street was a community of necessity. What I mean by that is Tulsa was rigidly segregated, so it wasn't possible for Black folks to fully engage with the principal economy, so they had to create their own insular, separate economy, literally across the railroad tracks from downtown Tulsa, and they did that.

Speaker 4:

Another point that's really salient here is that many people don't understand the complicated relationship between Black folks and Native Americans. Many people don't know, for example, that when the five civilized tribes, the Cherokee, the Muscogee Creek, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and the Seminoles were removed from the southeastern United States into Indian territory which is what Oklahoma is today a number of folks who came with them were Black folks, because all those tribes engaged in the practice of chattel slavery. So they had Black folks living among them as slaves and most of those tribes also had Black folks living among them as free persons. So after the Civil War and the five tribes officially sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, they executed treaties with the federal government. The federal government ultimately broke up the tribal land masses and allocated individual land allotments to people who were members of the tribe. Well, part of the conditions for those trees after the Civil War is you tribes, you Muscogee Creek Nation, you Cherokee Nation you must adopt people you formerly enslaved as tribal members. They did that. Those tribal members received land allotments. What is a land allotment at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Speaker 4:

It's an accession to wealth, particularly in an agrarian economy. So a lot of the relative wealth that Black folks in Oklahoma what's now Oklahoma have is traceable back to the fact that they have ancestors who were part of the five civilized tribes who received land early on in the 20th century because of the Dawes Act. So that helped support successful business communities, not just in Tulsa, your Black Wall Street, but there was a successful business community, black business community in Muskogee, oklahoma, 50 miles from here. There were successful Black business communities in many of the all Black towns in Oklahoma and Oklahoma throughout its history and more than 50 all Black towns. So Black folks in Oklahoma actually had some ways a leg up on Black folks around the nation, actually had in some ways a leg up on Black folks around the nation Because Black folks around the nation didn't get that 40 acres and a fuel and a lot of the Black folks in Oklahoma got 160 acres because of their relationship with the wood crops.

Speaker 3:

That's very strange and you know I definitely understand, and you know it's interesting Not to go off surgery. But we actually have, I think, another book of yours that we're producing right now, getting ready to go out, which is Acres of Aspirations the All Black Towns of Oklahoma. That I think is a very powerful piece of work that illustrates how the some Native Americans and some of the you know separation that was caused within the two communities, but that that that speaks a lot of volume. So because that, because these, these African-Americans or enslaved Africans at the time, were enslaved by the Native American tribes, and because these Native American tribes sided with the Confederacy when the Union overcame they, would that kind of like a, would you say that was kind of like a disciplinary act on the Union to say, hey, since you guys sided with the Confederacy, you have to give these black people here that you own as slaves ownership, because it almost feels like they didn't necessarily do that to the rest of the country as was promised. So what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 4:

Well, I mean, I think that the tribes value their sovereignty. So the tribes actually had teams of negotiators to negotiate with the federal government over these treaties called the Treaties of 1866. And a lot of these negotiators were well-educated, sophisticated people, so it's not like they were unaware of what was happening to them. This was a negotiated agreement. Of course, the federal government has immensely more bargaining power than the tribes. Right, you just defeated the entire Confederacy and the tribes aligned with them. You're in a better bargaining position. But it was still a subject of bargaining and you know as a practical matter, at least technically, that's what happened to the other states who were members of the Confederacy. They didn't get to say Black folks, you're not a citizen in Mississippi, mississippi has lost the Civil War. Folks, there were citizens, although the state ultimately extracted grave penalties for you know, for that grant of of theoretical equality, Got it.

Speaker 3:

Okay, that makes sense. So so, leading up to the uh, leading up to, you know, we're, we're building where we have all of this, all the black companies, you know, I believe one, one gentleman, and it, it, it. It kind of goes back to, you know, the core of what our platform is about, because I heard names in this book that I never heard before, and you're talking about individuals that were essentially millionaires at the time. You know, because you know you, you're, you're, you're walking around with gold, gold, gold, watches. You know, you know they, they were, they, they, they seem to be showing off their wealth a little bit, which isn't a bad thing. But you know this one gentleman, he had a multiple, he owned a bus route Is that right? He owned a bus station and ended up selling it to the Tosa with the conditions that black people had to be able to ride. That Is that accurate.

