O.W. Gurley built an empire of African American businesses in Tulsa and though it came burning down in the massacre of 1921, new generations of entrepreneurs rose from the ashes
be a success in the Jim Crow South. Born on Christmas Day 1868 to freed slaves in Huntsville, Alabama, he grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where he was largely self-educated. Gurley married his childhood sweetheart, Emma, became a teacher, and then took a relatively cushy job with the U.S. Postal Service—but he dreamed of a better life in America.
Gurley knew freemen and sharecroppers would make their way to Tulsa, so he built a grocery store on an avenue he and others named Greenwood, after a town in Mississippi. Then he subdivided his land into residential and commercial lots. As Gurley expected, Greenwood soon became a beacon of wealth, education and advancement—rivaling areas of New York, Chicago and Atlanta. Doctors, lawyers and realtors flourished, luxury hotels were built, and millionaires were minted.
Paradise Found: The Dreamland Theatre was the jewel of Greenwood Avenue—until the nightmare of the 1921 Tulsa massacre.Entrepreneurs also began to emerge. John Williams and his wife, Loula, built a confectionary store and erected the opulent Dreamland Theater. Simon Berry built a private transportation network of Model T. Fords and buses, which transported residents through Greenwood and all the way to downtown Tulsa. Berry soon began chartering planes for Tulsa’s increasingly wealthy oilmen.
Amid this bustling landscape, O.W. Gurley continued to expand his empire. At Greenwood’s peak, he owned and rented out three brick apartment buildings and five townhouses near another one of his businesses, a grocery store. He then built the Gurley Hotel, started a Masonic Lodge, and opened an employment agency for migrant workers.
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