Dreams of Black Wall Street

An introduction to the premise of this podcast, which chronicles the history and related events of what has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." Historical artifacts include an audio recording of an interview with Tulsa Race Massacre Survivor, William Danforth Williams.

Between May 31st and June 1st of 1921, what the Oklahoma Historical Society calls quote, "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history," claimed the lives of potentially hundreds of people and left an entire community in Tulsa, Oklahoma completely decimated. That community, known as Greenwood - an African American district in North Tulsa, suffered a brutal attack by a white mob, which resulted in a horrific scene of chaos, destruction and bloodshed. The area, with a population of about 10,000 at the time, according to the historical society, had been considered one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States for the early part of the 20th century. For that reason it earned the name Black Wall Street. When the mayhem ceased, and the smoke cleared, Black Wall Street laid almost completely flattened. In less than 24 hours, according to a Red Cross estimate, more than 1,200 houses were burned; 215 others were looted but not torched. Two newspapers, a library, a school, stores, hotels, churches and many other black-owned businesses were among the buildings damaged or destroyed by fire. Historians now believe an estimated 300 people were killed during the attack.

An overview of this podcast and this season. Dreams of Black Wall Street examines the course of once-thriving predominantly Black communities that are both known by the moniker, Black Wall Street, as well as those that fit such a description. This was a period in which African Americans - only several generations removed from slavery - were on a quest for community and the promise of full citizenship. The right to be both politically engaged and at the very least try their hand at supporting themselves and their families while maintaining the right to seek out the proper means to do so. These communities are used as a glimpse into the Black experience of America during this era. While season 1 focused on the Tulsa Race Massacre in which the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Ok was destroyed, season 2 will focus on the once-primarily Black, rural, self-sufficient town of Rosewood, Florida. Rosewood was a bright spot of Black independence in Levy County Florida, that existed amid the dark shadows of the Jim Crow South. During the first week of January 1923, Rosewood became the site of a racially motivated massacre of a number of the town’s African American residents and the destruction of the rural hamlet. Accounts of the death toll vary, ranging between less than 10 people to more than 100. At the time, like incidents of a similar nature, the Rosewood Massacre was characterized as a race riot. Florida - and other parts of the country, especially the South, had been experiencing a particularly large number of lynchings of black men in the years leading up to the massacre. However, this isn’t just a story about the destruction of another Black community. It’s also about the decades long road to compensation. A long, complicated road fraught with emotional highs and lows that resulted in just a sliver of repayment for all that was lost in that tragedy.