The Battle For Greenwood: What’s Next, or Is Greenwood Rising?

[Music] Thanks for tuning in to this special episode of Focus Black Oklahoma. This is the second of a three-part series focusing on Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District. The series is titled The Battle for Greenwood. This episode is called What's Next or Is Greenwood Rising? Focus Black Oklahoma is sponsored by the Black Church Traditions and African American Faith Life Program at Philip Seminary, offering a master's degree in social justice online and in-person, learn more at We're Faith Leads.com. The year 1954, the occasion, a family reunion at the Johnson Home at 504 East Jasper Street in North Tulsa. The event brought relatives in from Los Angeles and reunited two sisters, Lietta Fisher and Caroline Smith, who had not seen each other in 47 years. After dinner, the party moved to the Flamingo Night Club at 116 North Greenwood Avenue, where Alonzo, Stack, Walton, and his combo played. The Oklahoma Eagle, Tulsa's Black-owned newspaper, covered the Johnson's 1954 gathering. Three decades later, the family's names appeared in the paper again in the Legal Notices section. The Tulsa Urban Renewal Authority, or TURA, had filed its petition to condemn and take for public purposes by eminent domain proceedings, their property. The Johnson's were going to give a gift, whether they wanted to or not, to public higher education in Tulsa. TURA in the mid-80s was seizing Black property throughout North Tulsa. Blocks in the city's Washington and Gurley Hill editions that, in 1921, were ruined in the race massacre. But let's focus for now on one parcel. Lots 22 and 23 on block four of the city's Gurley Hill edition, just north of the heart of Greenwood. Before we go deeper into that land's history, some definitions. A lot and block system is one way to serve a land in densely populated areas. It's used to identify specific parcels, often laid out on something called a plat map. The term plat just means a plat of land. You used to have to visit a hall of records, or an assessor's office, to review these documents, like the private investigator Jack Nicholson plays in the film Chinatown. A little lost, I wonder if you could tell me where the plat books for the Northwest Valley are. Part of it's in Ventura County. We don't have Ventura County nor Hall of Records. Well, then I'll settle for Los Angeles County. Row 23 Section C. Now, like a lot of things, Tulsa's plat records are online. In the ownership history, those records tell the record of lots 22 and 23 on block 4 of the Gurley Hill edition is dramatic, involving one of the most notorious figures in Tulsa history. That figure is tape Brady. In 1919 and 1922, the year's book ending the race massacre, he's listed as the grander or owner of what would become the Johnson's property. Brady's name until recently adorned Tulsa buildings, streets, and neighborhoods. But that was before Leroy Chapman, the late history recovery specialist, unearthed the man's real legacy. Today, we'll be looking at tape Brady's Tulsa W. Tape Brady, Tulsa's city founder, known Klansman participant in the race riot and obstructive justice. Tape Brady was what they call an alderman or a city founder of Tulsa. He was an entrepreneur, he was involved in the mining and the oil business and lots and lots of real estate around town, including in the Greenwood area. But in 1945, Charles Henry Johnson acquired the land once held by that white supremacist. He and his family lived comfortably in the following years. His wife Izola traveled to Boston in the spring of 1951, just as their daughter Micella graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. Micella went on to attend Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. But that era was also the beginning of a slow but steady downward spiral for Greenwood, according to historian Hannibal Johnson. And by March 1986, the year the legal notice naming the Johnson's appeared in the Oklahoma Eagle, their land was back in white hands. Darwin L. Brown, an attorney who spent 45 years with TURA and its successor agency, the Tulsa Development Authority, had taken possession of it. Today, the land belongs to the Oklahoma State University or the OSU Board of Regents. It has a fair cash market value of over $5.7 million. OSU, the largest landowner in Greenwood. Vanessa Hall Harper is a Tulsa City Councilwoman. We featured her in our previous episode when she asked pointed questions about North Tulsa property. Who are the landowners of Greenwood? The historic Greenwood district. Who are the landowners? And why is this the sacred land primarily owned or certainly under the control of governmental entities? It's not the people and not the descendants of the legacy and what we know Greenwood is. It means. Today, OSU Tulsa's campus sprawls across scores of acres that were once Greenwood. But that school wasn't part of the original plan for public higher education in the city. At first, in 1977, only one institution was part of that vision. On a hill north of Guthrie stands a school like no other in the state. Created in response to Jim Crow and segregation, this college has struggled through severe legal, economic, and political restrictions. In the face of opposition, Langston University has given generations of students a step up to a better life. Langston practically built the African-American middle class. University proved that it could take students that were not able to qualify for major state university and take those same students and with the right wraparound programs, make them into productive citizens that could go on and do great things. Founded in 1897 as Oklahoma-colored agricultural and normal university, the college has produced poet laureates and sports legends, civil rights leaders, doctors, engineers, and thousands of teachers. Eight decades after its founding in 1977, the school expanded to Tulsa when the Oklahoma state regents for higher education created the Langston Urban Center. There were two factors behind this expansion. Tulsa felt their city needed higher education options beyond the University of Tulsa, the private institution on Route 66, and Oral Roberts University further south. Langston, a public land grant university, fulfilled this