Review of Victor Luckerson’s Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wallstreet; One Hundred Years in the Neighborhood that Refused to Be Erased (New York: Random House, 2023)
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Victor
Luckerson, in Built from the Fire: The
Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wallstreet; One Hundred Years in the Neighborhood that
Refused to Be Erased, renders a patiently told historical account of the
birth, development, and persistence of the African American community of
Greenwood, located on the north side of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Luckerson
establishes the context for the development of Greenwood by conveying the
broader history of the land that came to be known as Oklahoma, a large part of
the population of which from the 19th century into the early 20th
consisted of American Indians, especially those of the Five Tribes (Cherokees,
Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminole) who had been forced to relocate as
a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
These Native American peoples were sometimes dubbed the Five “Civilized”
Tribes” because of their efforts to adopt white society’s agricultural,
religious, and other cultural practices;
for those of these groups with the economic wherewithal that in some
cases included plantation ownership, these practices included slaveholding. But in the course of settlement in the
eastern part of Oklahoma, until 1907 known as Indian Territory, most American
Indians manumitted their slaves, who then commonly were called freedmen.
With
generous African American and American Indian populations, Indian Territory
came to seen as providing hope for
multicultural prosperity and pluralistic cultural interaction that ran counter
to the prospects for African Americans in the Jim Crow South and for Native
Americans who by 1890 had lost their courageous effort to repel government and
white settler encroachment in the Atlantic, midwestern, and, increasingly, the
western lands beyond the Mississippi River.
In
such optimistic spirit did James Henry (J. H.) and Carlie Goodwin respond to
the entreaties of African American real estate entrepreneur Alexander George
Washington Sango, moving their family of
four children from Water Valley, Mississippi to Tulsa in December 1913. Owners of a grocery store and investors in
landed property in Water Valley, J. H. and Carlie pursued like activities once
arrived on Tulsa’s north side in the community that came to be known as Deep
Greenwood. Carlie profited from her
skill as a seamster and also utilized her knowledge of the legalities of land
transactions. J. H. opened a grocery
store, co-owned an undertaking business, and---
in a move that would have considerable ramifications for the Goodwin
family history in Greenwood--- worked as
the business manager for Tulsa’s first Black-owned newspaper, the Tulsa Star.
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The American Southwest, Midwest, and West had become attractive places of settlement for those of European provenance with the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. A perverse version of this act, which provided 160 acres of previously government owned land for anyone willing to establish and maintain a farm, pertained specifically to American Indians in the form of the Dawes Act of 1887; passage of the Dawes Act dissolved tribal land ownership in favor of family-owned farms of the European type. Some American Indians held on to these small holdings, which increased steadily in value, and prospered, but more sold such land parcels, to their long-term economic detriment.
Many
African Americans (including those who had been slaves to American Indians
prior to manumission) maintained identities as tribal members and received lands
specifically identified for American Indians under the Dawes Act. Others bought land from those Native
Americans who decided to divest themselves of individual parcels allotted in
the aftermath of passage of that legislation.
For their part, whites purchased land according to the terms of the
Homestead Act and from those Native Americans inclined to sell. In Tulsa, a burgeoning white community grew
(with ever increasing rapidity once an oil gusher was hit in 1901 just outside
the city) mostly on the southern side of Tulsa, and a similarly expanding Black
community located on the city’s north side in Greenwood.
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Among
those African Americans who prospered in Greenwood were beautician Mabel Bonner
Little and her husband, shoeshine shop
operator Pressley Little; over time,
they purchased a home and invested in other real estate property.
There
was the Reverend R. A. Whitaker, who founded Mt. Zion Baptist Church, oversaw
the construction of a grand new edifice housing the church, and launched
multiple social and cultural services under the aegis of the church.
There
was J. B. Stradford, who first operated a pool hall and a variety of other enterprises
before building the elegant Stradford Hotel, rivaling the best that the
southside white community had to offer.
And
then there was the marvelously ambitious Loula Williams (whose husband John
Williams operated a car repair business), who first owned a confectionary and
then, using her natal family name, purchased property to build the grand,
three-story building she dubbed Dreamland, which housed multiple enterprises,
especially a grand cinema that showed the most popular current movies.
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On the strength of such entrepreneurial endeavors did Greenwood Avenue and Deep Greenwood in general flourish so prosperously between 1900 and 1921 to gain national attention and the moniker, “Black Wallstreet.”
But
a virulent mood abided in the American South and by extension was evident in
places such as Tulsa. The mood prevailed
in places outside the South, as well, so that during and in the aftermath of
World War I, race conflict and abuses occurred in locations including East St.
Louis, Houston, New York City, Chicago, Washington D. C., and in the small
cities of Bishec, Arizona and Elaine, Arkansas.