Speaker 4:

Yes, Simon Berry was one of the notable entrepreneurs, so he had a number of business ventures. He started out with the Jitney service. A Jitney service is very much like a taxi cab service and you sort of alluded to the fact that it's also very much like an Uber. I talked to some younger folks. I asked them if they knew what a Jitney service was and finally one person raised his hand and said isn't that like an Uber? And of course, yes, it is. The principle is the same thing. It's like a taxi service. So that was very successful. He saw the need for a larger transportation service. He started a bus line that was ultimately purchased by the city of Tulsa.

Speaker 4:

Simon Barry was also a pilot, and a black pilot, with his own private plane. He started a charter plane service and because Tulsa was on this really steep upward trajectory becoming the oil capital of the world, a lot of wealthy oil men here. So among his clientele were some of the wealthy oil. And in addition to that, Simon Barry owned and operated the Royal Hotel, which is one of several boutique hotels in the Greenwood District on Black Wall Street Really remarkable. One of several boutique hotels in the Greenwood District on Black Wall Street Really remarkable. You know, words had it that in the early 1920s Simon Barry was making something on the order of $500 a day, which would be an incredible bank, right? I mean, many of us'd take that today, right?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, some of us ain't even making $500 a day. That's amazing, that's amazing. So, leading up to the actual what caused it, right, and it's interesting because it feels like I made an Instagram post about this recently that because you know they have this new word for white women that cause ruckus and trouble for a lot of us Karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen.

Speaker 4:

Karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, Karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, karen, Karen, karen Karen.

Speaker 3:

Karen, karen, there you go. So it was interesting to see that it was a Karen that was essentially the linchpin to even this whole riot. Could you go a little into detail about this, karen? You?

Speaker 4:

know.

Speaker 4:

I'm glad you brought that up, because it's important to distinguish between true causal factors and catalytic factors. When I talk about causal factors, I catalytic factors. When I talk about causal factors, I'm talking about the foundational elements that led to the community disruption that really caused this event. So let me just take off a few things that are substantial causal factors. One is the state of race relations in America during this period.

Speaker 4:

Sociologists, eddie, and historians often refer to the period as the nadir of race relations in America, the low point of race relations in America, because primarily of a proliferation of events that were called race riots throughout the nation. The summer and fall of 1919 were named Red Summer by James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP because there were so many of these so-called race riots in the United States New York, philadelphia, washington DC, omaha, nebraska, elaine, arkansas, longview, texas, chicago, illinois. I could go on and on and on. Another thing that's happening simultaneously is lynching. Lynching is a form of domestic terrorism. It's perpetrated primarily against Black folks. So the point of lynching is not simply to punish an individual, but rather to send a message to the group to which that individual belongs. It's to reinforce white supremacy. That's the whole basis of lynching. So all that is going on during this period. So the state of race relations, the sort of systemic structural race relations problems in America, is a foundational cause, as is what I call landlust. The Black community of Tulsa sat on land that was valued by other folk in Tulsa, corporate interests and railroad interests. They wanted to move the Black people off the land, move them farther north, take the land for what they considered to be higher and better uses. The Klan, the iconic domestic terrorist organization, had a presence in Tulsa in the early 1920s, swelling through the late 1920s. So they were a factor what I consider what I call cognitive dissonance or just garden variety jealousy. It means that the poorest white folks on the other side of the tracks think that they're superior to the best and brightest of the black folks on the north side of the tracks. So if you're white and you're not doing very well economically and you look across the tracks and you see black folks driving, like Simon Barry was driving a Model T, living in and owning a hotel, having a plane service, it causes cognitive dissonance. What you think could be your reality is not your reality. We might refer to that as jealousy. And then, finally, we had a afternoon daily newspaper called the Tulsa Tribune that published a series of inflammatory, incendiary articles and editorials. It really fomented hostility in the Black community and then the white community toward the Black community. All those are the real causal factors.

