The third weekend of September will feature the annual civic celebration with 918 Day festivities, and it will be when rapper Steph Simon and friends turn the Tulsa Arts District
1. FIRE IN LITTLE AFRICA - FIRE IN LITTLE AFRICA
On June 1, the city of Tulsa in Oklahoma marked 100 years since white supremacists burnt to the ground a wealthy African-American suburb that had come to be known as Black Wall Street. To commemorate the occasion, a hip-hop collective calling themselves Fire In Little Africa released an album about the event, recorded in a Tulsa mansion previously owned by a local member of the Ku Klux Klan. The album s producer, a PhD-toting academic who deejays as Dr View, said it wasn t until he was 24 years old that he heard the history of Black Wall Street. I d finished two degrees, he said. Two degrees! And I d just found out about it, and it was in my backyard. It was a wake-up call. Also addressing the event is the new album by blues musician Guy Davis, on which he sings: It ain t right, no it ain t right, what the white folks did in Tulsa on that night. MORE >