“Beautiful, bustling, and Black”—that was how author, attorney and activist Hannibal B. Johnson described the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in his book “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District.”

In the early 1900s, the Greenwood District flourished with over 100 Blackowned businesses, from restaurants and grocery stores to hotels and hospitals. Brick office buildings lined the streets with Black doctors, lawyers, and dentists ready to serve their communities. Visitors to the area included agricultural scientist George Washington Carver, famed contralto Marian Anderson and popular jazz and blues singer and pianist Dinah Washington. The district’s success represented more than just commerce; it embodied Black Americans’ resilience and ingenuity in creating economic opportunities despite the crushing restrictions of Jim Crow laws.

Greenwood’s prosperity came to a violent end in 1921 when a white mob destroyed the district in what is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In just two days, their ensuing violence left 35 city blocks decimated, over 800 people injured, potentially 100 to 300 people killed (though exact figures can never be determined) and generations of accumulated wealth erased.

Unfortunately, the tragedy at Greenwood wasn’t an isolated event. The years leading up to 1921 were marked by race-related violence. As Johnson noted in his book, the United States saw 61 recorded lynchings of Black Americans in 1920; the year prior, more than 25 major race riots erupted throughout the nation in what was dubbed the Red Summer.

The devastation and its lasting impact

Today, the country continues to grapple with the aftermath of such vehement destruction. Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina, are among the few cities carrying out reparations projects despite opposition from the 6% and 13% of respondents who argued that such programs would be too expensive or too difficult to administer, respectively, according to a poll of 1,000 people by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Boston TV station WCVB.

Though Greenwood residents reconstructed with astonishing speed after the massacre, their efforts were continually stymied—not just by violence but by policies that deprived these areas of further opportunities. “The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre temporarily stilled the economic engines that revved on Black Wall Street. That said, the community quickly rebounded and rebuilt, peaking economically in the 1940s,” Johnson told Stacker in an email. “In the 1960s and subsequent decades, structural factors like integration and urban renewal precipitated a second decline.”

The 2024 ruling denying reparations to the last survivors of the massacre serves as a sobering reminder that the consequences of this destruction continue to reverberate through time, contributing to today’s racial wealth gap.

The legacy of Black business districts across America

Though perhaps the most widely known, Tulsa’s story was not unique.

“Wherever you had large Black populations concentrated because of segregation, you had these enterprising African Americans who sprouted up to provide every need possible,” Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott, author of “Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal” and associate professor of history and Africana studies at Tulane University, told Stacker.

Across America, Black entrepreneurs established thriving business districts that faced similar threats from racial violence and discriminatory policies.

From Richmond’s Jackson Ward—known as “the cradle of Black capitalism”— to Detroit’s Paradise Valley, Chicago’s Bronzeville, and Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn, across America, Black entrepreneurs established communities with flourishing enterprises that stood as beacons of economic promise and prosperity.

Stacker used Census data and other sources to explore the untold history of lesser-known Black Wall Streets across the United States and how present-day Black business districts strive to rebuild wealth and opportunity in the current economic landscape.

You may also like: AI art is facing a copyright problem. Here’s what it means for creators.

The winding path to economic freedom

The roots of Black entrepreneurship run deep in American soil. The entrepreneurial spirit of Black Americans can be traced to as early as the 17th century, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Even while enslaved, Black Americans would barter and trade their surplus production with other people who were enslaved—though most profits went to their enslavers. Some with managerial duties even sold their skills and services to others. Once freed, Black Americans continued this tradition of engaging in businesses that used the skills valued by white enslavers, including catering and personal services such as tailoring and hair care.

In the decades following the Civil War, Black Americans faced a paradox: newly freed but systematically excluded from mainstream economic opportunities.

“These were enterprising, ambitious people who were trying to get their part, their piece of the American dream, who were just as enthralled with American free enterprise as their white counterparts,” Garrett-Scott said. “Through their enterprise, they were able to carve out a space within the limitations—the limited options that they were given.”

Overcoming systemic barriers

This exclusion, though devastating, sparked a wave of Black entrepreneurship across the country. According to the 1914-1915 “Negro Year Book: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro,” Black business ownership grew from virtually zero in 1863 to over 40,000 enterprises by 1913, while Black homeownership rose from near zero to over 500,000 properties in the same period. This growth occurred despite the implementation of restrictive “Black codes” that required white sponsors for Black business licenses and Jim Crow laws that systematically segregated commerce.

These communities developed sophisticated financial networks, with Blackowned banks providing crucial capital to entrepreneurs routinely denied loans by white-owned institutions. “What made these Black business districts thrive wasn’t just Black people supporting Black businesses; it was also Blackowned financial networks, Black banks and Black insurance companies that provided the capital when white institutions refused,” said Garrett-Scott.

