The homes and buildings of the Black community and The Dreamland Theatre
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In the season finale of Someone Lived Here we learn the story of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The neighborhood was 35 blocks and became known as Black Wall Street. It was a thriving Black community and the site of The Tulsa Massacre. It was later rebuilt even bigger than before, but today very few original buildings are standing. We follow the story of the Dreamland Theatre and the owner, Loula T Williams and her son, William Danforth Williams.
In this episode, we interview Hannibal B Johnson, an attorney and writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma who has written multiple books including Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District and Images of America: Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District.
Thank you to the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum for use of their audio recordings.
At the end of the episode, Kendra gave herself a homework assignment. She would love for you to join. The description is below:
Research the history of your town or city, your neighborhood, your state.
Ask questions like: Were there Black communities here? Were there native communities? Were violent acts committed? When and where was that highway built? Were people of color displaced? See what you find, but then here is the most important part. Add what you find to your town or cities Wikipedia. Include your sources.
Wikipedia is how the world learns about a place or a topic. And these histories are often written from one source and I think it’s worth adding a lot more. It is not the responsibility of historians of color to uncover wrongs. It is the job of everyone to uncover the past so we can recognize the damage and use that knowledge to build a future.
Below are some additional resources that might help in your research. I will be adding more to this list, along with best practices for updating Wikipedia pages:
Renewing Inequality is a tool developed by a team at University of Richmond. It allows you to see displacement caused by Urban Renewal map its timeline and who was affected.
Saving Slave Houses is a project by Jobie Hill which documents still standing slave homes across the country.
Below is a transcript for season 2, episode 6 of Someone Lived Here and the story of the Greenwood District before and after the Tulsa Massacre. If you have any questions about the show or suggestions on how to make it more accessible please reach out at someonelivedhere@gmail.com.
Kendra Gaylord: This week we aren’t looking at one house, or one street, but a whole neighborhood. The Greenwood District in Tulsa Oklahoma was 35 blocks and became known as Black Wall Street. It was a thriving black community that was the site of The Tulsa Massacre, it would later rebuild even bigger than before. But today, very few original buildings are still standing.
Welcome to Someone Lived Here, a podcast about the places cool people called home. I’m your host Kendra Gaylord.
There aren’t many photos of the homes and buildings on Greenwood Ave before 1921, but we know some of the businesses that were there. There were two hotels, The Welcome Grocery Store, a 3 story brick building, which held a confectionery and professional offices. There were 3 drug stores and two newspaper plants. And then there was The Dreamland Theatre. I said there weren’t many photos, but the Dreamland Theatre was an exception. It was a wide brick building. 2 stories. A flat sign outside reads, Williams Dreamland Theater. Movie posters lined the front and were pasted to the side of the building. A few years later a light-up sign was added. The words Dreamland readable from either direction coming down the street.
Around 1918, promotional material was made to advertise the theater. A small hand held mirror. On the backside a photo of the theater with information that read “The Dreamland Theatre, The only colored theatre in the city, Mrs. Loula T Williams Proprietor.”
There is a photo of Loula and her family in a car they owned around the early 1910s. Her husband John is in the driver’s seat, Loula is at his side both are looking forward. Their son William is in the back seat looking straight at the camera.
We’re going to talk more about Loula and her son William in a little bit, but first I want to introduce you to Hannibal B Johnson. He’s a writer and attorney in Tulsa and has written multiple books on the Greenwood District, including Black Wall Street and Images of America: Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District. I called him to learn more about the neighborhood before and after the Tulsa Massacre. One of the things to keep in mind is that this land was valuable.
Hannibal B Johnson: The fundamental causes of what happens in Tulsa 1921, include that national racial context, they include land lust, the fact that the land on which the black community sat, the Greenwood District, Black Wall Street – those are other alternative names for the black community. The land on which that community sat- 35 square blocks roughly was separated from Downtown Tulsa by the Frisco tracks, the Frisco railroad tracks. That land was desired by a number of other interests in Tulsa including corporate and railroad interests. There are documents attesting to the fact that there was a concerted effort to move black citizens farther north and seize this land for purported higher and better uses.