need. Then there was the federal government's mandate in the late 1970s that historically black colleges integrate their student bodies. Langston officials felt a Tulsa-based campus could attract non-black students. If you've ever seen the now-defuncts Utica National Bank's 1978 promotional video for Tulsa, a nearly 12-minute clip that paints a glaringly white picture of the city, you know there was no shortage of potential recruits for this new Langston branch. "I'm in the sunshine, see what we've got for you, come on in the sunshine, 'cause we're building a world around, building a world around, building a world around you." "I'm almost done with work." "You had to see the court." "It's a big day today." "It's a big day today." "You're the kids that fall." "Go to the grocery store." "It's a big day today." "We know it's my best to be able to face today." But even after Langston's arrival, the Metropolitan Tulsa Chamber of Commerce wasn't satisfied. It asked the state regents, the group that brought Langston to the city, to study Tulsa's higher education needs. That study was conducted in July of 1980. Two years later, Senate Bill 480 directed the state regents to, "establish a university center." And, "In Tulsa, one that would include Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma, and Northeastern State University, in addition to Langston." Together, these schools formed the University Center at Tulsa, or UCAT. What followed was a period of relocation and expansion. In 1984, UCAT's original home in the state office building on South Houston Avenue was proving insufficient for its needs. And so, in 1985, the city of Tulsa donated the land at 700 North Greenwood Avenue for the center's new $15 million headquarters. Its first academic buildings opened in 1988. the consortium. proceed to acquire even more North Tulsa land in the following years from the Tulsa development authority. 115 acres between 1988 and 2004. But as UCAT grew, it changed, becoming less of a consortium, and more of a headquarters for a single school. Spoiler alert, that school is not Langston. We're here to provide a degree from a comprehensive research university for people that can't get to still water. Brady, the whole downtown area, the Blue Dome District, all of that has just connected with OSU. So from that standpoint, I think this campus is in a very strategic area, very much connected to our business corridors, and it's exciting that OSU is just in the middle of it. OSU wasn't destined to control the UCAT site. As late as March 1998, it seemed the school would share it with the University of Oklahoma, which ultimately resettled in Midtown Tulsa. But the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce is lobbying of the state regions, and what James Halligan, president of OSU at the time, described as "backway dealings" with Governor Frank Keating, changed the playing field. Senate Bill 1426 signed into law in 1998, established OSU Tulsa, moved northeastern state university to Broken Arrow, and guaranteed Langston a Greenwood campus. The following year, and again in 2011 and 2016, OSU Tulsa created elaborate master plans, promising redevelopment, new educational buildings, a health center, and a technology and research park, none of which ever became anything other than drawings on paper. But Pamela Fry, OSU Tulsa's former president, believes one of the school's chief functions is serving its community. Very important is to really see and recognize our role, fulfill our role as contributing to the quality of life of the communities in which we serve. We learned to really think about how do we then enact those principles here that work in the Tulsa metropolitan urban area. In her view, OSU Tulsa is fulfilling its obligation. What I'm most proud of during my time here at OSU Tulsa is working with the community to hopefully rethink, rethink, reimagine OSU Tulsa as a premier urban serving public research university for Tulsa, and particularly for our neighbors here in Greenwood. But according to the members of the Langston community, there's still plenty of work to do. In 2002, for example, just a few years after UCAT's breakup, Langston Tulsa provost Wilbur Thomas, charged the state regents with, quote, "treating Langston differently," then OSU Tulsa by depriving it of its needed funds. The following year, Langston alumni in Tulsa and Muscogee echoed this accusation, arguing that the dissolution of UCAT put Langston Tulsa's branch on, quote, "unequal footing," end quote, with its OSU counterpart. It was only in September of 2020 that the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights charted, quote, "path for closing," end quote, the Langston alum's complaint. The agreement requires the state regents to pay a $750,000 supplemental allocation to Langston over three years. At the same time, through another agreement, OSU will pay Langston $15 million over 10 years. In exchange, Langston will terminate nearly all its Tulsa degree programs. This deal prompted Jared Carter Sr., founding editor of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Digest to ask, quote, "To local home estate just steal Langston satellite campus in Tulsa," end quote. Howard Barnett asked a similar question in February 2018 when he was president of OSU Tulsa. But the way he posed it, the Tulsa Development Authority was stealing land from his university. Barnett entered academia from the corporate world. He was managing director of TSF Capital, a financial advisory and management consulting firm, before taking the helm of OSU's Greenwood campus. He also had a background in politics, serving as chief of staff for Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, the official who helped broker the, quote, "backway deal," end quote, through which OSU took over UCAT. On his first day as president, Barnett named his priorities. I believe that we have to grow to thrive. We have to grow our programs, grow our faculty, grow our research, grow our financial support, and most importantly, grow our enrollment. And it's not growth just for growth's sake. I think we need to grow to provide the kinds of things that will cause Tulsa to embrace OSU Tulsa as its public higher education alternative. But that growth, in least in terms of the school's physical expansion, wasn't fully realized. And there were consequences for this failure. Kaiyan campus explains. So essentially, the University Center at Tulsa Trust Authority had held the land for some time, which charged with developing it into a university campus. After the kind of full scope of that development didn't come to fruition, the Board of Commissioners for the Tulsa Development Authority moved forward with legal action to regain control of the undeveloped portion of the property. The result of that was immediate settlement in 2018-2019 as when TDA received title back to the property. Kamis has a professional background in economic development, and once worked for the Tulsa City Government. Now, she's in a different role. They currently serve as the executive director for the Tulsa Authority for economic opportunity, which is the city's new kind of merged economic and community development entity. So I don't technically work for the city anymore, we're a fully separate, you know, legally independent entity governed by a Board of Trustees. The Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity or TAO formed just last April. That was when the city councilors voted 9-0 to merge the mayor's office of economic development, the Tulsa Industrial Authority, the Tulsa Parking Authority, and the Economic Development Commission into a single 13-member entity. TAO's partnership with the Tulsa Development Authority went into effect on July 1st. Casey Stowe, a Tulsa developer, explains the relationship between TAO and the TDA. Basically, there was a study that was undertaken to evaluate all of the economic development organizations in the city, and see how they're working with themselves and how they're working with the other organizations. And what came out of that is that the organizations, the various organizations, were doing, you know, a pretty good job, but they were very siloed. So basically, the city said, you know what you should do, Tulsa, you really need to pour all these into one bucket, and share common staff, right, get some efficiencies by, you know, not having four executive directors, have one executive director. And also, by pouring all of the organizations into one bucket, you're all now one organization, so you have to talk to each other because now you're all one, right? And so that's what happened, and TAO was formed. Each of these organizations are organized by a state statute, right? And all of them had the same state statutes, title 60, I believe, except for TDA. TDA is kind of unique in that it is a urban renewal authority. And so it's governed by statute 12, or title 12. So there are some restrictions there, where it had to remain its own organization legally, but practically, it's staffed by TAO, right? And all of the board members or commissioners actually on TDA are also board members of TAO. So there's TDA representation on the TAO board. It's that former organization, the Tulsa Development Authority, that acquired much of the land once owned by OSU Tulsa. There's 56 acres that are under master planning currently. It's owned by TDA, the Tulsa Development Authority, is the majority of it. Although a portion of it is owned by the city, the kind of northernmost portion that is along the railroad tracks. It's mainly parkland or kind of undeveloped that we included it in this master planning process for this larger project. The main questions for now are, what will happen to that land? And who will decide how it's developed? According to Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum, the acreage is, quote, "strategically crucial," unquote, to the city's current downtown revitalization efforts. This is an exciting moment for Tulsa. We are standing here on one of the most historic sites in our city. And we have an opportunity in front of us over the next several years to decide how we can put the land around us to the best possible use for the citizens who live in this part of our city. Bynum is referring to the Kirkpatrick Heights Greenwood master plan. The city of Tulsa website explains that this plan, quote, "will create a vision and action oriented redevelopment strategy." strategy to guide the growth of 56 acres of land in and around Greenwood." Furthermore, it will provide strategies for incremental development with a mix of uses, reflecting the planning and economic context of the area, and will serve as a model for equitable and inclusive development. To that end, Bynum appointed a number of North Tulsa Community Pillars to the Leadership Committee, including Dr. LeVern Ford Wimberley, a long-time Tulsa Public Schools teacher, and Joe Williams, a former City Counselor. He also appointed Vanessa Hall Harper, the current City Counselor we heard from earlier. "Where we stand today may very well be one of the most important projects to date in Greenwood's history because what happens with this land could greatly impact the economic, social, and political future of the Greenwood community." Diane K. Miss describes this planning process in more detail "Right now, what we're going through is a master planning process. So this is really just really community-led engagement process to help set the vision for what development and redevelopment will look like. So we're not yet to the stage where we're thinking about development or redevelopment of the acreage. We're really at the point where we're going deliberately going out to the community and asking for their input on what the vision is for the area." And Rodrigo Rojas, Deputy Chief of Staff for Tulsa Mayor GT Bydom, emphasizes the importance of community engagement with this process, which can happen through the website ourlegacytulsa.org. "We invite people to please engage in this process. You know, we're on the front end of this really special master plan and even from your home you can interact with and provide feedback through the website but also just to stay updated. So this is the time, right? Please get involved, get your friends involved, family involved. That's what this process is for." Only once that input is received will development proceed. The process at this stage seems to herald a bright future for Greenwood. But given the TDAs and the city's development track record, there's reason