RebuildingBlack Wall Street.

Greenwood: the original Black Wall Street

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood district grew into a self-sufficient Black business community, with hotels, grocery stores, doctors, and newspapers. Dollars circulated inside the neighborhood several times before they left it. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob destroyed it in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Hundreds of people were killed and about 35 square blocks were burned.

Chicago's Black Belt and Bronzeville

As Black families left the South for Chicago, segregation pushed them into a long, narrow strip of the South Side that became known as the Black Belt. Its commercial and cultural heart was Bronzeville, sometimes called the Black Metropolis. Along 35th Street and nearby, Black Chicagoans built institutions such as the Chicago Defender newspaper and the Overton Hygienic Building (1922), alongside theaters, nightclubs, and shops.

The first Black-owned bank in Chicago was the Binga Bank. Jesse Binga opened it in 1908 as a private bank, mainly because so many banks turned Black customers away. It is described as the first bank owned and run by African Americans in the North. It became Binga State Bank in 1921 and was closed by the state in June 1930, as the Great Depression hit the churches and fraternal societies that held most of its mortgage loans. Its story is one reason this page is about building financial systems that cannot be shut down so easily.

The policy kings: a shadow banking system

Banks and insurers often turned Black Chicagoans away, so a lot of capital moved through policy, an illegal numbers lottery. Players picked numbers, and the drawing decided the winners. The most successful operators, the Jones brothers (Edward, George, and McKissick), ran their wheels from a shop on 42nd Street. Theodore "Teddy" Roe ran another large operation. These operations employed thousands of neighborhood residents, and their owners invested in local businesses, clubs, and real estate. By some accounts the Joneses took in about $2 million a year at their peak.

It was also an illegal gambling racket with real costs. It ran on trust in a few powerful men, with no public record and no legal protection. Edward Jones went to prison for tax evasion in 1939 and 1940. Teddy Roe refused to give in to the Chicago Outfit, and he was shot and killed on August 4, 1952. The Outfit then took over the game. The money had stayed in the neighborhood only as long as the men holding it were allowed to hold it.

Why “Block” Wall Street

Policy was not blockchain. Nothing like it existed then, and the name is not a claim that the policy kings used one. The link is the lesson. The community built its own financial system, and it was fragile because someone could shut it down, seize it, or take it over. A public blockchain such as Bitcoin has no owner who can be pressured. Its rules are written in open code, anyone can check the record, and holders can keep their own funds. Block Wall Street joins blockchain with Black Wall Street: the same goal of community-owned wealth, built on a system no one can burn down or buy out.