It has become so rare that we consider a conviction of an officer killing an unarmed Black man a win. Producer/Director Salima Koroma and members of the Greenwood community discuss the city’s history inside the Black-owned business, the “Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge” Credit: Patrick Altema (co-EP) / courtesy of The SpringHill Company for CNN Films. These people had land, freedom, and opportunity even after being formerly enslaved. Tulsa’s Black Wall Street was an undisputed blowout win. We might have a childhood friend make it to the league ever so often or a progressive politician, but it is rare. Watching this documentary, I have realized that there are few stories where Black people in America win. It was our forty acres and a mule ten-fold. This coalition of successful Black people was more than just an economical powerhouse it was a promised land.

Scores of Black residents needed shelter from the American Red Cross for weeks many permanently fled the city. Some marauders even flew airplanes to drop incendiary devices into Black residential areas. After a white lynch mob was rebuked by African American World War I veterans, violent white vigilantes, some ‘deputized’ by local authorities, pursued and killed hundreds of Black men, women, and children in stunning acts of violence. Many of the buildings in this image were later destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.Īccording to the synopsis of the film: Accounts vary, but a 19-year-old African American man was arrested after being accused of assaulting a 17-year-old white woman inside Tulsa’s Drexel Building. The intersection of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street is seen in 1917.

I could tell you that a shoe shiner was accused of trying to rape an elevator operator, but it does not matter. It is unimportant, the story of how the riot started. Greenwood, a historic center of Black wealth, is the site of one of the nation’s most shocking mass murders. On May 31, 1921, a white mob terrorized the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, most often recognized by another name, Black Wall Street. Premiering on CNN Monday (May 31) with an encore Saturday, June 5, Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street explores the history of Black Wall Street and the violent events of late May and June 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of the city’s African American residents. A buried history has finally unearthed itself. (courtesy of The Everett Collection)ĭURHAM, NC – CNN‘s documentary Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street, executive produced by LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, and Philip Byron for The SpringHill Company, opens a door that questions American integrity. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District smolders after the 1921 race massacre.

Dreamland the burning