Circulation of the Dollar on Black Wall Street

Did you KNOW that the dollar circulated 36 to 1000 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the commUNITY of ''Black Wall Street/Little Africa''?

The commUNITY was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws. It was not unusual that if a resident’s home accidentally burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. When the average male student went to school on Black Wallstreet he wore a suit and tie not because of a dress code enforced by the school but due to a sense of respect instilled by his parents.

There were Ph.D’s residing in Little Africa, attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry who also owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day in 1910.($500 of 1910 dollars would be worth: $12,500.00 in 2014-Inflation calculator) During that era, physicians owned medical schools. A lot of the residents owned farmland, and many of them had gone into the oil business. Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six African Americans owned their own planes. Another example of the wealth of Black Wall Street was a banker in a neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi River. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.

Little Africa encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a population of 15,000 African Americans. There were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. There were also pawn shops, brothels and jewelry stores.

The Tulsa Race Riots

When the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw the unity and economic success of Little Africa, many of them were sickened with jealousy. Led by the Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers in a period spanning fewer than 12 hours would destroy Black Wall Street and murder 3,000 of its residents. Survivors that were interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because during the time that all of this was going on, white families with their children stood around on the borders of the community and watched the massacre, the looting and everything—much in the same manner they would watch a lynching.

Believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, the bloody 1921 Tulsa race riot has continued to haunt Oklahomans to the present day. During the course of eighteen terrible hours on May 31 and June 1, 1921, more than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, while credible estimates of riot deaths range from fifty to three hundred. By the time the violence ended, the city had been placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held under armed guard, and the state's second-largest African American community, Black Wallstreet had been burned to the ground.

Gathering before the Riots

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