How Black prosperity was built up and torn down in Tulsa

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, to start a three-part series examining America's persistent racial wealth gap, we head to Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, in 1921, a violent white mob destroyed the thriving Greenwood neighborhood — then known as America's "Black Wall Street.” The event wiped out much of the prosperity experienced by the area’s Black residents and, along with it, the opportunity for intergenerational wealth-building. We'll learn about the history and attempts at restitution. But first: a downgrade of the nation's credit rating.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The nation's credit rating takes another hit. For Marketplace, I'm Novasopo and for David Brancaccio.
0:07.9	There are three big credit rating agencies on Wall Street. Moody's just became the last to
0:13.6	downgrade its top-notch rating of U.S. sovereign debt. It's a small change with big implications.
0:19.2	Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzor is here with more. Good morning, Nancy.
0:23.1	Good morning. So why did Moody's downgrade the nation's credit rating?
0:27.7	Yeah, Moody's downgraded the U.S. one-notch on its 21-notch rating scale. And in a statement, here's how Moody's explained it. It said it's excessive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of big deficits. And Moody says if the 2017 tax cuts are extended, that'll add around $4 trillion to the deficit. Congressional Republicans are currently working on a bill that would continue those tax cuts.
0:59.0	All right. So, Nancy, this is not the first time the nation's credit rating is downgraded. It's not the second time. It is?
1:05.6	It is the third time, Nova. The first time was in 2011 When Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S.
1:13.3	during a congressional standoff over the debt ceiling, Fitch did the same thing in 2023 after yet
1:20.3	another long fight in Congress over the debt limit. And that almost led the U.S. to default on
1:25.4	its debt. So this is about debt and spending. What does it
1:29.3	mean for U.S. borrowing costs and for consumers going forward? Well, if you have a lower
1:34.9	credit rating, it means you're in theory a bigger risk. That means investors demand a higher interest
1:40.1	rate, and that is already happening with U.S. Treasury bonds, and things like mortgage rates and
1:45.7	car loans are loosely tied to the 10-year treasury bond. So when the U.S. government has to pay more
1:52.1	to borrow, so do we. All right, Nancy, thank you very much. You're welcome.
2:04.6	In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and Black Lives Matter protests which followed, public attention turned to the persistent racial wealth gap in America.
2:26.1	The median black household still has only 15% as much wealth as the median white household.
2:31.5	Today, in the first of a three-part series, Marketplaces Mitchell Hartman takes
2:34.9	us to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to see how black prosperity has been built up and torn down over a century
2:41.9	of racial violence and discrimination. Today, Tulsa's historic black neighborhood, known as
2:47.9	Greenwood, has a small cluster of shops and empty storefronts, a history
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.