Speaker 4:

Tulsa is a powder keg, is a tinderbox in 1921. Tulsa is a powder keg, is a tinderbox in 1921. And all that's needed is some sort of igniter or catalytic event to cause the community to erupt. That event is an event that involves two teenagers the black boy named Big Roland, who's a shoeshine boy dropped out from Booker T Washington High School. A white girl named Sarah Page manually operates an elevator in a downtown building called the Drexel. The event happens on Monday, may 30, 1921, which happens to be Memorial Day. Big Rollin was trying to use the restroom. Facilities are segregated. He goes over to the Drexel building. He knows that there's a restroom available for his use on the third floor. He boards the elevator.

Speaker 4:

Something happens on the elevator. We don't know exactly what it was. It caused the elevator to jerk or to alert and Dick will bump into Sarah Page. She overreacted. She began to scream. The elevator landed back in the lobby. Dick was frightened. She was screaming. He ran from the elevator. She was distraught. She exited the elevator. There was a clerk from a locally owned store called Renberg's there. He comforted her. She told the clerk her story about being assaulted on the elevator, a story that she would later recant. She refused to cooperate with prosecutors. After they arrested her for assault, the store clerk called the police. Now that might have been the end of the story had it not been for the intervention of Tulsa Tribune, that newspaper I mentioned.

Speaker 4:

The next day, may 31st 1921, the Tulsa Tribune published a story entitled Ab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator. It was a false narrative. A false narrative, it essentially said that this black boy attempted to rape this respectable white girl in broad daylight in a public space in our downtown. That's what the article said. The article went out of its way to make the girl, sarah Page, look virtuous and, as a corollary, to make Dick Rowland, the boy, look villainous. So a large white mob ultimately gathered on the lawn of the courthouse. The jail was on the top floor of the courthouse. Black men were concerned about Dick Rowland's safety. There were rumors that he was going to be lynched. Several dozen black men, some of them armed, some of them World War I veterans, marched down to the courthouse to protect Dick Rowland. Words were exchanged between the large white group, numbering ultimately in the thousands, and the smaller black group, numbering in the dozens. A white man tried to take a black man's gun. The gun discharged.

Speaker 3:

As one of the massacres survivors said, all hell broke loose after that. Right, that's interesting because it's funny, because it's like a mix of well, what we now today would call a Karen and, outside of all the other causations that caused it and, of course, the media framing it in a way that was not necessarily true, ultimately led to the arrest of the young, the young man, and the crowds coming together and, of course, you know, armed black men coming veterans from my understanding reading the book coming together trying to defend this young man and ultimately, due to that jealousy and this powder keg and all the other causations that you mentioned, led to what we now know as the Tulsa Riot. So, with the riot, it was amazing to hear the amount of loss and damage that would cause because of this riot, and it goes back to the whole conversation we were talking about where Tulsa was actually, or Greenwood District was actually, at its peak in 1940. However, it just it blows my mind that that much damage and that much money was lost in property value, blah, blah, blah. But yet, in the 1940s, if they were able to pass down this money, this real estate, this land, to their children, as opposed to essentially starting from scratch. It seemed like Two things I got from.

Speaker 3:

The riot part was one, not only just the amount of damage, and I'd like for you to talk about that too. There was a. There was a snippet in the book where you know you have some white people, you know they're basically looting, which is interesting enough, and now they're talking about protests. They're looting now and it's like we learned that from you with anything. So we learned that from you if anything. So you have individuals looting and one part of the book speaks about how to the point you were making about jealousy how they were in these Black people's homes and they had all these nice aces and all, and they started spilling the plates, the covers and everything Like, oh, these Negroes have better stuff than us. And it leads to the whole point of you know, a lot of this was really due to that jealousy. But to the point of the financial, law.

Speaker 4:

What are your thoughts on that? There are a lot of things that we know because the factual matter has been studied thoroughly. There was a statewide commission convened in 1997. The final report report in 2001. It's a fact-finding commission Fourth morning report and they chronicle things like the physical damage, the losses and so forth.