for caution. "A community-led planning process for TDA-owned land, overseen by a new, streamlined economic opportunity authority, these seem like positive steps. But one developer's experience with city officials, the TDA and local developers suggest the problems TDA is meant to solve, aren't the main issues impeding inclusive development in the city." In an article on TDA, Kayanne Kamis and her co-authors decry the old state of things, when Tulsa had "bulkenized authorities," the industrial authority, parking authority, and other entities brought together when TDA formed. They write that, quote, "The price of this fragmentation is exceptionally high, undermining the ability of cities to develop integrated strategies and realize their full market and financial power," but Michael East Smith, a black developer, has been frustrated by fragmentation here. His problem has been the exact opposite, excessive unity between local business and government. "I had been frustrated with reaching out to the various purveirs who sell real estate downtown every time I inquired about a parcel of property for private development, but they take one look at me. It's not available. It's not available." And then you turn around, and you read about it and it's sold to a column of downtown mafia. It's about five guys that commercially the state gets that I consider the downtown mafia. Smith, who leads Pine Place Development LLC, is based in Houston, but he grew up in North Tulsa. I went to local public schools, Vol. 2, Washington High School, graduate in 1975, onto Oklahoma State University, graduated 79 with a degree bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering technology. He got involved in commercial real estate gradually, through his work in the oil sector. "When I graduated, I went to work for a marathon oil company in Lafayette, Louisiana, worked for 33 and a half years for marathon and took early retirement in 2013. In the last seven and a half years that I was with marathon, I kind of was dropped feed first, named a manager of Facilities Planning, leasing in real estate. So I had a million square foot commercial office building, which was our corporate headquarters that I was responsible for. I kind of learned the commercial real estate business just from feed to the fire on a job train and learn about doing." In July of 2016, the Tulsa World reported that Smith had proposed a 250,000 square foot multi-use building in the Greenwood district. "We called it the BC Franklin office complex in homage to BC Franklin, who was the lawyer who basically saved Greenwood after it was burned out." But Smith had competition. The Oklahoma Historical Society wanted to build its OK pop museum on the Greenwood land he was eyeing. The two groups faced off in the summer of 2016. "We came to the TDA meeting to present, and so it was just us and OK and Oklahoma Historical Society. Oklahoma's historic society came up and basically they thought they had it in the bag and they basically had a stick figure presentation, it was just nothing, nothing at all. And then we presented and we had all the bells and whistles and we had a five store structure with terraces and outdoor seating, ground floor retail and commercial and outdoor seating so you can watch the ball game." And of course that caused Oklahoma Historical Society to get coal feet because I think they had a deal in place where they were going to get the land for basically nothing. And we were proposing paying fair market value for the land and they weren't going to get it for nothing. So that's kind of scared them off. So wisdom would have it that, OK, you've got the bid, go through the process, you should conditionally win because you had the best bid, well TDA got coal feet and said, well let's hold on." Which they did, the TDA proceeded to take no action and then re-open the bidding process in September of 2016. For OK pop, the issue was resolved that December when the museum found a new home just west of Greenwood at 422 North Main Street. The recent proliferation of museums in and around Greenwood raises questions about Tulsa's relationship with its past and about which museums the city chooses to build. For example, it's a little known fact that Greenwood's John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park was originally planned to be a meeting space and storehouse for race massacre artifacts and not just an open-air memorial plaza. But a lack of funding killed that project. Julius Piggies, a community advocate and consultant explains, "We only had a commitment from the Oklahoma State Legislature for up to $5 million, they appropriated $3.7 million and did not give us any more money after that point. And we raised the balance of the funds on our own. We abandoned that concept and eventually ended up with the park as it is presently because we could accomplish that within the funds that they had made available." On the other hand, OK pop got plenty of money and support from powerful Tulsons. The George Kaiser Family Foundation, the Bank of Oklahoma, and other private interests chipped in $15 million, for example. And major city landowners helped as well. The Bank of Oklahoma committed land for the museum in 2011 and after OK pop abandoned the Greenwood site, David Sharp described in a 2013 news on sixth story as "the man who owns downtown Tulsa," "donated a parking lot across the street from the historic Canes ballroom." That's where the museum, which opens next year, stands today. With the land secured, the project can move ahead. Popstar Taylor Hanson spoke of the opening ceremony a year ago. "I'm so honored to be here on this great stage. Great folks representing service to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our state. I'm going to add something special as the resident long hair on this stage. We are here because of the creators. And about 10 years ago when the journey began, the conversation is just down this street about OK pop's vision. We talked about how to not just build a square box full of old things but to build something that lives." Hanson's description of OK pop as a living space might sound familiar. It echoes what LeRae Arthur Menza, project director with the exhibition design firm Local Projects, said about the Greenwood