{"id":19813,"date":"2021-07-26T05:10:16","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T05:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoklahomaeagle.net\/?p=19813"},"modified":"2021-07-26T05:10:16","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T05:10:16","slug":"the-power-of-greenwoods-circular-dollar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/2021\/07\/26\/the-power-of-greenwoods-circular-dollar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power Of Greenwood\u2019s Circular Dollar"},"content":{"rendered":"

ABOUT THIS SERIES<\/strong>
\nThe Oklahoma Eagle\u2019s \u201cOf Greenwood\u201d series is part of our 2nd Century Campaign, which commemorates the hundredth anniversary of this African American newspaper. This series is made possible through our partnership with Liberty Mutual Insurance.<\/p>\n

\n

By Gary Lee, The Oklahoma Eagle<\/strong>
\nPhotography by Basil Childers
\nHerman Fairchild, a burly plumber who wore so many keys on his belt he jingled when he walked,\u00a0called a room in Leona Bell\u00a0Bruner\u00a0Corbett’s boarding house home for more years than he could remember. Down the hall was a truck driver, a handyman man, and three or four others.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThese were the tenants of the sprawling house\u00a0Corbett\u00a0owned at 1142 North Greenwood\u00a0Ave. From\u00a0the 1920s to the 1970s,\u00a0she provided lodging, including all utilities, clean sheets weekly, and floors mopped spic and span every Saturday.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThey paid her $6 a week.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nIn Greenwood’s peak, the resourceful landlady also leased spaces to four different shopkeepers on the ground floor. In one store, Mr. Ware sold hot dogs wrapped in wax paper and other sundry goods. Uncle Sonny ran Pearson’s Laundry; Mr. Golf had a barbershop;\u00a0and Mr. Madison was proprietor of a shoe repair store. For a business, it was hard to beat the location\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a prime spot right on Black Tulsa’s busiest boulevard. They paid an average of $30 a month.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBesides the regular boarders, trucker drivers and others would rent rooms from\u00a0Corbett\u00a0for a day or two on weekends.<\/span>
\n

\"\"
S.M. Jackson, owner of Jack\u2019s Memory Chapel, with his family in front of the family business on Marshall Place, right o\u001e Greenwood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u2018An economic stronghold\u2019<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“The people, the store owners, and customers pretty much all knew one another,” recalled Mildred Blocker,\u00a0Corbett’s granddaughter, as she surveyed the block in Greenwood where the house once stood.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe area has long since been remodeled beyond recognition, so Blocker had to squint to point out the spaces where familiar businesses and homes used to be. “They all looked out for us, and we looked out for them,”\u00a0she said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nTulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was a self-contained economic stronghold in its heyday, a commercial marketplace where nearly every dollar earned was spent right in the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nIt was merchants like\u00a0Corbett\u00a0who shaped that legacy.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nIn the narrative of how Greenwood became\u00a0\u201cBlack Wall Street,\u201d\u00a0much of the credit usually goes to big titans of the neighborhood’s early days\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the Williams family, owners of the Williams\u2019\u00a0Dreamland Theater and other businesses, and J.B. Stradford, founder of the prestigious Stradford hotel\u00a0on 301 N. Greenwood Ave.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBut following the 1921 Greenwood\u00a0race\u00a0massacre and rebuilding the neighborhood into the 1960s, the day-to-day commerce was primarily the dominion of small Black business owners like\u00a0Corbett\u00a0and everyday patrons and journeymen like Fairchild, the plumber.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe money that flowed from one end of Greenwood to the other, between customers and merchants, employers and laborers, had to pass through hands like theirs.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAnd how it flowed!\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBy some estimates, the dollar circulated anywhere from 19 to 100 times in Greenwood and stayed in North Tulsa for more than a year before it was spent elsewhere.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe Rev. Charles Jeffrey Jr., famed editor of The Oklahoma Eagle,\u00a0once boasted not only could you \u201cbuy everything from a toothpick to a car\u201d along Greenwood, but what made it unique was all the businesses were Black owners who own their own properties.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nEdward L. Goodwin Sr., our late publisher and prominent lawyer, described Greenwood as \u201conce a Mecca for the Negro businessman \u2013 a showplace.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n
\"\"