One of the most significant developments was the creation of Black financial institutions. Exemplifying this trend was the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers, founded by Rev. William Washington Browne in 1881 in Jackson Ward, a Black section of Richmond, Virginia. Beyond providing insurance and banking services, the True Reformers operated department stores, published a newspaper, maintained a home for older people and invested in real estate across 10 Virginia cities, Washington state, Baltimore, and other locations.

Backlash and lasting impact

However, alongside these success stories came the backlash. Beyond Tulsa, Black Americans who engaged in economic activity fell victim to racial violence and intentional economic disruption. The 1917 East St. Louis Massacre in Illinois, caused by white workers targeting their Black peers hired by the Aluminum Ore Company or the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas of Black sharecroppers seeking to unionize in 1919, marked systematic attempts to suppress Black economic independence.

“Violence plays a role in both creating Black Wall Streets and their decline,” Garrett-Scott emphasized. “There are different, varying levels and kinds of violence.” Beyond direct racial violence, Black businesses faced what Garrett-Scott calls “bureaucratic violence”—systematic exclusion from professional organizations, denial of licenses and permits and restricted access to capital.

Discriminatory policies compounded the damage. Redlining prevented Black businesses from accessing loans and insurance, while urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s often targeted Black business districts for demolition, displacing established enterprises and fragmenting communities.

“Urban renewal—ostensibly intended to eliminate urban blight—devastated Black Wall Street by displacing individuals and enterprises and gobbling up land,” said Johnson. “Wealth disparities are in large part attributable to the ability to transfer property intergenerationally.

Urban renewal adversely affected that dynamic for Black folks.”

The ongoing wealth gap

The dismantling of these Black business districts has had lasting effects on economic progress for Black Americans spanning generations. According to the American Civil Liberties Union’s 2023 Visualizing the Racial Wealth Gap report, the gap in wealth between Black and white families has grown since the 1970s. In 2018, the median white family of three earned $33,000 more than a Black family of the same size. Black homeownership rates have also stagnated, lagging behind Hispanic homeownership rates and never reaching the 50% mark in the last 10 years.

“We haven’t matched the level of economic destruction that came through those forms of violence and policy violence with the requisite level of economic investment into those communities. Each new generation can fall farther and far farther behind,” Anthony Barr, director of research and impact at the National Bankers Association, told Stacker. Barr’s research specializes in the racial wealth gap, financial wellness and digitization.

Where Black Americans found success across the U.S.

Different cities developed distinct patterns of Black business growth. Due to segregation, Richmond’s Jackson Ward transformed from a mixed neighborhood that hosted German, Italian, and Jewish immigrants to a Black business hub.

During this time, “the Deuce,” known as 2nd Street, became a cultural and economic powerhouse and the home of Hippodrome Theater, attracting performers like Nat King Cole and Cab Calloway. The district was also home to St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, founded in 1903 by the first Black American woman to charter a bank in the United States, Maggie Lena Walker, and the Southern Aid and Insurance Company, the country’s first Black-owned life insurance company.

Durham, North Carolina, presented a unique case. Unlike older Southern cities, Durham’s rapid growth as a tobacco town created unexpected opportunities. “My hunch is that the growth was so rapid that anybody could come here to get a job,” Perry Pike of the Historic Preservation Society of Durham told the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. “They couldn’t afford to discriminate in the way that other southern cities did.” Durham was also believed to be more progressive than other communities.

“White allyship helped facilitate Black business success in Durham, both in terms of relative racial progressivism and capital investment,” said Johnson.

Education and economic growth

This relative openness enabled the rise of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company—the nation’s largest Black-owned insurer at the time—and Mechanics and Farmers Bank. Andre Vann, a North Carolina Central University historian, also noted that Durham fostered unusually progressive Black-white business relationships, with white capitalists often working through Blackowned banks to invest in Black communities.

Washington, D.C.’s evolution tells yet another story. The city’s Shaw neighborhood, particularly along U Street, emerged as a crucial hub after Black businessmen were forced out of downtown. By 1910, Shaw hosted over 200 Black-owned businesses, with the True Reformers’ five-story building on 12th and U streets symbolizing the community’s ambitions. The neighborhood’s growth was closely tied to Howard University, reinforcing the power of education in economic mobility. The area’s growth paralleled the expansion of Howard University, creating a symbiotic relationship between education and enterprise that became a model for other cities.

Barr notes modern Black business hubs can learn from these historical examples. “It’s not just about creating new wealth; it’s about supporting jobs, which is about supporting families,” he said. “It’s about increasing tax revenue, which is about being able to have more money available for public services and quality schools and infrastructure maintenance.”