Rising History Center in our previous episode. She compared the center to more traditional museums. I think Greenwood rising does something have a very different What I do think it does is contributes to the overall consciousness and awareness of black history in this country. And it humanizes history for the visitor. It pulls it out of the textbook and gives kind of the human story and perspective. Like OK Pop, Greenwood Rising has powerful backers. The History Center sits on Hilly Foundation Land, a plot the Hilly family allegedly donated to the new museum, but which Tulsa Property Records show their foundation still owns. And the Greenwood Rising Fund is a component fund of the Tulsa Community Foundation, another group linked to George Kaiser. But both Greenwood Rising and OK Pop can tell us to ask hard questions. Questions about the role these spaces play in relation to Greenwood. Is the spread of downtown museums, sites intended to preserve memories, a positive thing for the district, or do these sites promote the image of Tulsa as historically aware? When in reality, the city is erasing parts of its history. With these questions in mind, let's return to the developer Michael Smith, whose construction plan for Greenwood was in a way realized the only problem he wasn't the one who built it. In January 2017, Smith's Pine Place Development pitched its idea for an office retail space with a jazz cafe and a test kitchen to the TDA again. But this time, there was a new competitor, the Ross Group, which wanted to see two commercial developments at the site. The Ross Group is a major player in downtown Tulsa construction. The firm does extensive historical preservation work, and Mayor G. T. Bynum celebrated at CEO Warren Ross as one of the city's "visionary developers" end quote. But there's more to their story. The firm, quote, "carved its niche with federal contracts," end quote, "completing dozens of different projects for the Pentagon worth nearly $900 million since 2002." These included $24 million Department of Homeland Security, Immigration, and Customs Enforcement Facility in El Paso, and a share through its Walga Ross Group affiliate, a former President Donald Trump's $5 billion border wall project. Smith's interactions with the Ross Group, which did not respond to our request for an interview, began after he faced off against the Oklahoma Historical Society, and after the TDA reopened the bidding process for Block 44. Smith was determined to bid again for that site, given its historical importance. I've done some research and found that Block 44 was basically the last remaining parcel of the original Greenwood business district. The last one left, following the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce's surrender of the land where Driller Stadium now stands. That happened several years earlier, when Kathy Taylor was Tulsa's mayor, and Ruben Gantt was head of the Greenwood Chamber. The ballpark is built, that land is lost, that portion of the original Greenwood business district is lost. As Smith revised his plans for the site, Warren Ross contacted him. Hey, look, we are building a parking garage across the street, and we'd like to possibly partner up with you to be able to provide the parking for your office complex. And at the time, I hesitated meeting with him, and so they kept pushing me to meet them, meet them, meet them. And so I finally acquiesced and met with him. With that, we had some discussions. They were able to see my drawings, they were able to see everything I had. My biggest mistake was I didn't put them under NDA, non-disclosure green. A few months later, Warren Ross calls me and says, "Hey, look, we've decided that we're going to partner up with somebody else." As soon as I hung up the phone, I knew that this was a lost cause, because I had lost my competitive advantage. I had lost my business and competitive advantage. This prediction proved accurate. In February of 2017, TDA voted unanimously, 4-0, to approve the Ross Group's proposal. The vast bank's headquarters now stand on that Greenwood block. Now, when you go downtown to that site and you look at the vast bank building, it is a carbon copy of Pine Place Development's building. The only difference is the color of the brick, literally the color of the brick. Block 44 hurt me to the cool, because I, quite frankly, that was some of my best work. And to see it just kind of banish without any kind of control, that was painful. Back in January, an in-depth Washington Post piece covered Smith's failed Greenwood bid alongside other trends impacting the district, like gentrification. It's a concept that, by now, is deeply embedded in popular culture. For example, in situation comedies like Seinfeld. Jerry, you know that shoe repair place at the end of the block. Well, if they don't get some business, they're going to have to shut down and make way for one of those gourmet coffee or cookie stores. I like coffee. I like cookies. Of course you do, and you know why? Because you're a bunch of yuppies. You know, it's your go-go corporate takeover of life styles that are driving out these mom-and-pop stores and destroying the fabric of this neighborhood. Well, what's so great about a mom-and-pop store? Let me tell you something. In my mom-and-pop brand of store, I wouldn't shop there. Gentrification is also ever-present in hip-hop lyrics. I pray to love my son, Keith. Gentrification's been the nation that I once was raising. Mother's a tryna-feet children, but gentrification is kicking them. How did they build it? Walking where we sleep, my gentrifying neighbors are trying to call the police on me. I need to be prepared. But gentrifying can't recognize trees. They to give back, down to sleep. Ain't no good, you're fine. Yes, we've seen them by the whole town. In our first episode, we referenced Latoya Rose of Greenwood's Rose Tax Solutions who believes the driller's stadium has helped gentrify Greenwood. But not everyone agrees that is what's happening in the district. Here's Greenwood Rising's interim executive director Phil Armstrong addressing both that issue and the January Washington Post piece. Yeah, that article was really not delivered with absolute journalism integrity. Because for example, what's taking place