Tulsa, 100 years later

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The plight of black entrepreneurs in Tulsa, nearly a century after one of the nation’s worst acts of racial violence.

In 1921, a White mob descended on the Greenwood district of Tulsa, killing scores of African Americans, and looting and burning their businesses to the ground. The Tulsa massacre decimated Greenwood, a commercial hub once hailed as the height of Black enterprise.

But as Tracy Jan reports, Black erasure in Tulsa is hardly a remnant of the past. Today, Black entrepreneurs in historic Greenwood feel threatened yet again, as gentrification drives up property values and Black business owners get priced out of land ownership — and some of them are asking why there still hasn’t been restitution for the past.

In case you missed it: On Friday’s episode of Post Reports, we went in deep on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. With firsthand accounts from Post journalists, members of Congress and police, we reconstructed the events of that day, and answered some big questions about how it happened, why it happened and what might happen in the future. If you haven’t heard it yet, definitely go back to take a listen. That episode from Friday is called “Four hours of insurrection.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post.
0:07.0	Hi, good afternoon. This is Tulu, Aurora, Niko with the Washington Post.
0:10.0	Hi, this is Amy Britton calling you the post.
0:12.0	This is Peter J. Davidson from the Washington.
0:14.0	This is Post Reports. I'm routine powers.
0:18.0	It's Monday, January 18th, MLK Day.
0:24.0	Today, a hundred years after the Tulsa massacre,
0:28.0	Black business owners are fighting for their place in the future of a changing city.
0:35.0	Okay, so Tracy, tell me who you are and what you do for the post.
0:42.0	My name is Tracy Jan, and I write about race and the economy at the Washington Post.
0:47.0	Post Reports producer Jordan Marys Smith spoke with Tracy to talk about her recent reporting in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
0:55.0	It's an area that used to be known as Black Wall Street.
0:58.0	The reason why I was there was because I'm working on a series of stories about reparations.
1:04.0	And this would be the very key one about what happened to the victims of the Tulsa massacre.
1:10.0	People whose homes, lives, livelihoods were destroyed in 1921 by a white mob, basically envious of their economic success.
1:19.0	There has never been restitution from the city of Tulsa to repay the victims or descendants of the Tulsa massacre for the wealth that was destroyed there.
1:28.0	In fact, there have been very few examples of reparations in the US to write historical wrongs.
1:35.0	And there have been growing calls for reparations for slavery and for other events that systematically destroyed Black wealth in America.
1:43.0	I wanted to bring that destruction up to present day. Like what does it mean for Black Tulsa's to date?
1:53.0	Coming out to the city gates of Tulsa, Oklahoma, this city of Scott Greenwood, this city of Bob Wars.
2:11.0	This city of banks, this city of schools, libraries of churches, and this city of murderous.
2:27.0	I connected with Reverend Robert Turner. He pastors the Vernon AME Church, which is in historic Greenwood.
	...

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