‘Black Wall Street’ Is Being Gentrified
The City of Tulsa continues to plunder the historic district and displace its Black community
When most people hear about Tulsa, Oklahoma, they think of Black Wall Street and the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. The massacre’s forthcoming 2021 centennial and its depiction in the HBO series Watchmen has renewed interest in the Greenwood District, prompting visits from tourists who are eager to witness the historic Black Wall Street neighborhood. They’re often unaware of what little of its architectural history remains and the state-sanctioned erasure that has occurred in Greenwood for decades.
What visitors find once they arrive frequently brings them to tears: Instead of preserved landmarks of a once-burgeoning Black economic haven, they see a historically Black neighborhood that has been forcibly whittled away by its city government. Last year, the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) published amendments to a sector plan for the Greenwood/Unity Heritage Neighborhoods that Black Wall Street has occupied for nearly a century. In it, the city proposed a series of “urban renewal projects” that could irreparably displace thousands of Black families, upend historic Black Wall Street, and give the TDA power to initiate the compulsory removal of Black and Brown households through eminent domain. The original…