White society in Tulsa came to be jealous of the success enjoyed by so
many (though by no means all; there were
also those forced by circumstance to perform menial work and ply the seedier
trades) African Americans in Greenwood.
In
Oklahoma, including the Tulsa area, white mobs on numerous occasions had
exercised vigilante non-justice, often in the form of lynching. The year 1921 had witnessed the lynchings of
Marie Scott in Wagoner, Oklahoma; Claude
Chandler, in Oklahoma City; and Roy Belton,
in Tulsa. The prospect that such a
lynching was in the offing for a jailed African American teenager by the name of
Dick Rowland served as the precipitating factor in the 31 May / 1 June 1921
Greenwood Massacre.
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Rowland
was a hardworking youth from a poor family in Greenwood; he earned money from odd jobs that he spent on
typical adolescent pursuits: movies,
clothes, dates. On the evening of 30 May
1921, he was walking close to the Drexel Building, which offered a “Colored”
restroom, and entered the building to use those facilities, located on an upper
floor. After the doors to the elevator
closed, a young white girl, Sarah Page, who operated the elevator, screamed,
causing a hubbub that eventually landed Rowland in the city jail. What caused Page to scream was never
determined with certainty, but Rowland was charged with assault. On the morning of 31 May 1921, the sensationalist
white newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, ran headlines screaming, NAB NEGRO
FOR ATTACKING GIRL IN ELEVATOR.
Racial
tensions in Tulsa were already running high according to the temper of the
times, and for reports that white women had recently been seen dancing in
establishments of the “Negro Quarter.”
A
crowd of whites gathered at the city jail, then another congregated at the
county jail, to which Rowland was moved with the supposition that he would be
safer in a cell on an upper floor of the facility under the watch of tough
County Sheriff William McCullough.
Concerned
for Rowland’s fate, twenty-five African American residents from Greenwood
eventually faced off in the wee morning hours with approximately 1,000 whites
gathered at the county jail. A
one-on-one confrontation between a white vigilante and a member of the Greenwood
congregation sparked wider confrontations, fights with fists and handheld
weapons, and gunshots. The white mob
seized the opportunity to vent longstanding hostilities, taking the key fight
to an area four blocks west of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Streets. At 1:45 AM on 1 June 1921, McCullough finally
sought help from the National Guard, but by then crowd violence was beyond
control.
In
the course of the following wee morning and daylight hours, approximately 300
people, mostly African American, were killed.
Houses totaling 1,256 burned and 215 were looted. Among the edifices destroyed were the
magnificent Stradford Hotel and the multi-story Dreamland complex that included
the premier Black theater owned and operated by Loula Williams.
The
century after Greenwood Massacre featured efforts of a resilient people to
rebuild and maintain the cultural vitality of their neighborhood.
But
Greenwood was never exactly as the community had been before the Massacre:
Loula
Williams exerted great energy in rebuilding Dreamland but went heavily in debt
doing so; eventually her vibrant spirit
could not fend off the trauma and exhaustion:
She died in an asylum in 1926.
Husband John, though, who had desperately attempted to salvage Loula’s lagging
spirit and ameliorate the physical wear and tear, was able to maintain his
Williams One-Stop Garage business until his death in the 1930s.
Greenwood
business stalwarts J. B. Stradford and A. J. Smitherton moved away, as did many
Greenwood residents; Stradford opened a
new hotel in Chicago; Smitherton
launched another newspaper, the Empire Star, in Buffalo.
But
many others stayed. Mabel Little revived
her beautician enterprise, and husband Pressley maintained his businesses. Reverend R. A. Whitaker oversaw the
construction of a new Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
And, very notably, the family of Edward Goodwin Sr. (son of J. H., who
lived until March 1958) and Jeanne Osby Goodwin remained in Greenwood to
establish multiple business enterprises, amass real estate holdings, and
operate the highly influential Black newspaper, the Oklahoma Eagle.
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Ed
and his sister Anna, who were in the midst of graduating from Booker T. Washington
High School when the Massacre took place, went on to attend Fisk University in
Nashville, graduating in 1926. Ed and
Jeanne Osby met at Fisk and were married in 1927.
Ed
eschewed the undertaking business that dad J. H wanted him to take over, opting
instead to open a shoeshine parlor, an entertainment venue called the Goodie
Club and, especially, a haberdashery. Ed
also for a decade built wealth via running gambling numbers, an enterprise of
that era known as “policy.” He phased
out the latter occupation in the aftermath of his purchase of the Black
community newspaper Oklahoma Eagle, which brought responsibilities that
would most define his career from 1938 forward, although his early
entrepreneurial efforts brought a level of wealth magnified by abundant
investment in real estate.
