Greenwood

Donald Byrd's fifth commission for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater draws on the Company's theatrical roots and its legacy of addressing social injustice. The title references a 1921 tragedy in the segregated Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma—one of the country's most affluent African American communities known as "Black Wall Street" at the time.

On May 30, 1921, a young Black man was arrested for attempted assault on a white teenage girl in the elevator of a Greenwood office building. The next day, a newspaper report about the arrest incited an armed white mob, and matters escalated quickly.

Over the next day, the mob grew and burned much of the neighborhood to the ground, killing as many as 300 Black people and leaving another 10,000 homeless. Afterward, the Tulsa Race Massacre was erased from the nation’s memory, but the story resurfaced in anticipation of the event’s centennial in 2021. 

Visit our blog to learn more about Greenwood and the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre