At the heart of the Greenwood district stood a vibrant community of women. Much like the men of Greenwood, women gathered and spent their money at the businesses on Black Wall Street that eagerly welcomed them.
At the Loula T. Williams’s Confectionary, a soda shop-esque store, they talked about their lives and celebrated major events.
Women not only frequented businesses in Greenwood, they were also the owners and proprietors of them.
Some women rented out rooms, such as Mrs. Angie Stokes or Mrs. Wilson. Others owned cafes and confectionaries: Williams Confectionery, one of the most popular in the area, was owned by Loula Williams and The People’s Cafe, which boasted “good home cooking” was co-owned by Mrs. M. Newman (Tulsa Star, “Tulsa Colored Business Directory”).
Not all of the women in Greenwood were business owners. Most were not. Many worked in professions such as stenography and tailoring (Gates). An even larger number made their living as domestics, who worked in the homes of White Tulsans. Some made their living through sex work. Prostitution rings were run out of homes along First Street and Admiral Drive (Madigan 40).
Work was one part of the life of on Greenwood, but it wasn’t all of it.
Religious activity was especially important to many Greenwood women. The First Baptist Church drew many attendees, as did Mt. Zion Baptist Church and Vernon AME Church. Women not only attended these churches, but read poems, sung worship, and organized potlucks. They attended the National Baptist Convention (NBC), held annually in different cities around the country, and were members of the Women’s Convention Auxiliary, a subcommittee of the NBC.
Record of secular organizations is scant. National organizations that promoted equality for African Americans such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Negro Business League (NNBL), and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) had chapters in Oklahoma and members in Tulsa.
Some of the women in these clubs were known in their own right. For others, in civic organizations, and outside of them, their names have perished from the record. Even so, it is clear that the women of Greenwood contributed in rich and varied ways to their community.
Elizabeth Thomas
Bibliography:
Eddie Faye Gates, They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa (Austin: Eakin Press, 1997).
Randy Krehbiel, Tulsa, 1921: Reporting a Massacre (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019),
Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Race Riot of 1921 (New York: St. Martin’s Press).
“The Colored Business Directory,” The Tulsa Star (Tulsa, Okla.), Vol. 9, No. 6, Ed. 1, Saturday, February 21, 1920, newspaper, February 21, 1920. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc72786/m1/3/
Citation:
The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for this article: Elizabeth Thomas, “Womanhood in Greenwood,” in Women of Black Wall Street, 2021, Brandy Thomas Wells, Ed. https://blackwallstreetwomen.com/background-essays/
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