After statehood, Tulsa's Black community built a vibrant center of African-American culture around Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street, where hundreds of prosperous Black businesses brought remarkable wealth and earned the area the name "The Black Wall Street of America." Archer Street stood as the line of segregation between Black and white worlds, symbolizing both opportunity and oppression, because segregation fostered a vital economic center for Blacks while also defining their place in the nation, the state, and the city. On June 1, 1921, following a distorted and false claim of assault, the Greenwood area suffered the most devastating single incident of racial violence in the 20th century. In 24 hours, as many as 300 Black citizens died, and 36 square blocks, 23 churches, and more than 2,000 businesses and homes burned. For days, a thick gray pall hung over Tulsa's northern horizon from the massive fires, and with hands raised before soldiers' guns, an estimated 6,000 Black men, women, and children were marched past Greenwood and Archer Streets to temporary internment camps. Fire and hatred destroyed the community but not its enterprising spirit, and Tulsa's Black citizens rebuilt the famed business avenue more enterprising than before, turning the tragedy of 1921 into a new beginning.
