“Greenwood was a real community in the old-fashioned way,” Randle says. “Everything you needed was within walking distance. The area embraced its diversity. Even though there were rich and poor, everyone went to the same schools, churches, parks, pools and rode the same public transit. It was a place with a connection to its people. As a result, the people had a sense of belonging and pride.”
That sense of pride was even higher in Greenwood than most other pedestrian neighborhoods because its people had triumphed against all odds in rebuilding after the 1921 Race Massacre. Eunice Cloman Jackson, co-owner of Jack’s Memory Chapel, explained in Eddie Faye Gates’ 1997 book “They Came Searching”: “They just were not going to be kept down. They were determined not to give up. So they rebuilt Greenwood, and it was just wonderful.” Booker T. Washington coined the phrase “Negro Wall Street” in 1913, but the phrase was not in common usage at the time, evolving into “Black Wall Street” over the decades.
“In fact, the north Tulsa after the riot was even more impressive than before the riot,” Greenwood resident and education activist Juanita Alexander Lewis Hopkins said in “They Came Searching.” “That is when Greenwood became known as ‘The Black Wall Street of America.’”
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