Kendra Gaylord: And what would happen Tulsa was not isolated to Oklahoma. Racist violence was happening across the United States. Race riots and lynchings were some of the ways it manifested.
Hannibal B Johnson: Race riots, so-called race riots. These were really invasions of black communities by white vigilante mobs, race riots proliferate throughout the United States during this period. In fact, in 1919, just two years prior to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, there were more than two dozen so-called Race Riots throughout the United States in cities and towns and communities. The other thing that was happening simultaneously was the proliferation of lynching. Lynching is a form of domestic terrorism whereby typically a white vigilante male mob targets and individual more often than not a black individual. The target is often accused of some social slight or legal infraction, and then subjected to extra judicial punishment. So the point of these acts of lynching, these acts of domestic terrorism were not simply to punish or to annihilate a target, but rather to send a message to the group, to which the target belonged about their relative place in society. So lynching is really all about white dominance, white hegemony, white supremacy. There was jealousy, as I mentioned earlier, consternation, angst in the white community over the relative economic success of people in the black community. There was the presence of the Klu Klux Klan, the iconic domestic terrorist organization, whose primary targets were black. The Klan had a presence and tells that in the early 1920s and swelled tremendously throughout that decade.
Kendra Gaylord: But the next factor, I wasn’t expecting. Newspapers.
Hannibal B Johnson: And then there’s the role of the media. I think it’s always important to talk about the role of the media today and back in the day. Back in the day, the media consisted primarily of newspapers. So there was one newspaper, a daily afternoon publication called the Tulsa Tribune that published a series of incendiary articles and editorials that really fanned the flames of racial discord and hostility in the white community against the black community. So we have this combustible mix, this powder keg, tinderbox, it needs only some sort of igniter or catalyst does that the community a light.
Kendra Gaylord: And we’re going to talk about that catalyst. But before I want to introduce you to one more person: Mary Elizabeth Jones Parrish. She came from Rochester, New York in 1918. She would later write of moving to Tulsa…
“I had heard of this town since girlhood and of the opportunities here to make money. But I came not to Tulsa as many came, lured by the dream of making money and bettering myself in the financial world, but because of the wonderful cooperation I observed among our people, and especially the harmony of spirit and action that existed between the business men and women. On Greenwood one could find a variety of business places which would be a credit to any section of the town. In the residential section there were homes of beauty and splendor which would please the most critical eye.”
Mary was a typing instructor and self published her stories and the stories of others in the community in a book called Events of the Tulsa Disaster. We’re now going to go back and talk more with Hannibal B Johnson about the events that led to the Tulsa Massacre.
Hannibal B Johnson: The catalyst involves interestingly, two teenagers. A 19 year old black boy who shined shoes downtown and a 17 year old white girl who manually operates an elevator in a downtown building called the Drexel building. On Monday, May 30th, 1921, Dick Rowland, the boy is shining shoes downtown. He needs to use the restroom and facilities are segregated. So we walk over to the Drexel building where he knows there’s a facility on the third floor. He enters the elevator. Something happens on the elevator that causes the elevator to jerk or to lurch, he bumps into Sarah Page, by some accounts, he steps on her foot. She begins to scream, again by some accounts, she slaps him. The elevator winds up back in the lobby. Dick Rowland, the boy frightened runs from the elevator. Sarah Page, the girl distraught exits the elevator into the arms of a clerk from a nearby locally owned store called Renbergs.
Hannibal B Johnson: She tells the clerk her story, which is a story of an assault. The clerk comforts her and ultimately she recants that original story. Dick Rowland was arrested for attempted assault. He was taken to the courthouse and put in jail, which is on the top floor of the courthouse. Sarah Page refused to cooperate with prosecutors to testify against Dick Rowland. That might’ve been the end of the story had it not been for the intervention of the Tulsa Tribune, that daily afternoon newspaper I mentioned earlier. The next day on May 31st, 1921 The Tribune published an article entitled Nabbed Negro for attacking girl In an Elevator. That article is a false narrative. It’s a false narrative of attempted rape and broad daylight by a black boy on a white girl. The narrative goes out of its way to make Sarah Page, the white girl look virtuous. And as a corollary, it makes Dick Rowland look villainous.