Speaker 4:

So what we know is that the violence lasted roughly 16 hours, that Black men in the Greenwood community put up a pretty rigorous defense, albeit a short-lived one, because they were outgunned, outmanned and overmatched. But there was a group, a national group called the African Blood Brotherhood that had a presence in Tulsa and some other cities. They were kind of the forerunner to a group like the Black Panthers and so they had presence here in Tulsa. So there was an attempt to defend the community. At the end of the day. We know that property damage conservatively estimated by leadership at the time was $1.5 to $2 million. Now if we translate that to present value it would be well over $25 million. And remember that is almost certainly a lowball estimate because there were interest corporate and railroad interest in the community who wanted this land. So they wanted to get the land. They wanted to get the land on the cheap and it's a lowball. The damages we know that at least 1,250 black homes were destroyed. We know that businesses, churches, schools and library were destroyed as well. We know that black folks were put in internment centers, very much like people of Japanese ancestry were interned during World War II. They had to have a green card, literally a green identification card, countersigned by a white person who was willing to vouch for them to get them out of these centers. And we know that some Black families spent days, weeks and months living in tent cities on the charred earth set up by the Red Cross. The Red Cross was called in to provide relief, was led by Follet Maurice Willis from St Louis. So this was a really trying time for everybody in the Black community. And what's amazing again is that so many people decided to remain.

Speaker 4:

Your question I'm going to give you an example of this imagining what might have been had it not been for this disruptive event. Imagining what might have been had it not been for this disruptive event. One of the people who left town after the massacre was JB Stratford. Now, jb Stratford was a leader in the Black community at the time of the massacre in 1921. But although no white person was ever charged and convicted and spent time in jail for any offense related to the massacre.

Speaker 4:

About five, six dozen black men were charged with inciting the riot, inciting the massacre. One of those men was a leading Tulsa Tulsa in the black community Jamie Stratford, who was a lawyer and owned the Stratford Hotel, an elegant hotel in the Greenwood District. He fled Tulsa, moved to Chicago. His family became incredibly prominent in Chicago, is still prominent in Chicago. In fact his great grandson is John Rogers, who's known for his investment prowess in Chicago, one of the leading Black investors in the United States. So what if that family had remained here in Tulsa instead of relocating to Chicago? And that family vowed never to set foot in Oklahoma again until the indictment was dropped. Guess what, in 1996, 75th anniversary of the massacre, they held a ceremony and got those indictments lifted for the Stratford family and the.

Speaker 4:

Stratford family came into Tulsa to participate in that ceremony.

Speaker 3:

That's beautiful. That's beautiful and that's what I'm saying. So it's like, like it's not just damages, it's the overall, you know, impact of this, what this had, just from a historical standpoint, because this never happened. Who knows where Tulsa would be and what type of city it would be and what type of, you know, community we would have there as black people, right? So another interesting fact that I remember reading on a book at that I think it was the church specifically that you know, they didn't even take any insurance money because of their level of integrity and pride, and you know it just, to me it was like wow, after all that's happened to us, we still have enough dignity to say we're going to pay every single dollar, because that's the type of people that we are and that really touched my heart.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, let me just clarify that the story you're talking about has been out of sight. At the start it was a new church at the time of the massacre, about six weeks old. It had been built. But it cost roughly people think around $85,000. A lot of money. They had borrowed $50,000 from a single individual but they had a mortgage on the facility. It was beautiful.

Speaker 4:

I've got letters from white folks who lived in the vicinity talking about the grandest church in the black community and so forth. So unfortunately, one of the rumors that was going outtown during the period of the massacre was that this church, mount Zion, was being used to house weapons for the black community. So when the large mob came across the Frisco tracks, firing and looting and shooting, they went to Mount Zion Church, this beautiful blue church, set it on fire and burned it down. But after the devastation, I tell people, the congregation had a number of key decisions to make. So the first question to ask and answer is do we still have a church? And of course the answer is indeed we do, to the extent that we still have members. We are the church. The edifice is not the church.

