barbershop. and it was in the 1100 block of north greenwood. that was in 1963. they talk about greenwood and all you can see now is one block, but it was businesses all the way down from lansing back to martin luther king drive today. 1921. greenwood was much larger than just that one block that you guys see today. greenwood was much larger to the south, to the east, to the west and to the north. but all that we have left is just a sliver of its former self.
so the next morning, tuesday, may 31st, the tulsa police decide we re going to pick up dick rowland. so they go to where he lives with his mother in greenwood, arrest him, take him to the courthouse and like as with other prisoners, put him up in the fourth-floor jail. the first edition of the tulsa tribune hits the streets around 3:00, 3:30. within 30 minutes there s lynch talks on the streets of tulsa. lynch talk soon turns into a lynch mob. meanwhile, black people are trying to figure out what s going on, what to do, how to organize. there was a feeling amongst black vets that if trouble comes my way, i ain t dodging it. in tulsa, there had not been an african-american lynched, and there were black men and women
over this madness. any time we can go on to be a great city, we are destined to be. my dreams of what greenwood should look like, it should look like us. my hope for greenwood is that she can become back what she used to be. i wish greenwood would be healed. a lot of stuff was buried deep.
president woodrow wilson endorsed it. it showed all over the country. it showed in tulsa in the convention hall. it certainly validated these ideas. how do you survive if you re a black person in america during this era? and part of the answer came through african american veterans of world war i. they fought in combat units in france where they were treated with respect and with honor. and they came back to the united states and they found none. we have black veterans in greenwood. they fought for their country. they fought for their freedom. so when they come home, they expect to be respected. but what they come home to is,
and anyone that wants to do business here should also be engaged in that same idea. that same mentality, the same thought process. when i got to tulsa in 1984, i was asked to do a regular guest editorial column in the oklahoma eagle, which is a black newspaper. one of my assignments was to do a historical treatment of the greenwood district. i ve had this sort of obligation of service that if i m going to live in this community, i want the community to be the best it can be. we can t do that unless we engage in the work of racial reconciliation. we can t do that unless we acknowledge our history.