A Black Wall Street is established in Augusta, GA.
According to WJBF Channel 6, a plan in eight stages focused on black entrepreneurship, proposed by Lawrence Freeman Jr. and Thelonious Jones, aims to create a business Walton Way, Laney Walker, Broad Street encompassing district, East Boundary and other regions. The goal is to promote economic growth and help entrepreneurs generate wealth, With a district shaped after the original Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK.
The project is inspired by Viola Fletcher, “Mother Fletcher”, the oldest survivor living in the massacre of the Tulsa race in 2021, which saw more than 300 lost lives and all the companies of Black Wall Street destroyed, according to The Tulsa library. Fletcher was 7 years old at the time and was 110 years old in May 2024, notes People. She is still fighting to rewrite the wrongs of the massacre that left her family in poverty, by Justice for Greenwood.
Fletcher lived in the Greenwood district, a black predominance district with prosperous companies, where the massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921. An incident took place on May 30 between Dick Rowland, a 19 -year -old black man, and Sarah Page, a 17 -year -old white woman in an elevator. In response to different stories of what happened, a fight broke out between black and white crowds. THE white crowd Define 35 blocks of fire in the black community, resulting in more than 300 deaths, 800 injuries, 1,200 destroyed houses, And all black companies have essentially disappeared, according to the Tulsa library.
Freeman mentioned, “What I would like to see is coming back to our ancestors, our great grand-grandfather, the great grandchildren what they did for the Tulsa, the Oklahoma Black Wall Street, how they prepared and joined and called on black businesses.”
He then commented: “The success for us and for me is to be able to say that we have kept the dream, The living vision of Mother Fletcher. She is the oldest survivor.
Currently Freeman and Jones are looking for community support to companies, from the community leaders, and politicians.
“We need our politicians to write legislation to make sure we get a piece of pie because the government contracts And the government everything brings wealth, ” Jones told WJBF Channel 6. “So we need the municipal councilors to put aside and make sure that black entrepreneurs can compete.”