Speaker 4:

They met in private homes. They asked the next question do we have insurance? They had an insurance policy Guess what Insurance policies back in that period. It was very common. But it's been a clause in the insurance policy that says we will not pay out if the damage is caused by riot or civil unrest. That's why the term riot is so important. The next thing they did was ask can we consult a lawyer about some sort of strategy to unload this mortgage? And they could, and they thought about it. Lawyer told them yeah, there's a legal strategy called bankruptcy. It processes you. Through this legal strategy you can at worst reschedule your indebtedness and make the burden a little bit lighter for yourself. The congregation leadership met and decided they had a moral obligation to repay in full this individual who had lent them $50,000. So they came up with some really creative fundraising strategies. It took about 30 years, but it remains enough to make it off the mortgage and to build a new structure, and it's still a vital, viable part of the community today. Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Speaker 3:

That's amazing. Yeah, that was a beautiful story. I mean to come from something like that and just to still be able to build something and pay it back after what happened to you when you should really have been compensated again. That just spoke volumes to the character of, you know, our community really. So one other thing, and I want to make sure that we have time to speak on your new book.

Speaker 3:

One of the things that I got from the book is, you know, going to, you know, the regeneration ultimately, and how it became successful in the 40s. One thing that I got from it was, like you said, it reached its peak in the 40s and from my understanding, it was essentially the oil industry that did that. But the biggest piece that I got after it became so successful is what caused it, what's called what caused the decline really. And he said in the book specifically this is the part that I want a lot of people to take away from this and just sit on it and think about this in the future. He said in the book that desegregation was the key that unlocked the Black dollars to flow into these other communities, and at first it was drip by drip and then it was a flood. Could you go into some detail when it came to that?

Speaker 4:

I think for some people it'll be ironic that something we fought so hard for integration or desegregation is something that really sped up the demise of this successful Black business community. But it's not so strange if you think about it. And why did this Black community exist as a business community in the first place? It exists because the mainstream economy was shut off to us. We had to create something of our own because we had people who wanted to offer their services. We had people who wanted to sell their wares. They weren't able to do that elsewhere. We had people who wanted to be consumers and purchase services, purchase wares they couldn't do it elsewhere. Purchase services, purchase wares they couldn't do it elsewhere.

Speaker 4:

When integration or desegregation comes along, we are able to find goods and services outside the confines of our community, often at better price points because of economies of scale and other kinds of economic factors, and we're excited that we have this whole new world opened up to us. So we spend outside the community, not necessarily being conscious of the fact that we're undermining the financial foundation of the community as we let our dollars flow outside the community Because guess what? White folks are not coming into the community bringing their dollars, like we are going outside the community and spending our dollars. So if it had been a mutual and equal exchange, that might've been different. But that's not the way the world works. So integration and desegregation is a negative factor in terms of economic wellbeing of a successful black business community.

Speaker 4:

I would pair that with another phenomenon that happened and all these structural things. They're not things that are unique to Tulsa. It's happened in cities all across the United States, especially the next factor urban renewal. So in Tulsa all the old timers call it urban removal, because urban renewal initiatives of the 60s and 70s primarily often had adverse effects on communities of color. And that's in part because communities of color historically have been relatively voiceless politically. So the mechanisms of the government can come through with relatively little resistance and do whatever they want to. And what happened in Tulsa is they built a highway right through the heart of what was successful, successful black business community, intersect 244. Didn't think anything of it, I mean. And now it's just painfully obvious what a devastating impact that highway right through the heart of the community had on economic health.

Speaker 3:

Wow, those really those two things urban renewal or or or removal or, in some instances, what we're looking at now, gentrification as well as decertification and us flowing those black dollars back. Is there any way to change that or get us to a place where we are as successful, or close to that type of success, as a community?

Speaker 4:

I think we have to acknowledge that the world has changed and having a segregated, black insular economy is something that's not likely to be viable, certainly not in the context of a place like Tulsa, oklahoma. The black demographic in Oklahoma is probably 8% and Tulsa. In Tulsa, the city is probably about 15%, but it's about 8% or 9% in the metro area, so we have a relatively small population. So what really is likely is what's going on now in the Greenwood community, that is, we're holding on to the legacy of what was and we're working to use what I call the Black Wall Street mindset to leverage economics and entrepreneurship among a whole new generation. In other words, if we actually teach this history and help people understand that you have forebears 100 years ago who are doing incredible things even by today's standards, against odds that you will never face, that should be inspirational to people who feel challenged and feel unable to break into the economic system that we have today. So that's kind of what we're doing.

