How to Apply Kwanzaa Principles to Community Conversations 2024: Unity!

The foundations of the Greenwood District and Black Wall Street were laid when African-Americans migrated to Oklahoma from the South. One such individual was Ottawa W. Gurley (aka O.W. Gurley), an early settler arriving in Tulsa in 1905. Gurley purchased 40 acres of land and developed the People’s Grocery Store and a one-story rooming house. This initial land development set the stage for a thriving Black community that become the home to doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs with businesses ranging from restaurants, hotels, billiard halls to shoe stores, tailor shops and more. The forces of segregation mounted after Oklahoma became a state in 1097, deeply uniting the community and creating an economic hub for the Black dollar to circulate as residents earned and spend their money entirely in Greenwood.

Then on May 31, 1921, it all came to an end when the disunifying fist of white supremacy struck the community. White residents’ resentment of the success and wealth of Black residents culminated with unprecedented violence and destruction in the Tulsa massacre. Now is the time to strive for the same state of mind and Black unity in family, community, and entrepreneurship as we enter the new year. Let us do it for the sake of the future of our children.