#Oklahoma notable people serial#

#Oklahoma notable people serial#

After running a general store in Perry, Oklahoma, Gurley, a serial entrepreneur, moved to oil-rich Tulsa, and reportedly purchased 40 acres of land on the north side of the city with the vision of selling residential and commercial plots to African Americans. Born to freed slaves in Alabama, Gurley was raised in Arkansas and moved to Oklahoma during the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. Gurley is commonly referred to as the founder of Greenwood. The Architects of GreenwoodĪ wealthy Black landowner named O.W. As word spread that Indian Territory was a safe place for African Americans to settle, between 18, more than 50 Black townships were founded in Oklahoma. The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the government to divide tribal territories into allotments for individual Native Americans, which included Black members. “The relative wealth of some Black folks in Oklahoma comes in part through their connection to the tribes and their landownership,” says Hannibal Johnson, historian and author of Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with Its Historical Racial Trauma. After the Civil War, under the terms of the Treaties of 1866, these African Americans were emancipated with some integrating into the tribes, a relationship that would later provide freedmen with their own land.

African Americans and Land Ownership in Oklahomaīefore the Greenwood district was established, African Americans came to Oklahoma in the mid-19 th century as slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes, the term used for the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes, who were forced from their lands in the southeast part of the country, resettling in Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory.