Carlos Moreno, author of “The Victory of Greenwood,” spent 20 years researching the massacre for the recently released book and argues the stage was set for the massacre years before it happened.
Moreno said the massacre was part of an effort by Tate Brady, a founding father of Tulsa and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and others to rob Black Tulsans of their property, their possessions, community, pride and dignity.
In the book “Black Fortunes,” author Shomari Wills lists Gurley as one of the country’s first six Black millionaires. In that first year of Gurley’s development efforts, Wills wrote, the district attracted a Black doctor, a dentist, a Baptist church and hardware store.
Gurley built the first building, a rooming house, and later the home of the Vernon AME Church. Gurley opened a grocery and built a $55,000 hotel. Stradford responded by building a $75,000 hotel, which at the time was promoted as the nicest in Tulsa.
Moreno believes the two men were friendly competitors who shared a vision of creating a wealthy Black enclave where residents and merchants could take dollars made working for white Tulsans and circulate that money in Greenwood.
Oil dollars were continuing to flow into Tulsa, and fortunes were being built on both sides of the tracks. To the west of Greenwood, Brady opened the Convention Hall, while that same year, 1914, Loula Williams — who along with her husband, John Williams, were among Greenwood’s thriving business owners — opened the 750-seat Williams Dreamland Theatre at 127 N Greenwood. Over the next few years, she opened two more Dreamland Theatres in Okmulgee and Muskogee.
Gurley was enjoying a rise in prominence among both Greenwood residents and white Tulsans across the tracks, and while Williams and Brady were opening grand new venues, Gurley’s wealth was reported as topping $150,000 ($3.6 million in today’s dollars).
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