ABSTRACT
After the Civil War, thousands of former slaves sought cheap land and opportunity by moving to the Oklahoma territory. The following land grab and oil boom brought prosperity for both whites and African Americans settling in the growing city of Tulsa. However, de jure segregation created two Tulsas-one white, one African American. African Americans were restricted to North Tulsa, settling and developing what became known as the Greenwood District into a prosperous community. In the midst of the Jim Crow era, segregation worked to strengthen community cohesion. Barred from patronizing white establishments and forced to provide for themselves, by 1921, 35 city blocks of North Tulsa had been established as a self-sufficient African American community complete with a bus system, schools, hospitals, newspapers, banks, and over 600 businesses (Ellsworth 1982). Greenwood Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the community, was dubbed “Negro Wall Street” by Booker T. Washington because of its many bustling businesses and the multiple African American millionaires that worked and lived on the street. Tulsa’s white residents, while begrudgingly acknowledging the community’s success, continued to refer to North Tulsa as “Little Africa,” and intermittent lynchings and other displays of white supremacy served to remind African American residents of their place in Oklahoma’s racial hierarchy (Johnson 2007).
