Introducing, 2021 Tulsa's Black Wall Street in Historic Greenwood District
The 2021 Ornament celebrates Tulsa's Black Wall Street, a thriving community of small, independent, black-owned businesses and services in historic Greenwood. It comprised a 35 square block area where people worked, lived, shopped, played and worshiped. The back piece shows several buildings representing some of the more than 70 businesses, incliding restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, barber shops, dentists, variety stores and theatres. Also represented are churches and residences.
At the bottom center are figures of a man and woman representing the nearly 10,000 person community. It all was burned to the ground in the horrific massacre of 1921. In a few years new entrepreneurs rebuilt it, and the community thrived again until the 1950s. The front piece says: Historic Greenwood, 1921. For more information on Black Wall Street check out the newly opened Greenwood Cultural Center.