![]() Not only did his father, grandfather and uncle cut hair at the family barber shop that operated through the "early 2000s," Eaton says, but other family members frequently ran other businesses in another open space in the same building, from a grocery store to a photo studio. "I realized that being able to have a business and doing it, kind of, like the Black Wall Street way was real important, and something that I really wanted to do," he says. That was a hush-hush conversation." Carrying on a tradition ![]() "And then, as they were building up their communities and housing. "It was a traumatic event that took place," he says. schools over the past century, even in Oklahoma, where the racist incident only became an official part of the state's curriculum in February 2020.Įaton says he can understand why many people of his grandfather's generation didn't want to rehash the massacre, noting that he knew some of the survivors worried that simply revisiting the tragic event could potentially stir up further violence. "We did not know about that massacre coming up as children the elders didn't really tell us."Įaton is far from alone, of course, as historians have noted in recent years that the history of Black Wall Street and the massacre that occurred there have generally not been taught in U.S. "It was never taught in the schools," Eaton says. Founded in 1913, the school remains in operation and, today, the massacre is officially on the curriculum.Įaton says he never discussed the massacre with his grandfather, whose generation of Black Tulsans he says mostly avoided the subject. Washington High School, which was one of the few buildings in Greenwood to remain standing after the massacre and even served as a headquarters for the Red Cross' relief efforts after the violent event. In the 1970s, Eaton graduated from Tulsa's Booker T. ![]() (Eaton's father, Bobby Eaton Sr., was reportedly one of the first Black men arrested in Tulsa for protesting segregation laws in the 1960s.) ![]() got started," he says, adding that his father and grandfather would meet with "all of these iconic black men in the community" when Eaton was a child in the 1960s to discuss racism and the Civil Rights movement, while planning local protests. "That barber shop is where the civil rights movement from North Tulsa. But it was the barber shop that remained open for decades, passing down to the next generation of Eaton's family, and serving as an important meeting spot for the Black community in North Tulsa, Eaton says. Joseph also ran a nearby grocery store in the years after the massacre. And as his children - my dad, Bobby Sr., and my Uncle Jerry - got older, they became barbers there as well." "And next door to it was the barbershop … He went to work every day inside this barber shop. "He built this home that I occupy right now," Eaton says. He joined the effort to rebuild the community in the aftermath, which included building the home where Eaton now lives and runs the radio station that broadcasts on KBOB 89.9 FM. When the "Black Wall Street" massacre was perpetrated in 1921, Eaton's grandfather Joseph was a factory worker in his 20s. Now, Eaton hopes the massacre's centennial, and the increased national attention it brings to Tulsa, will help boost local efforts to revive the area even after the anniversary has passed. Today, Eaton, 66 owns a radio station and media company, Eaton Media Services, housed in the same building where his grandfather ran the barber shop for decades after the 1921 massacre.Īs a Black business owner in Tulsa, Eaton feels he's both carrying on a family legacy while also continuing a tradition of Black entrepreneurship that goes back more than a century, to when the Greenwood District was teeming with Black-owned businesses. A study commissioned by Oklahoma officials in 2001 determined that the massacre resulted in roughly $1.8 million in property damage in Greenwood, an amount that would equal nearly $27 million in today's dollars, based on inflation. It has been described as "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history," and much of the property and wealth the city's then-prosperous Black community had built up over decades was destroyed.
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