Greenwood District

Historic Black Wall Street, site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

In the early twentieth century, Greenwood was one of the wealthiest African American communities in the United States, nicknamed Black Wall Street for the concentration of Black-owned banks, law offices, hotels, and shops that lined its streets. The district was built largely from nothing after 1898 by entrepreneurs who were excluded from white commercial areas.

Today Greenwood is home to the Greenwood Cultural Center, which preserves the history of the district, and the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park on Reconciliation Way — a powerful public memorial with bronze sculptures depicting the massacre and its aftermath. The Greenwood Rising History Center, opened in 2021 on the massacre's centenary, has become the most comprehensive museum account of what happened and why. This is essential history for understanding both Tulsa and the United States.

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A story
On 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob destroyed Greenwood in one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history. An estimated 300 Black residents were killed, 10,000 left homeless, and 35 blocks of businesses and homes burned to the ground. The Tulsa Race Massacre was largely suppressed from public history for decades; a formal state commission investigation was not completed until 2001.

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