The Choir of Evergreen Pentacostal Church in North Tulsa, circa 1934. Black Tulsans usually gave ten percent of earnings to the church. COURTESY OF THE PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The Perrymans, Creek Freedman, were an in\u001d uential family with major landholdings in early Tulsa. This picture was taken in front of their home, circa 1900. COURTESY OF THE PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCommerce fueled by Jim Crow<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAlthough Black Tulsans recall Greenwood’s circular dollar legacy with nostalgia, it was a cycle of trade wrought by segregation and the racist laws of the era that supported it. With few exceptions, white merchants strictly followed Jim Crow statutes that barred them from accepting\u00a0Black customers. Thus, for the first half of the 20th century, Black Tulsans had no choice but to patronize\u00a0Black-owned businesses. “Nobody else would accept our money,” said Jack Henderson, a North Tulsa civic leader and former city councilman. “So, we had to spend it among ourselves.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nA walk down Greenwood became a stroll down the memory lane of a neighborhood that was a cornerstone of life and livelihood for the family from the 1920s to the mid-1970s. Blocker, who is seventy-something, and her daughter, Michelle, shared\u00a0Corbett’s story in a couple of interviews. As they reminisced, it was also clear just how much\u00a0Corbett\u00a0had been an essential cylinder in the engine of Greenwood’s economy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nShort, poised, and to the point,\u00a0Corbett\u00a0was a ubiquitous Greenwood personality.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAs a businesswoman, she was a matter of fact. “She was not someone you messed with,” recalled Blocker, who as a child lived in the house with her mom, Ione, and\u00a0Corbett.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“She was the kind of woman who ran her life pretty well. And she ran everybody<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nelse’s too,” recalled Jocelyn Payne, who frequented the\u00a0Corbett\u00a0house as an adolescent.<\/span>
\n
\"\"
Princetta Rudd at seven, dressed for her first communion. She would become a Booker T. Washington schoolteacher, Greenwood socialite and author. COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/span>The dollar\u2019s Greenwood trail<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe trail the dollar took through Greenwood often ran like a maze.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nA look at the earnings and spending of\u00a0Corbett\u00a0and others in her circles, based on interviews and our analysis, offers an example.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nIn the 1950s,\u00a0Corbett\u00a0took in an estimated $300 a month\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a hefty sum in an era when many laborers earned less than $80 a month. She might run over to Cannon’s Dry Good’s next door to buy a housedress. Mr. Cannon, the owner, would then go down to Kyles Drug Store down the street to pick up a prescription.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nOwner Roy Kyle would use what he made\u00a0to\u00a0pay his clerk. The clerk might, in turn, take her dress to Caver’s Dry Cleaners\u00a0going\u00a0north\u00a0on\u00a0Greenwood. When Howard Caver, the owner, had a leaky pipe, he might contact Herman, the plumber who kept a room at\u00a0Corbett’s place. With the payments his customers gave, Herman could pay rent to\u00a0Corbett.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe earning and spending of hundreds of other Greenwood residents would take a similar circle.<\/span>
\n
\"\"
An auxiliary at Vernon AME Church on Greenwood, in the 1950s. It was one of various social circles for Greenwood women. COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nGreenwood\u2019s decimation<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe commercial life of Greenwood, by most accounts, peaked in the 1940s and\u00a01950s. The\u00a0Black community began there in the early 1900s. While most In the early 1900s\u00a0\u2013\u00a0most Black men worked either in the nearby oilfields or for whites as laborers\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Greenwood mushroomed quickly in size and prosperity to the point that the educator Booker T. Washington dubbed it\u00a0\u201cThe Negro Wall Street.\u201d\u00a0The\u00a0May 31-June 1,\u00a01921,\u00a0race massacre, when a white mob looted the community and murdered up to 300 Blacks, decimated it.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBut\u00a0within four years, Greenwood residents rebuilt the community\u00a0with such care and speed\u00a0that the National Negro Business League \u2013 which was founded by Washington \u2013 held its national convention in the district. The Oklahoma Eagle celebrated the convention by publishing a 10-page edition, packed with 96 ads from primarily Black-owned Tulsa businesses. An editorial boasted that convention visitors would see \u201cthe many opportunities the \u2018Wonder City\u2019 offers to the right kind of people who are looking for a location\u201d to open a business.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBy the 1940s, Greenwood was booming again. According to census reports, there were 240 Black-owned businesses in the neighborhood in 1942.<\/span>
\n
\"\"
