a city called tulsa. tulsa boomed after the discovery of oil. tulsa became the oil capital of the world. oil drew people really from all over seeking fame and fortune. the population just mushroomed. back then, people were moving to the city every day, whether it s a sharecropper leaving some rural oklahoma county, looking
there s all kinds of good things that you find in south tulsa. you ll find computer stores, you ll find bookstores, you ll find 24-hour pharmacy, you ll find health food stores. none of those things can be found in north tulsa. north tulsa is a food desert and that s got to change. one of the things that people don t generally know is that the greenwood community actually came back after it was destroyed. it was rebuilt because the rural community, rural lands were still owned mostly by black folk. but by the 1960s, these towns started to disappear. there is this idea that greenwood was destroyed in 1921
race riot of 1921. i was a videographer for the race riot commission report. i was honored to accompany eddie fay gates, who was the commissioner at the time. her job was to record the testimonies of the riot survivors. we have located 51 actual living riot survivors, ages 78 to 104. no research takes the place of eyewitness testimony, and that is why this day is so significant. this is simms. go on and tell her. you ll never forget that riot. that s something to be always in your memories. this has been the age-old story here in tulsa. never knew what happened to my great-uncle, never saw my great-aunt again. you hear those stories over the ages. folks were coming in with oral history, where bodies could be buried. we interviewed over 300
been told. okay, so, on this map, this is the creek nation, this little yellow spot up here is township tulsa. the green area are the allotments of the freedmen . everyone got 160 acres if you are full blood creek. if you are full black from africa, if you are female, you got 160 acres. the freedmen allotments totaled 1 million 192,000 40 acres. 1 million, i really want people to understand that. that is a lot of land for a
survivors. we have located 51 actual living riot survivors, ages 78 to 104. no research takes the place of eyewitness testimony. that is why this day is so significant. mrs. simms. you ll never forget that riot. that s something that will always be in your memories. this has been the age-old story here in tulsa, never knew what happened to my great-uncle, never saw my aunt again. you hear those stories over the ages. people were coming in with oral history where bodies could be buried. we interviewed over 300 tulsans to identify what we thought were likely spots in town where victims of the massacre were likely buried in