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)

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 19^th century into the early 20^th 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.

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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 73^rd 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.