in the construction here is not gentrification. The vast majority of what was black-owned here that you see construction has not been in black-owned hands for almost 30 years. And the toss of development authority bought most of that property. And so what you see in new development is developers, albeit mostly white developers, buying the land from the toss of development authority. So it's not the traditional view of black people own land, white people come, or people with money come in, buy the land next to them, or buy that apartment building, raise the rates, and black people have to leave. That was taking place in the 70s and the 80s. The last 10, 15 years, no one black-owned anything in this part. So that's not true gentrification. Freeman Colver, president of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, has a similar view. He thinks gentrification, and the white black tensions the term implies, is a distraction from what's really happening. Well, I was talking about gentrification. I was playing a white man on every day problems. And in a day, we know racism still exists. And I'm sorry that it still exists, right? And I'm from the deep side, right? I know about a racism better than anyone that was born in Oklahoma. I know. The real scourge in his eyes is infighting among Greenwood's black community. And whether you agree or not, there's no denying that tensions have run high in recent years, especially between Colver's Greenwood Chamber and another entity challenging that group's historic role. (Music) You know, I'm a pasta educator, I'm a father, I'm a husband. Colver sees his leadership of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce as, in many respects, the culmination of his activism. I've been in the movement since high school. I actually served as the chair of the reparations committee for the state in Oblacinpee in Alabama. When I was 17 years old, me and the brother of Reverend Al Shunton, we organized a march in seven when I was 23 years old. It was called the Backless March. And I've been in the movement for a long time. A lot of people don't know that. They just see me because I'm so humbled. I've been in this movement since I was 17 years old, well over 22 years. The Greenwood Chamber, a group with a mandate to boost black community. businesses in Greenwood dates to 1938. It listed 240 black owned businesses as members in the 30s and 40s. That enrollment is much lower today. And now I'm just serving here in Greenwood. Just trying to help these 38 businesses that we have get attention because it's living history. It's black Wall Street. It's Greenwood Avenue and nobody has been a chillier for them. So God sent me here to be a chillier for them to help preserve this area to help promote entrepreneurship right on ground zero on Greenwood. But Tulsa, Councilwoman Vanessa Hall Harper, a former Greenwood Chamber member, believes the group isn't fulfilling its mission. She argues it is abandoned its responsibility. Building the membership, providing the resources that black businesses need, in addition to the creation, the support needed in the creation of black businesses. Those are the things that business, that chambers, business chambers in particular, do, right? That is that is part of their core mission. The Greenwood Chamber is not doing that. And for the Greenwood Chamber's critics, one business in particular, provides a recent compelling case study of its shortcomings. That's Tori Tyson speaking from her blow out hair studio in 2017. Here she is again in October last year. I'm Greenwood on my business for 13 years. Welcome to Black Wall Street. I got to watch a lot of buildings come up, a lot of businesses come and go. And I'm here just about every day. So I meet people from all over the world. Just two months later in December, the Greenwood Chamber evicted Tyson for refusing to pay increased rent. The forced closure of her business sparked outrage. There was a protester earlier and it's actually still going on right now. It's quiet now. But earlier, there was shouting in the street and disrespectful name calling into historic Black Wall Street of America. I'm really hurt because over the years I've been complaining about the Greenwood Chamber, the members, the process. Right now I'm going to be right here for right now. Right now, I don't know. I want to stay. That's my go. That's the stay. Tyson's case helps explain why the Greenwood Chamber has met with opposition in recent years. Opposition that mounted until a splinter group, the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce formed in 2018. Sherry Gamble-Smith leads this new chamber. She's the CEO and president. Another member is Vanessa Hall Harper. Like Gamble-Smith, she broke off from the Greenwood Chamber to form the new organization. I was involved very strongly with the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. Back in 2016, 2017, the Greenwood Chamber had really just deteriorated and so I got involved. So when I met Sherry Gamble-Smith, she was involved as well. We were trying to build and collaborate with anyone interested in reestablishing and strengthening this business chamber, this Black Business Chamber that we clearly need. At the time, she found the Greenwood Chamber's membership policies, especially vexing. We wanted to establish or reestablish the Greenwood Chamber as a legitimate organization. One of the ways in which you do that, if you are a membership organization, if you are a chamber, one of the things you are required to do is have an annual meeting that gives the status of this chamber because you are receiving funds from people. And so I wanted to have a membership meeting. And one of the things you do if you've ever attended the Regional Chamber annual meeting, for example, is that they give us status and give a report of the organization. They did not want that to happen. And I'm like, why? Colver, for his part, alternates between seeing the new chamber as a positive. There's another organization that calls himself a chamber. That's good. And a nuisance. Stop throwing dirt on what we're doing when we're actually getting results, right? We've raised more than $800,000 and all of it has gone back into Greenwood, right? We got brand new rules, break word over