Reclaim Our Time. Build With Us.
“Us” includes you. Our stories, our skills, our imagination, and our care for one another belong in what we build next.
We’re building a home for Black American knowledge, connection, opportunity, and joy—a place to discover our stories, find practical resources, and bring our skills together.
We have built before. We can build together again.
We have built before
Black Americans built homes, businesses, schools, churches, newspapers, banks, and communities where families could put down roots. Those places held more than buildings. They held savings, livelihoods, knowledge, relationships, and plans for the next generation.
Greenwood, Tulsa
Known as Black Wall Street, Greenwood was a thriving Black business district. In 1921, white mobs attacked the community, killing residents and burning homes and businesses. Survivors rebuilt. Their work belongs in this story alongside the destruction.
Rosewood, Florida
White mob violence in January 1923 killed Black residents, destroyed the community, and drove survivors from their homes. Remembering Rosewood means remembering the people and the lives they had built there.
Seneca Village, New York
A predominantly Black community established in 1825 grew to include property owners, churches, and a school. Its residents were displaced through the acquisition of land for Central Park, with the remaining residents evicted in 1857.
Their loss came through a different mechanism from the violence in Tulsa and Rosewood, but it also broke apart a place people had made their own.
Benson and Kowaliga, Alabama
Black families helped build a school and an agricultural and industrial community. The creation of Lake Martin transformed that landscape: Benson’s houses and churches were razed, and much of the land associated with the Bensons now lies beneath the lake.
The school’s closure in 1926 involved financial difficulties as well as the changes brought by the dam. This history deserves its own explanation.
Read the history: Alabama Heritage · Lake Martin: Encyclopedia of Alabama.
We built institutions, too
Black banking is part of this legacy. Maggie Lena Walker’s St. Luke Penny Savings Bank opened in Richmond in 1903 and helped Black families save and buy homes. It is a story of institution building and endurance.
Across these histories, we remember both what was taken and what people sustained.
This is our time to come together
Black organizing also faced deliberate government disruption. Under J. Edgar Hoover’s leadership, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program targeted Black organizations. A March 1968 FBI memorandum set a goal of preventing the rise of a leader who could unify and energize what it called the militant Black nationalist movement.
Read the record: congressional findings preserved by the National Archives.
Reclaiming our time means carrying our history forward and making room for our future. It means bringing generations together, sharing knowledge, supporting Black enterprise, and giving our children stories of what we have built—and what they can build.
New Black Wall Streets Across America invites you into that work.
We have built before. We can build together again.
General Support
Help carry the vision forward.
Support New Black Wall Streets Across America with a voluntary contribution. You do not need a paid membership or Circle access to contribute.
A contribution supports our work; it does not purchase a membership package or unlock Circle. Paid membership packages are still being developed.
New Black Wall Streets Across America has not established federal 501(c)(3) recognition. We do not represent contributions as tax deductible. A contribution does not guarantee services, funding, membership benefits, employment, or a leadership role.
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