Speaker 4:

The community is a fully integrated community today and most of the land is not technically owned by Black folks, so it's a Black historical community, but as a practical matter, it's an integrated community and it's really diverse in terms of what's there. So there's residential, commercial, educational, cultural, arts, religious, on and on and on. So it's really about celebrating the legacy and leveraging the legacy to teach a whole new generation that they can be successful. They don't have to be tied to the Greenwood district to be successful, they can be successful anywhere. You can get this knowledge here and go to Atlanta or Buffalo or anywhere and do your thing. You know it doesn't have to be more, particularly in the information age and the computer age. What's really important is the spark, the mental spark around, you know, entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and thank you, luke, I want to. I'm going to jump in because I want to give the audience an opportunity to ask some questions. So those of you who are in the audience I want you to you can either unmute yourself or you can type your question in the chat. If you unmute yourself, just feel free to ask If you want to type it in the chat. If you're shy, then I will pitch the questions to the two guests today and then maybe Hannibal, if you could, in one of the questions because I want to respect your time tie in some information about your new book as you answer one of the questions from the audience. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Michael Nelson, I think you had one. So if you want to unmute yourself, you can or I can ask it for you from the chat.

Speaker 5:

Good evening, can you, can you hear me? Yes was then as to what it is now and how young people accept information and how they convey information, how they interpret the information. And I find, being a registered nurse, just that imagery is very big in terms of trying to not necessarily transform but convey that information. Transform but convey that information. How do you see, as mentioned in trying to duplicate, so to speak, but in these times in which we can duplicate, of going back to which is something I, like you said, which was building by necessity, I think that what you mentioned was key and was very interesting to say because, if we look at it that way, as simplistically as it sounds, it really makes sense in order for us to reinvest in ourselves and getting our younger people to think about in ways in which they now take in that information of imagery. And so how can we transform that, how can we get younger people to believe in that?

Speaker 4:

Well, I think you know, the first step obviously is to get them to know, to share the information with them, to impart the information, and then I think we can set up of the founders of the Greenwood community, the Black Wall Street, as role models and we used to talk about role models a lot, but the role models don't have to be in the era now, they can be historical figures.

Speaker 4:

And so if we look to OW Gurley, jb Stratford, bc Franklin, simon Berry, ac Jackson, the people who were the movers and shakers in the grammar community, we see them as role models. We understand the obstacles that they face, which I want to emphasize again, they face obstacles that we will never face, which is not to say that we don't have issues of structural, systemic racism. We definitely do, but they had that in spades and they still did incredible things. So it's about thinking about what the possibilities are, as evidenced by our forebears, and about creating a mindset that says, despite all the barriers and the obstacles and the slings and arrows, I can do this, I got this. That's really what it's all about, and teaching this history is really the first step.

Speaker 5:

Thank you. I have one other quick question for you. I have one other that works for us, whereas we're still trying to sit at these tables and be a part of these integrated systems that are not necessarily integrated, nor do they want them to be. So it's like we're fighting a battle in which it's so ingrained now that it makes it so very difficult. And I'm not saying impossible, because I don't believe it. I think anything is possible. However, going back to just relying on ourselves and possibly even segregating, so to speak, for our own communities, would you still say that there's a chance of better integration, or actually going back, so to speak? Not backwards, but just going in a different direction, in which we now create our own communities again and rely on us again, and the idea of money transferring within our communities?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that it that it's a, it's an either, or that it's a sort of dichotomous choice. So I'll give you a kind of a. I thought the. The analogy that I thought of first, oddly, is you remember the Miss Black America pageant? We can have a Miss Black America pageant. We can have a Miss Black America pageant and still compete in the Miss America pageant. The point of the Miss Black America pageant was that black women are not treated fairly and don't have an equal chance in the regular pageant. We're going to try, but in the meantime we're going to do our own thing because we're going to celebrate black women. Right, you can do those things simultaneously. We can invest in people who are black entrepreneurs or black businesses while simultaneously work to crack glass ceilings and do all the other stuff that needs to be done, because I don't know. I think I'm entitled, just as entitled as your average white boy, to do whatever I want to do in the larger economy.

