Tulsa Massacre 100 years later: Black Wall Street reimagined as Black tech hub

Busines and tech leaders are looking to rebuild Tulsa's Black Wall Street. But others say reparations are due.

A century ago, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, buzzed with Black entrepreneurship, creating a thriving Black middle class unlike anywhere else in the U.S. at the time. The area was so successful that famed author and orator Booker T. Washington dubbed it the "Black Wall Street of America" in 1913. But the thriving neighborhood was shattered in 1921 by a mob of white vigilantes, apoplectic over trumped-up charges of rape against a Black resident and resentment of well-to-do Black citizens. Three hundred people were killed, thousands were wounded and approximately 35 acres of commercial and residential property within the district were destroyed Earlier this year, survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre recalled the scenes of horror and the evisceration of the city that once was.