In the thriving black community of Greenwood, Irene Evans was one of many great business owners. Though her date and birth location are unknown, Irene’s active community involvement has left a rich record of her noteworthy and substantive contributions to the district.

In March 1914, Irene and her husband, Harry Daniel Evans (H.D.), originally of Texas, opened the Evans Café in the Martin Building at 126 N. Greenwood Ave. The café’s “famous fried chicken and homemade pastries” (the latter for which Irene was famous) were extremely popular in Tulsa and throughout the state.^[1] Only three months after opening, the café served the area’s white baseball teams, including the Tulsa Oilers and the Bartlesville Blues, after a rivalry game.

The Evans advertised regularly in The Tulsa Star throughout 1914 and attributed much of their success to this. After 1914, however, advertisements for the café ceased. This was likely because the business was doing so well that further advertising proved unnecessary.

In June 1914, the Evans Café café expanded. It hired James Cheatham, a professional chef from New Orleans, and two servers. Cheatham was initially hired to run the restaurant at night and serve as assistant manager. However, Cheatham and his wife caught the Greenwood entrepreneurial bug within a few months. They opened their café in Greenwood—little information about the relationship between the Evanses and the Cheathams. Instead, the latter couple’s marital split and their departure from the district became a highly publicized scandal.

The Evans overcame the matter and soon opened Evans Tailoring Company at 609 East Archer Street, a road located in the heart of Greenwood. The business was run out of their home in the Martin building, owned by attorney and Greenwood’s first justice of the peace, Freeman L. Martin. The tailoring shop had several successful neighbors, including Dora Wells’ Hair Manufacturing and Garment Factory.

The first ads for Evans’ Tailoring Company appeared around 1917 and continued regularly in The Tulsa Star until the Fall of 1918. The shop specialized in suits and promised cleaning, pressing, repairing, and delivery. Irene supported the business as a seamstress.

In addition to their business endeavors, Irene and her husband were active community members. The couple attended First Baptist Church, founded in 1899 by a small group of Black Christians. First Baptist Church North Tulsa survived the Massacre. By the church’s own account, the frenzied mob bypassed the brick veneer structure because they believed it was too fine to be a Black church. The mob destroyed at least a half-dozen other churches. Later, the church hosted many Black leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Justice Thurgood Marshall.

H.D. was involved in Greenwood’s Business League with O. W. Gurley, Dr. R.T. Bridgewater, and other prominent Greenwood citizens. The league sought to improve and protect the district’s business enterprises and extend its public services and institutions for the community’s betterment—one of these discussions included the construction of a hospital. In early 1914, the league met weekly to plan its programming and fundraising campaign for the State Negro League, which was held in the district in February.

Along with her participation in the Church, Irene was a member of the Household of Ruth, a women’s group based on the Odd Fellowship, a co-ed fraternal organization focused on aiding those in need. In January 1918, she was noted by the United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of the Mysterious Ten as “the most excellent queen” who “ruled with distinction” at their Royal House Meeting.^[2] Less than a month later, Irene organized an event for the children of these organizations at her church. The United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of the Mysterious Ten are secret associations dating back to the 1860s. They were organized by freedmen who aimed to care for the sick.^[3]

The Evans couple was beginning to hit their stride in Greenwood when H.D. died suddenly at the age of 41. He passed in January 1919, a few months before the Tulsa Race Massacre. It is not clear where Irene was at the time of the Massacre. Undoubtedly, the Evans Café, if it still existed, was destroyed alongside other businesses in the 100 block of Greenwood. Nearby ventures on Archer Street also did not escape destruction.  Most fierce battles between Greenwood residents and the white mob occurred between Archer Street and the Frisco railroad tracks.

Little is known of Irene, the Evans Café, or the tailoring business after 1918. Irene completely vanished from the record. It is possible that she perished during the Massacre or that she left soon before or after this tragedy.

Despite this missing information, enduring materials show that Irene and her husband, H.D., had a strong sense of social responsibility, spirituality, and business management in the years leading up to the Massacre. Their commitment to these principles was honored in Greenwood even as their legacy was cut short.

---

[1] “News Around the City,” Tulsa Star, 1 August 1914.
[2] “The Royal House Convened January 16^th,” Tulsa Star (Tulsa, Oklahoma), 12 February 1918.
[3] “United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of the Mysterious Ten,” http://www.stichtingargus.nl/vrijmetselarij/ubfsmt_en.html.

---

---

Citation: Makayla Swanson, “Irene Evans,” in Brandy Thomas Wells, ed. Women of Black Wall Street, 2021, https://blackwallstreetwomen.com/?page_id=207(Access Date).

*Any use of images on the website must be attributed to the original site/copyright holder.

---

Sources:
“Evans Café Opening,” Tulsa Star, 14 March 1914.
“The Evans Café,” Tulsa Star, 3 October 1914.
 “News Around the City,” Tulsa Star, 1 August 1914.
“Evans Café,” Tulsa Star, 11 April 1914.
“Evans Café,” Tulsa Star, 20 June 1914.
“News Around the City,” Tulsa Star, 6 June 1914.
 “Evans Café,” Tulsa Star, 20 June 1914.
“Husband Foils Wife’s Elopement,” Tulsa Star, 19 December 1914.
 “Mrs. Cheatham Leaves Hubby,” Tulsa Star, 22 January 1915.
“‘Little Africa’ Now Has a Real Arm of the Law,” Tulsa World, 8 September 1915.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Tulsa, Tulsa County, Oklahoma, Accessed via Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn07276_013.
“Evans Tailoring Co,” Tulsa Star, 22 December 1917.
US, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 accessed via Ancestry.com. First Baptist Church, North Tulsa, “History,” https://fbcnt.org/members-guests/history. http://web.archive.org/web/20161116080759/http://fbcnt.org/members-guests/history/.   
“Local Bus Men to Hold Own Doings,” Tulsa Star, 7 February 1914.
“Untitled,” Tulsa Star, 23 February 1918.
OddFellows.org. “About,” https://odd-fellows.org/about/.
“The Royal House Convened January 16^th,” Tulsa Star, 2 February 1918.
 “Juveniles Organized,” Tulsa Star, 2 March 1918.
Hannibal B. Johnson, Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District (Austin Texas: Eakin Press, 1998), 30.
“Harry D. Evans,” Find a Grave Database and Images, (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/68329974/harry_d-evans.   Tulsa Churches Honor ‘Holy Ground, 100 Years after Massacre,” Politico, May 30, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/30/tulsa-oklahoma-massacre-centennial-churches-491447.
“United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of the Mysterious Ten,” as culled from Alan Axelrod, The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders (New York, 1997); and Alvin J. Schmidt, Fraternal Organizations (Westport, 1980). http://www.stichtingargus.nl/vrijmetselarij/ubfsmt_en.html.