4.5 • 10.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2021
⏱️ 26 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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0:00.0 | So I want you to close your eyes and imagine. |
0:12.9 | It's a sunny morning in early May, 1921, you're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the bustling all |
0:18.5 | black greenwood section of town. |
0:20.6 | A dapper, mustachioed man pulls up in front of a Stradford Hotel in a shiny Model T-4. |
0:26.6 | He's a lawyer and real estate developer named JB Stradford, and the hotel is just one of |
0:31.4 | his properties. |
0:33.2 | He is not only one of the richest men in town, but one of the most prosperous African-Americans |
0:37.6 | in the country at the time. |
0:39.6 | He steps into the lobby, stops for quick shoe shine, maybe from someone like a young Robert |
0:44.2 | Fairchild, who recalled in a 1978 interview that he used to earn good money, shine and |
0:49.6 | shoes in greenwood. |
1:11.0 | That's Fairchild, being interviewed by Scott Ellsworth, a writer, historian, and Tulsa |
1:15.4 | native. |
1:16.4 | Scott has spent decades studying and writing about Tulsa's greenwood district. |
1:20.6 | And though we imagined that scenario with JB Stradford, the man himself was very real, |
1:25.2 | one of hundreds of African-American entrepreneurs who helped make greenwood one of the wealthiest |
1:29.2 | black communities in the United States in the early 20th century. |
1:33.8 | You know, in Greenwood there were two movie theaters, the Dixie as well as the Dreamland. |
1:38.6 | There were more than 30 restaurants. |
1:40.8 | There were 35 grocery stores and meat markets. |
1:44.6 | There were a dozen physicians and surgeons. |
1:47.3 | There were lawyers, real estate agents, you know, all sorts of shops, you know, you name |
... |
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