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Black Wall Street

Black American
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Black Wall Street refers to the prosperous African American business district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

Detailed Definition
In African American poetry, Black Wall Street symbolises Black enterprise, aspiration, communal achievement, racial violence, and historical erasure. References often invoke both pride and devastation, highlighting how Black success could be met with organised destruction. The term helps interpret poetry concerned with stolen prosperity, suppressed memory, intergenerational trauma, and the fragility of progress under racial hostility.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem commemorating the Tulsa massacre reflects Black Wall Street themes; Verse mourning destroyed Black prosperity demonstrates this term; A poem celebrating entrepreneurial Black community before racial violence illustrates Black Wall Street; Poetry linking generational wealth loss to historical destruction reflects this concept; A poem recovering erased Tulsa memory exemplifies Black Wall Street usage
Additional Notes
Black Wall Street refers specifically to the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which by 1921 had become one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States, only to be destroyed by a white mob and, controversially, aerial bombardment in the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31–June 1, 1921. The event, suppressed in official histories for decades, has become a powerful subject for poets addressing Black prosperity, dispossession, community survival, and countermemory. Students should contextualise poems about Black Wall Street within the broader history of organised attacks on successful Black communities, including Rosewood, Florida. Related terms include dispossession, Red Summer, enslavement memory, revisionist history, and countermemory. The centenary of the massacre in 2021 generated significant new poetic work.
Also Known As
Black Wall Street massacre Tulsa Race Massacre Greenwood destruction
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