The Reclaiming of Black Wall Street
The term “Black Wall Street” was popularized in the early 20th century by Booker T. Washington, when the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was more than 35 city blocks of thriving shops, hotels, theaters, churches, and much, much more of black owned businesses. along with well-kept residential neighborhoods. This community was founded by Black men and women, many being descendants of slaves who had dreams of a better life. And they worked together building an extraordinary existence, before the devastation of a Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot in 1921, obliterated their businesses and homes where 300 people died, and 800 injured. And a century after the Tulsa race massacre, you still have a community that’s struggling with no reparation for survivors who endured the violent siege on American soil.
So, as we fast forward to the here and now, black communities all over America from the 1920’s to the 1960’s sought to model Black Wall Street complete with black businessmen, lawyers, doctors, bookkeepers, nurses, and the like, with moderate success from the West Coast to the East Coast. But it would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibiting discrimination in public places that provided integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal which allowed for the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
Coupled with that, from 1890 to 1950, black women had a higher marriage rate than white women, before the expansion of the American Welfare System pitted the government programs against the husband or the male “significant other” in the 1960’s creating a major slide in black marriages while expanding the rise of the black welfare single mother over the financially struggling black male.
To preface these two government occurrences in defense of bureaucracy, these events were meant to merely supplement the lives of men and women in the black community, not to dislodge them from their homes or their old neighborhoods. Yet, many of the prominent men and women within these black communities moved to more affluent white areas leaving the less financially capable families to fend for themselves in the black historical neighborhoods with very little direction or financial assistance. In the decades that followed, those that remained were financially challenged to where their old neighborhoods would be now known as “The Hood,” as time went by, creating a gradual economic demise with even prominent black church’s exiting to greener pastures in more favorable financial communities causing a new kind of religious center known as the “Transitional Church.” This is one not even located in the people of color’s neighborhood. You just drive in and drive out.
Nevertheless, a new version of “Black Wall Street” can still be resurrected IF the black, brown, white, yellow, and red visionaries of our modern day made the decision to rebuild Black Wall Streets all over America. But here’s what must be understood about this resurrection.
A real version of a new Black Wall Street cannot exist without a rebirth of the traditional black families and a new version of the community centered Religious Assembly that teaches practical values of real faith, hope, and love. It can’t just be an entertainment center. Because faith has to be presented with a message of prayer, vision, and persistence with the manifestation of people’s dreams as the end result. Hope must lighten the heavy hearts of those struggling with anxiety and worry, allowing persistence to guide each heart to a level of positive expectation. Also, The Kingdom of God, NOT religion, must be the cornerstone of each respective community assembly as each individual works out their own salvation regarding God and their relationship with Jesus as Messiah.
So, the new version of Black Wall Street must be multicultural. Dr. Martin Luther King’s multicultural dream of racial co-existence is paramount in the resurrection and rebuilding of neighborhoods once predominately occupied by people of color. The key to this multicultural Black Wall Street Renaissance is the cooperation and coordination of the spiritual, relational, economic, and commercial powers that be, with a return to community and family accountability from men and women of all walks of life.
If the Multicultural Black Wall Street is to occur, the religious centers and the families must rebound to a higher moral standard and value to create an economic and commercial stability that propels the present multicultural generation into a new age of vision, prosperity, and abundance for the whole world to see.
Bernard H Hamilton, Th.M., MACP
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