Greenwood District and North Tulsa, Oklahoma were proof positive of what Black people can do when they pull it together and work to build a nation and rebuild a community.

Since we know that perception is 9/10ths of media law, let’s challenge the “stats” for a moment.

Why let some rich-white-guy-owned race-mongering mainstream media news corporation like, for instance, FOX, control the conversation about Black people in America? What is the truth about the ratings stock that race-mongers put in place about Black America? What is the difference in what they portray in the media as opposed to what is the truth, which is that Black America’s sins and errors are no worse or better than anyone else’s?

Let’s talk about the real deal with the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and what we can learn from it in the here and now.

Today’s North Tulsa photographs like this: “Economic and community development service that include twenty-four contiguous census tracts, bounded by 66th Street on the north, Admiral on the south, Mingo on the east and 49th Street on the west. The North Tulsa community is home to a majority of Tulsa’s African-American population according to the 2010 U.S. Census Report for North Tulsa. Population,  78,988; Percent living below poverty level, 28.7%; Percent of households earning below the national median family income, 64.8%; Percent of employable residents who are unemployed, 11.7%; and Percent of housing stock that is distressed, 25%.” That is directly from The Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, Tulsa.

Note 1: Most Black people in Tulsa are no longer living below poverty level, most of those who can work are working, but compared to the national median income stats, family income is still not up to par yet. Seventy-five percent of the homes in Black Tulsa are not “distressed,” and that’s a good thing.

Note 2: Yet, it’s still a long road from Year 1921, when the thriving and burgeoning Black business district was burned to the ground ‘lock, stock and barrel’ by a pack of ravenous white wolves.

It started when a Black man was accused of assaulting a white woman, likely for the specific purpose of setting up a situation to leverage one nonchalant happy-go-lucky “brotha” in order to do exactly what they did: Steal, kill and destroy.

As experience tells us, very seldom does a white woman open her mouth to claim she was “assaulted” by a Black man and it turns out to be true. Very seldom.

Therein lies the linchpin for a movie about the Tulsa Race Riots that was recently greenlighted by Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey will air a two-night mini-series highlighting the Tulsa riot and starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer. Ms Spencer plays a journalist from Tulsa facing the demons of her past. According to Jim Goodwin, owner of The Oklahoma Eagle, “It gives an opportunity for me to reflect upon what the possibilities of good are in the community, not what evil lurked in decades past.”

For Black America, so much “evil lurks in the decades” and centuries past that all of the stories would likely take another century to uncover and be documented.

For those who have not heard the story of “Black Wall Street,” see the reference below. By now, everyone should not only know it, but we should all be repeating it ‘ad nauseum,’ everywhere we go. We’ve got stories to tell, not “his” stories to repeat.

If the mainstream media were to tell the actual truth, the story of Black Wall Street is leverage upon which to base a future Black America. If it was done once, it can be done again and people with good knowledge would know that they should raise a flag to it and support it. The real truth is that without Black people, the United States of America is a total epic fail.

If we would understand that, get ahold of it, use it, and stop falling for the mainstream media news that the race-mongering ‘true pimps’ of Black people insist upon telling the whole world about us; and if ‘we’ would just take control of the conversation about Black people and stop letting others tell OUR stories in our place, the next “Oprah” who can greenlight a movie project about something extremely important to the Black community is on the rise…like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of a dark and hidden past in America that needs to be brought to the light and never ever forgotten.

Don’t lament over the past: Use it to build a future.

{BTW, that $2.5 million worth of losses in 1921 is now worth about $32.8 million and still creeping ever-upward.}

Reference

From the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce: The Story of Black Wall Street