Cook Center Debuts New Tulsa Report and Celebrates GIRI Research

The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, led by Dr. William Darity Jr., presented the final installment of its research considering and documenting the modern racial wealth gap in six major U.S. cities. This time, the Center set their sights on Tulsa, Oklahoma–a city still reeling from the aftermath of the massacre that decimated the black community 100 years ago, an event known today as the Tulsa Massacre.

The latest report, “Oil and Blood: The Color of Wealth in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” details how this massacre–which is estimated to have killed 300 people and displaced nearly 10,000 more–destroyed the economic gains previously attained by blacks in Tulsa in the wake of the oil boom at the turn of the twentieth century. While Tulsa was once home to a thriving “Black Wall Street” in the Greenwood district, it now boasts the largest black-white wealth gap in the six cities the Center has studied. 

Read more here.