Hannibal B Johnson: Members of the white community are up in arms. A large white mob gathers outside the courthouse, the white mob numbers, ultimately in the thousands. A group of several dozen black men, including some men who had served in World War I had weapons and knew how to use them marched down to the courthouse. They had heard that a mob was going to seize Dick Rowland from the jail and lynch him. Words were exchanged between the large white group and the smaller black room. A white man tried to take a black man’s gun, the gun discharged, and then chaos ensued. The violence lasted roughly 16 hours. Black men in the Greenwood District on Black Wall Street and the black community put up a fierce fight initially, but it was short lived. They were out outnumbered, outgunned, overpowered. White mobs spilled over the Frisco tracks into the Greenwood community: burning, looting and setting things a light. The Greenwood community lay in ruins. We know that between 100 and 300 people lost their lives in the Massacre.
Kendra Gaylord: One of those lives was Dr. Arthur C Jackson.
Hannibal B Johnson: Dr AC Jackson was a prominent black surgeon in Tulsa and let that sink in. Prominent black surgeon, that’s pretty remarkable. He had both white and black patients that too is remarkable because Tulsa was a rigidly segregated city back at the time of the massacre. Most folks have heard of the Mayo Clinic, the Mayo brothers of the Mayo clinic called Dr AC Jackson the most able Negro surgeon in America. He had a house on Detroit and he was actually exiting his house in surrender with his hands held high. When he was gunned down by a young white man. And he ended up succumbing to his wounds, bled to death.
Kendra Gaylord: The surgeon was offered no medical attention. And he wasn’t the only one to die like that. There is a recorded account from a white man who witnessed one of the early murders. He describes the mob watching a man die, not allowing the victims to get help.
W.R. Holway Interview: “And this man was shot, and rolled out in the middle of the street with a revolver in his hand and the crowd around him wouldn’t let anyone touch him or pick him up. Wouldn’t let an ambulance pick him up. We stood there for about half an hour watching that, but he wasn’t quite dead, but he was about to die.
Kendra Gaylord: There are photos of black mens bodies left on the side of empty roads. And there were many accounts that mentioned mass graves.
Hannibal B Johnson: We are in the midst currently of an investigation to see whether there are mass graves in Tulsa. There have been sustained oral histories about mass graves. There were some survivors who were eye witnesses, according to them to burials and mass graves. And so that investigatory process is underway.
Kendra Gaylord: Mary Parrish, wrote of the hospitals in Events of the Tulsa Disaster, “I can never erase the sights of my first visit to the hospital. There were men wounded in every conceivable way, like soldiers after a big battle. Some with amputated limbs, burned faces, others minus an eye or with heads bandaged… Was I in a hospital in France? No, in Tulsa.”
I mentioned earlier that there weren’t many photos of the Greenwood District before 1921, but after June 1st there were many. But it was a completely different Greenwood. Far off photos show smoke coming from just one section of Tulsa. Blocks that used to be filled with homes and life, were only smoke, ash and burnt ruins of over 1250 homes and businesses.
But all of the possessions in those homes did not burn, before they were lit on fire, they were looted. An account Mary Parrish took in her book from a woman in the community reads, “After they had the homes vacated one bunch of whites would come in and loot. Even women with shopping bags would come in, open drawers, take every kind of finery from clothing to silverware and jewelry. Men were carrying out the furniture cursing as they did so, saying, “These Negroes have better things than lots of white people,” I stayed until me home was caught fire, then I ran to the hill side where there were throngs of White people; women, men and children, even babies watching and taking snap shots of the proceedings of the mob.”
Kendra Gaylord: Other witness testimonials say that white men would pile all bedding and furniture together and then light with matches. Throughout the night, the white mobs prevented fire departments from extinguishing anything. Martial Law was declared in the morning of June 1st. The National Guard was sent in and black men walked with their hand above their heads to internment centers.