half million dollars of work in the buildings. We've given out more than $200,000 in grants. Restaurants like Wanda James, Stutt's barbecue, right in the North Tulsa, New Way counseling, Black Wall Street T-shirts, Alpha Grill, barbecue food trucks. All these businesses got grants because of the Greenwood Chamber. We're doing great things. We actually now have 38 businesses that contribute more than five and a half million dollars back into Tulsa's economy. So if I wasn't from here and I'm just a speculator, I will look at that group that's making all this noise as some haters, okay? And he insists these, quote, "haters," end quote, "people like Sherry Gamble-Smith and Vanessa Hall Harper have ulterior motives." The individuals that ran down the Chamber and didn't support the businesses here, they were ran out because of the decisions they made, you know, like forging checks and different things, investment money and different things. And so they was ran out and then they decided to just, I guess, is their PR campaign to say that Chamber is not doing what he's supposed to do under my leadership. But they went and started another organization and called it a Chamber. Gary Breakner, another Greenwood Chamber member, agrees that the Black Wall Street Chamber's presence is toxic. If there's another Chamber that's claiming to be a Chamber, North Tulsa needs a lot of help. But 21-1921 speaks a lot to us that that capitalism, individual businesses, multi-millionaires, more Black millionaires here in Greenwood than anywhere in the United States. How did they do it? They worked together, they believed in each other's vision, they empowered each other. What happened to the vision? Why aren't we working together? And so that's the key with the Chamber and that we have to work together, you know, with the community. I was told, Dr. Freeman, the five-foot Greenwood, when I first came aboard, I said in 1921, we knew where the enemy was coming from, coming from the South. But now we have our own neighbors' attackiness. Vanessa Hall Harper counters by listing the Black Wall Street Chamber's accomplishments. We have over 170 members. We provide, we created the Tulsa Black Contractors Association to assist Black contractors, just supporting Black Entrepreneurial Ship from its inception to being a strong successful business. But several Black owned businesses in Greenwood do not feel served. Like silhouette sneakers and art on East Archer Street across from Drillers Stadium. The need a Cooper owns the store, which opened two years ago. So what is not a member? No. Not a member of either Chamber. We've never been that invited to be a member of either Chamber. In my mind, the purpose of a Chamber is to get members. And there's so few Black owned businesses left on Black Wall Street, you'd think, between the two chambers that are serving this two-block area, basically. You'd think that they would reach out. It's pretty disappointing. I would love to see the chambers kind of come together and craft a shared vision that involves input from the business community here. And hopefully collectively we can all move forward because I do think things are a little, things feel a little, feel more stagnant on Greenwood than I think people expected following the centennial and I think, you know, that obviously people people don't want that. The experience of a business owner like Cooper, a Black woman, just footsteps from the heart of Greenwood, is striking and light of Freeman Culver's professed dedication to Black women. Black females is the largest subwoofer for entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs. I see this being the hub for the largest Black female incubator in the world. The competing business chambers in Greenwood assign supposedly that the Black community can't "get it together" unquote, draws plenty of outside media attention, coverage that skews towards sensationalism. During the protests following Torrey Tyson's forced eviction, for example, the headline was that Reverend Kenneth Evans had used a racial slur to denounce the demonstrators. A Greenwood Chamber of Commerce board member is catching some heat after using racial slur to call out a minority business owner. That was Reverend Kenneth Evans calling the crowd the inward which he used more than once towards the group supporting Torrey Tyson. Vanessa Hall Harper challenges this conflict-focused narrative, calling it a distraction from deeper issues. Oh well they're just fighting, they're just fighting each other, Black people fighting bucket. It's not that at all. That is a narrative that the power structure, right? The power in the city would love to say because that's how they've always been able to control, divide and conquer and put attention attention on that and take attention off of what happened to that land. There's the land once owned by the Greenwood Chamber that became the ballpark which we discussed earlier, and the land at North Greenwood Avenue and East Archer Street. That's where a 90,000 square foot mixed-use building, when we discussed in our last episode, stands. The land where Green Arts, for example, that land was owned by the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. But the Chamber's involvement didn't end the day of the land sale. Because there's another entity, the Greenwood Community Development Corporation, we have to consider. That group is a nonprofit. Its address is 116 North Greenwood Avenue, the former site of the Flamingo Night Club, where the Johnson family held their 1954 Family Reunion After Party. The corporation states its "primary mission" and "is working to "rebuild the North Tulsa community one business and one job at a time, empowering a disadvantaged and underserved community through the provision of small business training and services." And it's led today by the same man who helms the Greenwood Chamber, Freeman Culver. Because the corporation is a nonprofit, it has 501(c)(3) status, making it exempt from federal income tax. That status also means that every year, the group files a Form 990, a document that provides the public with information about a nonprofit with the IRS. And when you review the Greenwood Community Development Corporation's forms, you'll see that they list GreenArch LLC as a