One Tulsa, LLC and its founder Fred Jones announced details about the multi generational, multi-genre compilation album 1921.The Black Wall Street Music Project.
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Editor s note: The following may include first-person accounts of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that contain graphic depictions and antiquated racial terminology. We have chosen not to edit these survivor accounts to leave their stories unencumbered by interpretation or exclusion.
That’s what Oklahoma state Sen. Kevin Matthews thought as he watched a VHS film, given to him by his great-uncle, depicting a white mob destroying Tulsa’s Greenwood District.
Matthews, 61, was in his 30s at the time. He had grown up in Tulsa and graduated from Tulsa Public Schools.
But, he had never heard this story before.
“I watched it, and I thought it was a fictional movie,” Matthews said. “I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was shocking to me. I couldn’t understand how I could get to be an adult and not know this story.”
Black Wall Street, Tulsa Race Massacre not taught in schools for years usatoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usatoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Alvin Hall tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history. In the early 20th Century, Tulsa was a wild west town which became a boom city. But the oil capital of the world was also home to the thriving and prosperous district of Greenwood - nicknamed Black Wall Street by Booker T Washington - because it was a mecca for Black entrepreneurs. Several were millionaires in today s money and and figured out ways to prosper during segregation, creating profitable businesses for Greenwood’s 10,000 residents who couldn’t spend their money with white businesses downtown.