Hannibal B Johnson: So there were a number of internment centers set up in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. There were various locations, one was at McNulty Park. These were centers that just sort of corralled black folk temporarily on the notion that this was being done for their own safety and security. But a number of survivors from the Massacre said that, um, you know, there were rounding and mostly men, not all men, but mostly men. And what, what that did was essentially leave the Greenwood area defenseless so that people could set more fires and do more looting, do more damage to the community. Many of these folks who were in these internment centers had to have a green card, a kind of identification card that was countersigned via a white person who basically vouch for them. And these were often the employers of the black people who were, who were, who were in these, these centers from. For most folks it was a sort of period of time, days, weeks. Um, most of them were out after, at the end of several weeks.
Kendra Gaylord: I want to go back to the Dreamland Theater. Loula’s son William was a teenager during the Massacre. He had been separated from his parents and a white employee from the Dreamland Theater had brought William to his house in South Tulsa during Martial Law. When he was able to leave he saw the Dreamland Theater in ruin. The front facade barely standing, the windows and doors completely open to sky on the other side. The sign that said Dreamland had half fallen to the ground.
The Tulsa Historical Society and Museum has an old interview with William, They interviewer asks him how his parents felt, he says he didn’t really know. But after they rebuilt they had trouble keeping up with the loan payments.
William Williams Interview: “I was 16. And I remember.” “How did this affect your parents? Do you remember them talking about it?” “Not much because we lived in a tent for the first few months until they built back the Dreamland Theatre and had living quarter upstairs. I never did hear them talk about it much. Cause I was much more interested in myself. What were we going to do at school, the football team. You know how a kid is you don’t associate with your parents other than eating. So I don’t know. I know that they must have felt, a tough fight. Got to see people to make a loan to put this building back. They finally built them back, but this recession set in and they couldn’t make the payments.”
Kendra Gaylord: William mentioned living in a tent. There were many who lived in tent cities supplied by the red cross on top of their burned land. And tents didn’t just act as peoples homes, For BC Franklin it became his law office, when his office in Greenwood burned down.
Hannibal B Johnson: BC Franklin’s Law Office was destroyed in the massacre and there is an iconic photo of BC Franklin and a couple of other lawyers and a secretary operating the law office in a tent outside after the massacre. BC Franklin was the one who successfully challenged the amendment to the fire ordinance that would have made rebuilding in the Greenville community cost prohibitive. Part of the underlying reasoning for changing that fire ordinance in the first instance was this notion that we can seize this burned land, move those people farther North and do what we want. Higher and better uses for the land after they’re gone. So BC Franklin was sophisticated enough to, to realize the plot or the ploy and connected enough to be able to challenge it successfully so that African-Americans could stay in the Greenwood District, their home, that they had built.
Kendra Gaylord: And that victory kept the Greenwood district in the same location and over the coming years the neighborhood rebuilt and by the 1940s it was in its prime.
Hannibal B Johnson: The Greenwood District in its heyday in the forties was.. I refer to it as Black Main Street, which is much more apt descriptor than Black Wall Street. People falsely assume when you say Black Wall Street, that we’re talking about some sort of financial empire. We’re not. we’re really talking about successful small businesses and sole proprietors. We’re talking about service providers like a concentration of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, dentists, all manner of businesses from pool halls to dance halls, to theaters, haberdasheries, clothing stores, dry cleaners, restaurants, grocery stores, you name it you could pretty much find it in the Greenwood District on what was called Black Wall Street. The fact that these folks were able to thrive against incredible odds, even in the 1940 is of course the odds were long. The 1940s is still a Jim Crow period. It’s still a period in which lynchings occasionally occured, but certainly oppressive racial conditions existed in Tulsa, existed all over the United States. Yet you had this bustling, exciting, eclectic black business community in Tulsa, in sort of mid America. And that’s remarkable.
