I'm Vox Senior correspondent, Jamil Smith, sitting in for Sean Ramosfer.

Back in 1921, if you were black and lived in Tulsa's Greenwood District, you pretty much

never needed to leave.

You would find hotels, beauty salons, barber shops, movie theaters, dance halls, pool halls,

grocery stores, restaurants, hybrid assurries, clothing stores, shoe sign shops, jazz clubs,

and a number of service providers, including doctors, lawyers, accountants and dentists.

It was dubbed black wall street, but a better moniker would have been black main streets.

It's just their mostly small businesses and again professionals, service providers.

That's Hannibal Johnson.

He's an author, attorney, and he serves on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission.

Now Greenwood was one of many communities throughout the former Oklahoma territory that was

founded after the U.S. government and others, parceled out former indigenous tribal lands

to formerly enslave black people.

That ability, the own land, set the foundation for Greenwood to become one of the most prosperous

black communities in the United States until Memorial Day of 1921.

The incident happened on Monday, May 30, 1921, which happened to be Memorial Day.

Dick Rowan was at work shining shoes.

He needed to use the restroom.

Tulsa was a highly segregated city.

He knew that his options were limited.

He knew of a restroom and a downtown building called the Drexel Building on an upper floor.

He walked over to the Drexel Building, enter the building, board the elevator.

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