I’ve been obsessed and committed to this process. But it has been a complete labor of love,” says Turner before the screening of Before They Die, which cost about $930,000 to make.
With the help of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC), a membership organization that represents the most senior African American corporate executives in Fortune 500 companies, Turner was able to raise $1 million and take the survivors around the country to tell their stories at screenings.
Within 72 hours after deciding to help put on a screening of the movie in New York, Westina Matthews Shatteen, a member of the ELC and managing director at Merrill Lynch, convinced American Express, JPMorgan Chase, the Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Stock Exchange, Deloitte & Touche, and Merrill Lynch to underwrite the screening at the Times Center earlier this week. The ELC is planning to finance several more screenings.
Turner also received help from his cousin, Denise Clement, who produced the film and interviewed 22 survivors from across the country, including Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, New York, California, and Virginia. When the project started in 2003, there were 125 survivors were still living. Now there are about 65, she says.
“Our efforts with the film are to do what the government has not done, and that is to find a way to get reparations for them before they die,” Clement says. “The people in Rosewood, Florida, [an African American town where a massacre occurred in 1923], Japanese Americans who were in interned during World War II, victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, and families and victims of Sept.11 have all been compensated. The only people who have not been compensated were the survivors of Tulsa 1921.”
Greenwood had been extremely prosperous, and because of segregation, the community was totally self-contained. The community had black-owned doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, movie theaters, hotels, two hospitals, and several schools. “Once the dollar came into the community, it stayed in the community multiple times before going back out,” Clement says. “Blacks were allowed to work in white Tulsa, but they were not allowed to live in white Tulsa. So they brought all of their salaries back to the community and that is where it stayed.”
The riot started when a gun went off after several black veterans of World War I tried to protect the 19-year-old boy accused of molestation. An angry crowd of more than 1,000 white Tulsans clamored for the sheriff to release the boy so that they could lynch him. After the shot went off, the sheriff deputized the crowd, which then began shooting black people and looting houses.
“In order to cover up the fact that they were looting, they started burning houses. But they were burning houses knowing that there were people in the houses,” says Clement, who described photographs of charred bodies lying in the streets. “There are panoramic photos that show block after block of destruction. Houses were burned to the ground and the only thing left standing is the chimney. The photographs
Kindly return any and all information at your disposal on the massacre of Black Wall Street.
If their are historical periodicals that I can research, please let me know.
Hope to hear from you soon.
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how can i get a copy of the movie
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I am so glad that this story is being put on film.
My Grandmother came out of Tulsa,OK but, she never talked about the "riot", too painful I guess.
"What's done in the dark, shall come to the light"
How can I get a copy of the film?
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The film can be purchased and donations to the Tulsa Project Inc.
the fund for the survivors can be made at http://www.beforetheydiemovie.com
You can also finds numerous links to documentation and information regarding the riot and the survivors Journey To Justice. A schedule of screenings dates is also available. Please sign our guest book and join our movement to pass the pending Congressional legislation on the survivors behalf....Before They Die!
Reggie Turner Director Producer Before They Die!
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[...] Bash 1st Black Woman to Earn a Doctorate in Math from FAMU MTV Holds Its First African Music Awards Surviving Destruction of ‘Black Wall Street’ Top Republican Says Obama ‘Off to a Good Start’ Pastors Boycott NAACP Banquet Over Prop [...]
[...] Within moments, however, it and its residents, some 10,000 were attacked, lynched, and burned by an angry white mob apparently escalated over a dispute of an alleged assault of a white girl by a Black boy. Although an entire town was up in ablaze, nearly 80 years later, its story is still left out of the history books and justice unserved. Wess Young and Dr. Olivia Hooker, survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Source: Marcia Wade & BE) [...]
I'm glad this film has been produced. There is another film about the riot that I rented from a public library many years ago. Sorry, I do not know the name of the film. Also, the History Channel did a piece called "The Night Tulsa Burned" back in 1999.
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I'm a student at an HBCU. I've ordered my copy of the film and I can't wait to get it. I've heard bits and pieces about this story and I've always wanted to know more. Hopefully we can get this shown on campus!
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I am doing a current event for a Eng Class and I would like to read more about The Black Wall St.; if possible. I would like to know if the movie is out and where could I find it? IF the movie is not ready when will it become public so I can include it in my report
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I just wanted to say that I love this site
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[...] to testify in a hearing urging Congress to pass legislation that would allow survivors of the Tulsa race riots to sue for reparations. The riots left 300 black residents dead or missing and scattered 10,000 [...]
[...] to testify in a hearing urging Congress to pass legislation that would allow survivors of the Tulsa race riots to sue for reparations. The riots left 300 black residents dead or missing and scattered 10,000 [...]