related organization. In fact, the corporation is a partner in GreenArch, the commercial real estate firm Tide to Tulsa's Hilly Family. We discussed this real estate firm and these connections in our previous episode. Here's a quick refresher. Tulsa Attorney Kajir Yar worked both as the Hilly Foundation's Council and for GreenArch LLC. And the Hilly Foundation is a majority owner of GreenArch LLC, the firm that bought two parcels for the GreenArch mixed use building in May of 2012. The Hilly Foundation purchased that land for $667,000. The land, now owned by GreenArch LLC, has a fair cash value above $7.5 million. Another development plan for Greenwood promotes what you might call constructive destruction. It focuses on Interstate 244. Tulsa City planners charted that thoroughfare through the district in the 1960s, after deeming the community a ghetto in need of renewal. They had federal level support from the highway acts of 1965 and 1968. Greenwood residents rebuilt our ancestors. Greenwood was even stronger within just five years. In fact, Greenwood continued to thrive for decades until that highway, our 244. That's true, it's hard, demolishing our community once again. That state senator Kevin Matthews at the opening ceremony for the Greenwood Rising History Center. But now, a branch of Tulsa's young professionals organization, Typros, has formulated a plan that could transform Greenwood. Well, if you gave her a highway and then built out public transportation, then you can reconnect these communities and help revitalize the area that's really struggled over the last couple of decades after the highway was built. Cody Brandt works with the Typros Urbanist Crew. Full disclosure, Focus Black Oklahoma co-host Colby Webster leads that crew. Brandt has been researching infrastructure for years. So I had actually started researching highways in general in undergrad, because my landscape architecture or tap zone project I had done over Opal in the city and it was about Interstate 235, which in Oklahoma City, it's kind of the same thing as Ish, because the east side of 235 in Oklahoma City, where the capital is, it's kind of the historic black neighborhood of Oklahoma City, and then on the other side of 235 is Missed Apart, and kind of like a smaller version of Maborage. And so after that project, whenever I went into my master's program, that's when I started focusing a little bit more on Tulsa specifically. He thinks it's time to remove I-244, an idea that's gained traction recently. When President Joe Biden was in Tulsa for the race massacre Centennial, for example, he discussed ways his infrastructure bill would address those portions of the interstate highway system that sliced through black communities. Biden mentioned the Greenwood stretch of I-244 in particular, as one that could be taken down. For Brant, such a change would bring clear benefits. Probably the biggest benefit to that is obviously, you know, being able to give back a huge amount of land in a very valuable part of town. Land that the community could proceed to develop on its own terms in the same vein as the Kirkpatrick Heights plan discussed earlier. But other community members are skeptical about the highway removal's payoff. I mean, I can't see a huge mass of land becoming available because you removed the highway. Ruben Gant directs the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation in Greenwood. He returned to North Tulsa where he grew up after playing seven seasons in the NFL for the Buffalo Bills. You should be concerned with putting in initiatives that raise the median income levels of residents in the community. How can you expect a community whose median income levels aren't even above $30,000 in most zip code areas, take advantage opportunities to move, to build, to develop when they don't have the income or the access to capital and credit to do it? Who are you building these things for at that point? But in Brant's view, the Typrus plan factors in these broader considerations. And this land can then be put to community good in terms of placing it into a community land trust. So that way, the people who are harmed specifically by the highway benefit from this, from a financial perspective of, you know, they get the value of the land back. And then they also would profit off of any development that's built on top of it and they would also have a say in what type of development is built to. So, you know, that helps kind of ease some of the concerns within the community because it's really development for the community built by the community. He says the proposal already has considerable support. You know, surprisingly, very, very little pushback. Most of the pushback I would say is came from, you know, other black community leaders. And, you know, it's just a viable fear given how most of the public projects have gone previously in Tulsa. There's enough support that I feel like there's a legitimate reason that we need to be having these discussions sooner than later. And he's clear about the scope and limitations of his proposal. I don't want this to be a distraction to larger and more immediate preparation efforts. [Music] We want to thank you for listening to the second segment in our three part series, the Battle for Greenwood. Part three, reparations, airs in November. Our team includes Nick Alexandrov, Jamie Glisten, Carlos Moreno, Jesse Ulrich, Colby Webster, and Devon Williams. Focus Black Oklahoma's executive producers are Kareesh Ali-Lonsona and Bracken-Clar. Our associate producers are Nick Alexandrov and Vanessa Gaiona. And our production intern is Smriti Iangar. Focus Black Oklahoma is supported in part by Tulsa Artist Fellowship, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Focus Black Oklahoma is a project of Tri-City Collective. [Music] The KOSU Daily Podcast provides you with local news to get you on your way every Monday through Friday morning. The KOSU Daily includes stories from our state impact reporters looking into topics including health care and education, will also have reports on indigenous affairs in the state of Oklahoma, along with rural and agricultural issues. You can find the KOSU Daily wherever you get your podcast or at kosu.org. K-O-S-U Daily, Oklahoma News every weekday.