Okla. race riots inspire project
Composer Alicia Hall will present ‘Black Wall Street’ in Albuquerque, Santa Fe
During the oil boom of the 1910s, Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood flourished as “Black Wall Street.”
In 1921, the city’s white citizens, with the help of the Oklahoma state government, killed hundreds of black residents, razing the neighborhood in one of the worst race riots in U.S. history.
Singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran will perform her chamber piece “Black Wall Street” at EXPO New Mexico’s African American Performing Arts Center on Sunday, July 29, and Monday, July 30 and at SITE Santa Fe on Monday, July 30.
The story unravels the tangled roots of family, finance, violence, greed and rebirth within the context of the black experience in America.
“I imagined and I researched,” Hall Moran said in a telephone interview from Connecticut. “This was prom night, so you’re on the cusp of one form of entertainment, which is a jazz story. Then the outside world breaks into reality.”
At the time, Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses and published two newspapers. The residents had their own doctors, lawyers and real estate agents.
“People were forcibly evacuated from their homes so they were not
able to stop the burning of their property,” Hall Moran said.
The singer interviewed Olivia Hooker, a 103-year-old survivor of the riots. Hooker, who became the first black woman to enter the U.S. Coast Guard, was 6 years old at the time. Ku Klux Klan members ransacked her home while she hid under a table with her three siblings.
“Her story has been welldocumented,” Hall Moran said. “They set her doll clothes on fire. I’m going to play her talking to my son.”
Greenwood’s prosperity was born of the Oklahoma land rush and the quest for oil, she said.
“It’s very sad because that also relied on the forcible removal of the Native people.”
The mezzo-soprano performed “Black Wall Street” at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in June.
“They are very much looking at their past and trying to make amends,” she said.
Hall Moran will be joined by her husband, Jason Moran, classical guitarist Thomas Flippin and jazzrock-blues guitarist Brandon Ross.