Speaker 2:

So if there are any other questions, we want to be respectful of Hannibal's time, so we have about four minutes left, maybe one or two quick questions, and so unmute yourself and you can ask, and if not, there we go. Kiara, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

So my question was just that, you know, I noticed that in a lot of cities here in America, you know, where there are large Black populations, there is this money being sucked out of the community and we, we have a large majority in these cities, but usually we are not, you know, taking advantage of that large majority and investing back.

Speaker 1:

And so I kind of get what the guy who was speaking before what he was getting at about segregation was speaking before what he was getting at about segregation, because I'm not saying that you know us competing in these different, uh, different pageants and whatnot, and you know, continuing to break glass ceilings isn't, you know, isn't amazing. But my question is that do these systems, do they need, do we need to have time to heal? And you know, understand and and really like, divulge and digest our history? You know, before we can continue to, you know compete and you know, go competing in things that sometimes some of us can't, we can't even conceptualize what's going on. A lot of the time, you know, we kind of get lost in the sauce, get lost in the mix. So you know, like what, you know, what does that, how, what is that next step when it comes to, you know, digesting our own history.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I mean the model that's most familiar to folks is probably going to be the sort of corporate model is that it has been a lot of attention to diversity, equity, inclusion at the corporate level, and one of the things that often happens is corporate interests will develop internal systems, including business groups or sometimes called affinity groups.

Speaker 4:

So you might be an X corporation, you're black. There's an affinity group of black people who meet regularly to talk about things that are that are shared interests, particularly particularly among Black people, in a safe space so Black people can engage with one another and if there's still part of the means that's the kind of corporate way of recognizing what you're saying, which is sometimes there are issues of particularly important to a particular dimension of diversity those people need to be in a safe, comfortable space, talking with one another so that they can decide what issues need to be addressed in the context of the enterprise and then they can come back together with the main group and share that information. So that kind of support network is important. I think it is important not just in the corporate context but more generally.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Kiara. So I'm going to go ahead, Letitia, ask your question really quickly, and then that will be the last question for tonight.

Speaker 6:

My question is similar to one that was asked, but I had written my question out too. So my question is what's the solution for overcoming the sense of powerlessness? So Black people were thriving in Tulsa and a group of white people decided to burn the place down, kill indiscriminately, and the Black people who survived had to be validated by the white employees. So today we continue to see the Black people being killed indiscriminately, as if our lives aren't of the same value. So how do you overcome that sense of just powerlessness, like, no matter how good you are, you can be a great employee, you can be a great black person period, and it's like a moment your life can be gone, as if you're of no value. So how do you overcome that and how do you share that with you know your children, who may be dealing with the same feelings.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, of course. Now, if I can answer that question, I would be a billionaire many times over. I just think that it's important to instill in kids in particular, the sense of their value, irrespective of whether it's validated by the larger society. Like I know my value and I know that nobody's going to tell me anything. Contrary to that.

Speaker 4:

I know these horrible things are happening and I know it's frustrating to all of us, but we have to demand, continue to demand, more of the system. I know that sounds like something that we hear over and over and over. That's part of the frustration is because we've demanded more of the system for many years and we've not always gotten it. There are fits and starts one step forward, two step back. That's part of the frustration that I think plays out sometimes in some of the destructive behavior that happens in otherwise peaceful protests.

Speaker 4:

I don't have I don't have the answer. I don't think anybody has the answer, but I certainly am appreciative of people who have relative power in unusual spaces at exercise. The example I would give you the players in the NBA and what they did to say we're not playing the playoffs because we're not just pieces of meat. You know we are affected by these things that are happening and we're demanding some changes, and if those changes don't happen, then we're not going to chuck and dive for you anymore, we're not going to entertain you anymore. That's, that's power. So people who have power have to have to have to exercise it in ways that that create, on demand, change thank you for joining this edition of entrepreneurial appetite, if you likeite.

Speaker 2:

If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.