In recent years, the history of what happened during the terrible incident which has become known as the Tulsa Race Massacre has entered the awareness of the general public.
That was not always the case, partly because of a deliberate and concerted effort, conducted over the course of decades, to bury that history and keep it out of the public eye.
[Hear the KRMG In Depth Report on “Greenwood Rising: The Rise of Black Wall Street” here]
But in the runup to the centennial of the horrors which occurred in 1921, the story finally made its way into popular culture.
Yet the story of how Black Wall Street came to even exist in the first place has not.
A new film, entitled “Greenwood Rising: The Rise of Black Wall Street” seeks to rectify that by telling the story of O.W. Gurley and his wife, Emma.
Director Aaron Williams tells KRMG he really came up with the idea during the COVID pandemic, when so many black businesses were struggling just to stay afloat.
How did a black man, facing the headwinds of Jim Crow laws and barely a couple decades after the end of legal slavery, manage to build the most successful African American community in the nation?
“I didn‘t want to hear just about the Tulsa massacre,” he told KRMG. “I heard about the devastation, I hear about devastation all the time. I‘m not interested in another story of somebody being murdered, killed, and things torn down and ’woe is me.' Tell me how I got there in the first place. Yeah, I know about the aftermath, it‘s very unfortunate, but let me get into the mind frame of what started us there, because that’s the important part.”
Fatima Marie, who plays Emma Gurley, told KRMG she loves that the story portrays black characters as strong, independent, and accomplished people.
“You don‘t see that in movies, you see maybe more of the cheating, or the drama, and it‘s more like degraded. But he (Williams) really put a positive light, you know, and shed light on this couple, and O.W. Gurley‘s dream of ’you can make it,' you know, you have faith and you work hard and they got there - just not giving up, and working together, and keep going.”
The film is free to watch on the Fawesome.TV streaming platform or app; in fact, it’s the first original production by Fawesome.