National visionary strategist Tawanna A. Black told a Tulsa Regional Chamber audience Thursday that more than 100 years after Black Wall Street’s destruction, its promise lives on.
“We are talking about Tulsa’s greatest untapped asset,” said Black, founder, president and CEO of the Minnesota-based Center for Economic Inclusion and Living Truth Enterprise. “The people who built 600 businesses behind walls of segregation and terror, who built an entire community in four years without help from the government…those builders are the ancestors of the people in north Tulsa today. That DNA did not disappear.”
Black served as keynote speaker at the Chamber’s State of Inclusion event, which drew more than 300 people to the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel & Convention Center.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre wiped out Black Wall Street. Obliterated by arsonists, it rebuilt itself and reached its peak following World War II, only to begin a gradual decline exacerbated by urban renewal.
A total of $1.05 trillion is lost annually in U.S. productivity because of workplace discrimination, Black said, adding that it will take 300 years to close the racial wealth gap at the current rate of corporate change.
A total of 6.3 million new jobs could be created simply by removing the structural barriers that exist today, she said.
“Imagine what this community can build when you have equitable access, when that vision for equitable opportunity turns into equitable results, so that all people are actively engaging in the economy on their own terms,” Black said.
“Keep building. Keep demanding equitable access. Keep claiming the space you have already earned and never stop elevating your powers, your promise and brilliance as the best solution for Tulsa’s economic growth and competitiveness and know that there are more people in this room than you realize who stand ready with you.
Black also took part in a panel discussion with Tyrance Billingsley II, founder and CEO of Black Tech Street, and Rodrigo Rojas, chair of the Tulsa Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Rojas said that while a better understanding of the Hispanic community is needed, its people are holding their own economically. Oklahoma ranks seventh nationally in Hispanic buying power at $8 billion to $10 billion annually, he said.
“That is quite the accomplishment in our community,” he said. “You have representatives from all different industries, entrepreneurs who are really thriving to make lasting change here in the city and here in the state.”
Billingsley is helping lay the tech blueprint in Tulsa. He is CEO of Greenwood AI Center of Excellence (G-ACE), an initiative backed by Tech Hubs federal funding to pilot what an AI-powered economy will look like.
An arm of the G-ACE is the 9,000-square-foot Greenwood Cyber + AI Lab, Microsoft’s applied AI and cybersecurity innovation platform that opened in May.
“I don’t believe, left to its own devices, that this AI revolution is going to be good for humanity,” Billingsley said. “I do what I do because I want us to pioneer community mechanisms to make sure that everybody can participate in the wealth that it’s generating and that these technologies can be designed in a way that enhance our community and don’t end up stepping on it.”