Kendra Gaylord: There is a photo taken of Greenwood Ave looking North in 1938. The wide street is lined with cars parked on both sides. A bus is driving in the road. The buildings are all brick, two or three stories. They have light up signs. The sidewalks are filled with people walking. The Dreamland Theater is at the end. It’s 3 stories tall.
When you’re at that same location today. Looking North up Greenwood Ave its a very different view. Some of the brick buildings might be original, but you can’t really tell. Cars still line both sides of the street. But now where the Dreamland Theatre and so many of the neighboring businesses were is Interstate 244.
But how could so many irreplaceable locations of history be torn down? The answer is Urban Renewal.
Hannibal B Johnson: So part of urban renewal throughout the United States, not just in Tulsa. Urban renewal initiatives in the sixties, seventies and eighties often targeted communities of color. And often one aspect of urban renewal is location of highways and interstates through these communities of color. The communities of color in some ways represent the path of least resistance. So governments had an easier time securing this land and just plowing right through the heart of these communities. Tulsa is a great example because interstate 244 goes right through, bisects what was the historic successful, Black entrepreneurial community known as Black Wall Street.
Kendra Gaylord: And this federally funded displacement didn’t just happen in Tulsa. It happened in big cities and small towns all around the United States. In Norfolk, Virginia, Pasadena, CA, Chicago, Illinois, New Haven, Connecticut, Lubbock, Texas, Syracuse, NY.
The fact that the Black Tulsa community rebuilt buildings after they were violently taken. Homes that were meant to last 100s of years, but they were gone within a few decades.
Hannibal B Johnson: We live in part in the legacy of what happened in Tulsa in 1921. So that colors, race relations today in both sort of clear and more obscure and obtuse ways. For me, one of the things that the past with the present is what I call a gulf of distrust between sectors of the black community and the white community, and particularly white authority structures, because we know that during the Massacre, for example, police officers deputized people in the white mob who destroyed the black community. We know that no white person was ever held accountable for the violence and the trauma inflicted on black citizens. You know, that this history was deliberately excluded from curricular materials for decades after the event. So the past is really not past at all. The past is present.
Kendra Gaylord: That last line really got me. So much of what we heard about today feels so current. White men hunting down a black man, shouting the n-word, murdering him, and not facing charges. That happened on February 23 2020 to Ahmaud Arbery. Leaving a black man’s body in the street for 12 hours after being killed outside his own business by a soldier in the National Guard. That happened on May 31st 2020 to David McAtee.
This episode is the last episode of the season and I’m giving myself a homework assignment. And I’d love for you to join me if you can. Research the history of your town or city, your neighborhood, your state.
Ask questions like: Were there black communities here? Were there native communities? Were violent acts committed? When and where was that highway built? Were people of color displaced? See what you find, but then here is the most important part. Add what you find to your town or cities Wikipedia. Include your sources.
Wikipedia is how so many people learn about a place or a topic. And these histories are often written from one perspective and I think it’s worth adding a lot more. It is not the responsibility of historians of color to uncover wrongs. It is the job of everyone to uncover the past so we can recognize the damage and use that knowledge to build a future.
I’ll be posting updates on what I find on Instagram and will have a blog post on SomeoneLivedHere.com with resources and information on how you can start finding out more about your communities history.
As always, Thank you for listening to Someone Lived Here. Thank you to our guest Hannibal B Johnson. I would highly recommend reading his books. If you enjoy the show and want to be part of making it possible consider joining our Patreon. Every level gets a sticker and note in the mail from me. Our Music is by Tim Cahill and you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram for updates.
Thanks for listening to this season of Someone Lived Here. I’m your host Kendra Gaylord. I’ll talk to you again for Season 3.
Sources:
Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal B Johnson
Images of America: Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal B Johnson
Tulsa Historical Society & Museum interviews
Cowan Auctions, Dreamland Theatre Tulsa Oklahoma Mirror Related to Tulsa Riots
The Intercept Article “Louisville Police Left The Body of David McAtee on the street for 12 hours by Aida Chávez
CNN Article “Ahmaud Arbery was hit with a truck before he died and his killer allegedly used a racial slur, investigator testifies” by Eliott C. McLaughlin