Date Night at Three Bear\u2019s Club on Greenwood, a popular nightspot for the well-heeled. COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA labor pool of service workers<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nDifferent economic and social strata had also begun to form in the Greenwood community. About\u00a040%\u00a0of the residents were professionals or skilled craftspeople, including doctors,\u00a0school teachers, administrators and hairstylists. The remaining 60%\u00a0were laborers, domestic, or service workers.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nEven as the neighborhood’s merchant class was rising, only a minority worked for\u00a0Black-owned enterprises. Most of the\u00a0Black-owned businesses were small and employed no more than four or five employees.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBy the 1940s and\u00a01950s, the monthly salary scales for Blacks in North Tulsa ranged wide. Estimates\u00a0in 1955\u00a0are as follows, with a projection\u00a0\u2013 based on the cost of inflation \u2013\u00a0of what it would amount to in 2021 dollars in parentheses: Attorney: $1,500 ($15,066);\u00a0schoolteacher: $1,100 ($11,013);\u00a0grocery store owner: $500 ($5,000.);\u00a0maids or chauffeurs: $80-100 ($800-$1,000).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u00a0With just about everything imaginable available in stores, cafes, pool halls, juke joints, and other venues packed along the street, there was no shortage of ways for Greenwood folk to burn a dollar.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nFor a worker who made around $20 to $30 a week, a typical weekly budget would include $2-3 (10%) in tithes to the church; $6 in rent for a room. $8 in groceries from Mann’s, Jared’s, or another food store; 25 cents for a chicken sandwich at Betty’s Chat ‘N Chew. 5 cents for the Oklahoma Eagle newspaper. Possible treats could be 5 cents pack of Wrigley\u2019s gum, 10 cents for a policy ticket or a box of soda crackers, or a jar of Witteman’s shoe polish, each of which cost 25 cents. Occasional splurges could include a men’s suit at Cannon’s for $15 or a house dress from Jared’s for $9. Of course, the tabs were doubled for married couples. And, families with children had to add the costs of school supplies and clothes.<\/span>
\nThriving Black families<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThe Greenwood bourgeoise, by comparison, spent their money in much the same ways as their white counterparts\u00a0who lived\u00a0in South Tulsa. They bought cars, furs\u00a0and other luxury goods.\u00a0 Before the 1921 massacre, six\u00a0Black\u00a0families in Tulsa owned their\u00a0own\u00a0airplanes.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nHomeownership was a top priority among Tulsa’s\u00a0Black\u00a0professionals and skilled workers. By the end of the 1940s, nearly half of Black Tulsans were homeowners, according to census reports. Many of the well-established\u00a0Black\u00a0merchants and professionals helped finance the mortgages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nWhen it came to socializing, the dollar also flowed differently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nWhile women from higher-income homes might snag a “store-bought” dress for $15 from a door-to-door salesman, her working-class counterpart might opt to buy fabric for\u00a090\u00a0cents a yard from Kresge’s and make her dress. A higher-paid man would spend $2.50 on a bottle of bonded whisky,\u00a0while the working class would get a jug of the moonshine grandma made in the bathtub for\u00a0$1.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nDating habits were also different between income brackets, according to Princetta Rudd-Newman, a longtime resident of North Tulsa, who is documenting the culture and history of Greenwood in a forthcoming book, \u201cIf These Bricks Could Talk.\u201d\u00a0She\u00a0discussed how the dollar flowed differently among the affluent and working classes of the community.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“A Greenwood man of means would invite a woman for a steak dinner at the Wagon Wheel,” she said. “You’d get your\u00a0ribeye, French fries, salad, bread and a drink. That would be hitting the jackpot. It would cost $3.75.”\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nA more working-class guy might go to Stell’s in the Alley, a back street joint, and order himself a chicken dinner, Rudd-Newman explained. He would then offer different parts of it to the two or three women he talked to there. “He’d get good mileage out of that $1.25 chicken meal,” she said.<\/span>
\n
\"\"
John Emerson, owner of Bluebird Taxi Company, on Greenwood, outside one of his fleet of vehicles. Bluebird was of several cab services in the thriving community. COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF PRINCETTA RUDD-NEWMAN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nPlaying policy<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the different classes of Greenwood rarely mixed socially, one way in which all sectors of\u00a0Black\u00a0Tulsa society came together was by playing policy. The game was wildly popular in Greenwood for decades. The game, a forerunner to Powerball,\u00a0<\/span>was a daily lottery, introduced in Chicago in 1885 but played widely in many cities. Players would try to guess which numbers would be picked from a wheel that was spun each day and sometimes several times a day.\u00a0 Participating was called \u201cplaying the numbers.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Lawyers, waitresses, retirees\u00a0\u2013\u00a0people from all walks of life played,” explained Rudd-Newman. As a teen, she worked as a\u00a0numbers\u00a0runner, collecting the numbers from players, bringing them to the owners of the wheels. When the winners were announced, she would carry the bounty to them in wads of cash. “Lots of people along Greenwood played:\u00a0lawyers, waitresses,\u00a0everyone,”\u00a0Rudd-Newman recalled.