The Project
Fire in Little Africa is the story of the passion and resilience of artists in Tulsa leading the community through music, art and entrepreneurship.
The Woody Guthrie Center and Bob Dylan Center® are proud to present this album, documentary and podcast in collaboration with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. Fire in Little Africa brings together the top rappers, singers, musicians and visual artists in Oklahoma to commemorate the centennial of the 1921 Massacre and introduce Tulsa’s hip-hop culture to a global audience.
The History
In the early 20th century, Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was a thriving mecca of black business.
The combination of the oil boom in Oklahoma saw wealth pouring into Greenwood and Jim Crow laws meant those dollars continued to circulate within the black community. The entrepreneurs of Greenwood believed black people had a better chance of economic progress if they pooled their resources, worked together, and supported each other’s businesses. Soon, people like Booker T. Washington spread word around the nation that Tulsa was the ‘promised land’ of opportunity for blacks in America and ‘Black Wall Street’ was born.
In 1921, white Tulsans with the backing of city leaders like Tate Brady attacked Greenwood and burned 40 square blocks to the ground. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands lost their homes or businesses in one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. The scapegoat for the massacre was a 19-year-old shoe shiner named Dick Rowland, falsely accused of attacking a white girl in an elevator which set off the chain of events that led to the massacre of Greenwood. For years, this dark chapter was left out of textbooks as Tulsa attempted to erase this part of its past.
Nearly 100 years later, the massacre still hangs heavy over the city and the scars of 1921 may never fully heal. Miraculously this set of circumstances have birthed a hip-hop scene built on love, community and the legacy of the ancestors that paved the way. Now the Tulsa community is preparing to acknowledge what happened, bring justice to the victims and move forward into the future. Now, hip-hop artists have taken on an important role in leading the community in processing this generational trauma and ushering in a new era for Tulsa with this groundbreaking project.