The Eagle became a powerful voice through the tumultuous events of the century: the Great Depression, World War II, the Brown v. Board desegregation decision (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott (1954-1955), Emmitt Till Murder (1955), Little Rock Nine Incident (1957), March on Washington (1963), Civil Rights/Black Power Movements (1950s-1970s), the Civil Rights Act (1964), Voting Rights Act (1965), fair housing and employment legislation (late 1960s), Urban Renewal (1960s-1980s) and ongoing struggle at the urban core (1970s-2023), the Trump phenomenon (2016-2023), and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd (May 2020).
The
newspaper became a family enterprise. Ed
Goodwin Jr, became an energetic reporter and photographer for the newspaper and
would have been slated to take over leadership if his struggles with alcohol
had not waylaid that prospect. But son
Bob took over as publisher and managing editor when Ed Sr. retired in 1971,
then in later decades leading up to the present son Jim, a successful attorney,
took over leadership of the Eagle.
Ed
Goodwin Jr’s daughter, Regina, attended the University of Kansas, studied art,
pursued a career as an animator with success in Chicago, then returned to Tulsa
to work and eventually run successfully for a seat in the United States
Congress, still as of 2023 serving the 73rd District. Regina has labored hard and against great
odds in an increasingly divided country and very conservative Oklahoma to gain
funds for college and university scholarships for Greenwood youth, direct
federal infrastructure dollars to local benefit, and interact with the Oklahoma
Department of Transportation so as to prospectively dissemble a portion of
Tulsa’s Turner Turnpike for recovery of lands for Greenwood lost to Urban
Renewal (the latter a phenomenon witnessed in African American communities
across the nation, including St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood and eastern portions
of the African American community of North Minneapolis).
Regina’s
friend, Tiffany Crutcher, has become a highly effective activist focused on
community issues generally and police conduct specifically (initially in
response to brother Terrence’s killing at the hands of Tulsa officer Betty
Shelby). Commercial establishments such
as Greenwood Market, cultural venues such as the Greenwood Rising Center, and
commemorative sites such as the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park give
testimony to the ongoing vitality of Greenwood, with pertinent coverage to this
day recorded in the Oklahoma Eagle.
The
Greenwood Massacre and the destruction perpetrated under the misleading moniker,
“Urban Renewal,” have presented challenges with which Greenwood residents
struggle to this day. But the tenacity
of Greenwood’s African American community is symbolized in the day of witness
organized on the centennial of the Massacre, with centenarians Hughes Van Ellis
(age 100) and Viola Fletcher (age 106) sharing memories; in the new institutions given reference in
the paragraphs above; and in the
activism of Regina Goodwin and Tiffany Crutcher.
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And so it is that Greenwood is indeed the community that refused to be erased.
Luckerson
renders the details in clear, precise, unembellished prose. His research is herculean, utilizing abundant
written public documents, previous accounts of the Massacre, and a bevy of oral
sources, especially in the form of interviews with Greenwood’s eyewitnesses to
the events covered in the book. Only in
the epilogue does Luckerson allow himself much space for editorializing,
preferring to let his narrative of events convey the horror and the triumphs
recorded.
In
the epilogue, Luckerson reviews the tenacity and accomplishment of the
Greenwood community. He also examines
the continuing challenges wrought by the Massacre and Urban Renewal. He cites statistics pertinent to continuing
inequities in income, housing, economic development, and education. He issues a familiar call for investment in
programming designed to address the inequities, investment that should in his
view include explicit monetary reparations.
Like
so many others, though, Luckerson misses, for failure to understand, the fact
that the overhaul of public education would bring the greatest long-term
benefit to African American and other communities living at the urban core, in
this case Greenwood. Investment to
accomplish the needed overhaul should not be focused merely on inequities, often
perceived rather than real, as to facilities, print and digital resources, or
staff remuneration. Rather, the overhaul
must be a much more sophisticated revamping pertinent to curriculum and teacher
training, focused on locally centralized school districts such as that in which
the Greenwood community is embedded.
In the United States, the needed change in public education must come not primarily at the national or state levels but at the local level, where federal and state policy is variously embraced or sabotaged. With the overhaul at the level of the locally centralized school district, entailing a move toward knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and the training of teachers capable of imparting such curriculum, students graduating from institutions such as Greenwood’s Booker T. Washington High School will go forth as culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied citizens--- fully capable of completing the tasks of revivifying Greenwood and atoning for the abuses of history.
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Luckerson’s
failure to recognize the quality of change needed in public education is a
shortcoming he shares with many others.
His
masterful scholarship regarding Built from the Fire is a success
uniquely his. Luckerson conveys in full, with consummate skill, the wrenching
travails and enduring successes of the Greenwood community, which in microcosm
brings into sharp relief issues waiting for resolution across the United
States.