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“Many would play a quarter and end up winning $25. If somebody was feeling lucky, they might play five dollars. They could make as much as several hundred dollars with that kind of bet. Runners would get a certain percentage, too.\u00a0So,\u00a0it wasn’t a bad deal.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nBy the 1960s, Black Tulsans spent less than\u00a010%\u00a0of dollars they earned in the\u00a0Black\u00a0community, according to analyses of census records.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nOne of the biggest reasons was that the\u00a0city of Tulsa had wiped out the heart of Greenwood’s commerce. An Urban Renewal initiative had called for the demolition of buildings along historic Greenwood\u00a0to make way for the Crosstown Expressway.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThat project eventually led to the sale and demolition of the house\u00a0Corbett\u00a0had owned on Greenwood since the 1920s. After it was bulldozed, developers constructed a modern ranch-style single-family home at the exact location. The surrounding buildings were similarly erased.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nFor the\u00a0Corbett\u00a0family, the demolition of the house brought an end to an accumulation of wealth they had achieved over a century.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nThat arc of family history dated back to the last quarter of the 1800s.\u00a0Corbett’s father, William Rentie, and his wife Ellen,\u00a0using an allotment his family had received as Creek Freedman, developed a prosperous farm near Checotah, Oklahoma. They joined with another landowner to create\u00a0Rentiesville, which would become one of Oklahoma’s all-Black\u00a0towns. When the\u00a0Renties’ daughter, Leona, married and moved to Tulsa in the early 1920s, she apparently used family funds to purchase a plot of land and built the house on Greenwood.\u00a0Corbett\u00a0died in 1975.<\/span>
\nShunning Black-owned<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAnother significant factor in the sharp decline in the rate Blacks patronized\u00a0Black-owned businesses is that Tulsa’s white merchants,\u00a0largely in response to civil rights pressures, gradually opened their doors to Blacks. Residents of North Tulsa began flocking to white-owned stores. Warehouse Market, a sprawling downtown food store, and Froug’s, an Oklahoma-based department store chain, were particularly popular.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAs the\u00a0Black\u00a0population patronized south side stores, many\u00a0Northsiders\u00a0quietly shunned some\u00a0Black-owned merchants.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“These days,\u00a0Black\u00a0Tulsans want to buy from anyone except\u00a0Black\u00a0Tulsans,” said Tony B., a Tulsa spoken word performer, in a recent presentation at Tulsa’s Living Arts Center.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nHenderson,\u00a0the\u00a0North Tulsa civic leader and former city councilman, explained further:\u00a0“Sometimes Black people look at a Black store owner and express doubts about the quality of their goods. Or they say, ‘I don’t want to make that owner rich.\u2019\u00a0We have to move beyond that kind of thinking.”\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u2018There is a path forward\u2019<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
\nFor some Black Tulsans, the push to buy\u00a0Black\u00a0is strong.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nMichelle Blocker,\u00a0Corbett’s great-granddaughter, says that she and the family patronize\u00a0Black-owned businesses whenever possible. Wanda J’s, Tropical Smoothie and Rubicon Potato are particular favorites.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nEven for North Tulsans who want to buy\u00a0Black, reviving the level of allegiance to\u00a0Black\u00a0businesses is impractical.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nAccording to a recent study by the Washington,\u00a0D.C.-based Brooking Institute, only 250\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or 1.25%\u00a0of Tulsa’s 20,000 companies\u00a0\u2013\u00a0are\u00a0Black-owned. Many are spread out throughout North Tulsa and other parts of the city.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\nIn Henderson’s view, North Tulsa can nonetheless do a lot better at supporting\u00a0Black\u00a0businesses. \u201cWe have to recapture the spirit investing in our community,\u201d\u00a0he said.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n“It’s not realistic to think we can create Greenwood. But maybe we should be thinking more in terms of building certain replicas of Greenwood all over North Tulsa. There is a path forward,\u00a0but it can only happen if we work together.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABOUT THIS SERIES The Oklahoma Eagle\u2019s \u201cOf Greenwood\u201d series is part of our 2nd Century Campaign, which commemorates the hundredth anniversary of this African American newspaper. This series is made possible through our partnership with Liberty Mutual Insurance. By Gary Lee, The Oklahoma Eagle Photography by Basil Childers Herman Fairchild, a burly plumber who wore…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,120],"tags":[145,146,147,148,141,142],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-history","tag-gary-lee","tag-greenwood","tag-liberty-mutual-insurance","tag-second-century","tag-the-oklahoma-eagle","tag-tulsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19813"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}