INSIDE AMERICA
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"Our country's natural treasures define our identity as a nation..."
Is Tulsa A Sundown City?
What just happened? And then the revelation, we all know a version of this by heart...A centuries old Black community, town or city has no rights a newly formed outside (outside, outsiders/not even from Oklahoma) White nonprofit need respect.
I hope you've been following the backstory here over the last few days. A newly created nonprofit wants to build a private business venture, residences for the homeless, in the heart of a Black community. The community says "No."
Citizens thought an issue...plat approval... on the agenda at the Tulsa Area Metropolitan Planning Commission on Thursday, 02.15.2023, might be a potential stopgap. The item was approved 5-1.
Whatever happens with Catholic Charities' land grant to City Lights Tulsa, 02.15.2023 takes on the same significance as Juneteenth in Galveston in the 1860s. Only in reverse.
It explains everything.
Highways through homes rather than development, closed schools rather than recruitment, substandard housing as a birthright, the dismissal of the mojority of the city's Black teachers in response to desegragation, lower wages for higher educational attainment, decades of refusal to sell land or property with profit potential to qualified North Tulsans...other than churches.
02.15.2023...was Juneteenth in reverse. Relative to income, what group of people have supported America and our towns and cities more? By the time a young man named Adam Martin (hear him above) finished speaking to TMAPC, the lightbulb was on...all this time Black America has assumed we were free.
Tyre
WE HAVE AI, WE HAVE MONEY, WE HAVE LAWS. NO AMERICAN SHOULD DIE DURING A TRAFFIC STOP IN THE 21ST CENTURY
I'm not watching it.
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That's what I said before the Sunday morning I decided to finally watch the video of the traffic stop of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police. And, while I ate my breakfast, I watched. Remind you of anything?
The thousands of postcards sent to friends and familiy throughout the US of crowds gathered...people who took their lunches, packed up picnic baskets to go watch the lynchings of Black men and women during the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.
Today, if you want to grab a sub, a slice of pizza, a burger and watch the brutal beating of a Black man or watch a Black woman get a busted lip and a concussion during a traffic stop or merchant complaint, or harrased for walking down the street, or killed during the traffic stop on the way to buy a cake for their child's birthday, or humiliated standing in a bank proud to be cashing a first paycheck, or arrested as a burglar with keys opening the front door to their own house or any other harassment for...fill in the blank...you can find a recent video, and watch it...and forget it.
And, accept it.
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There weren't just five officers.
There are at least ten people right there with Tyre Nichols on that Memphis street, Castlegate, before he is taken to a hospital. When the videos were released two weeks later, millions of people from all over the world were there. By that Sunday morning, I was there.
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When, in America, did broken tail lights, speeding, eradic driving, not being quiet, being too quiet, refusing to get out of a car, getting out of the car as commanded, running away, all unarmed, become death penalty offenses?
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We all know the answer...none of them are.
I am going to face it.
Maybe, in America, being Black...even in the minds of Black police officers...is the offense.
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Is there a solution?
Anyone who watched saw why the other people right there, the people in their homes on that block, couldn't call the police, but, I have an uneasy feeling Tyre Nichols is dead because I let it happen.
I let Tyre Nichols and George Floyd and school children in Texas and Connecticut and Colorado die because I believe I have absolutely no power to make anything happen or stop happening in America.
I can work & pay, vote, watch, even protest...those are my 4 choices in America.
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From 2023 back to the year any one of us was born, these lynchings have been happening pretty much daily, even though we now, as a nation, have the technology, the money and the laws to prevent them.
Instead, We, the People, pay, it seems, mainly for speeches. And after speeches change nothing?
The best and brighest head to Washington DC to get rid of the tax code, get rid of public schools, make every state its own sovereign country (with outrageous taxation), and get rid of most peoples' rights?
Is the only way to end the plague of problems facing Americans to end political parties?
We also have the AI for each of us to represent ourselves within a group of united states in America.
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NORTH CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
ATLANTA
CHICAGO
BOSTON
WASHINGTON DC
SAN ANTONIO
PORTLAND
BUFFALO
MEMPHIS
CALIFORNIA
There is one marked difference between the traditional lynchings from the 1800s to the 1960s to today's executions...the protests. There was a time, a very long time in America, when a lone woman, Ida B. Wells, stood in the front speaking out against these crimes, joined by other Black journalists who documented thousands of deaths. It was well over 100 years from Ida Wells' birth to the birth of Bryan Stevenson's National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018, with Stevenson still declaring about lynching... "it's time to end the silence."
What's new...it no longer takes a century.
From North Carolina to California, the moment the American people saw Tyre Nichols' life end, we were all able to declare it time to end lynching.
Who, in Washington DC or Tennessee or my hometown or yours, will end it?
The Struggle Is Real
WAGES/OKLAHOMA/WOMEN
Wage policies, worker protections, rights to organize and minimum wage were the factors Oxfam America used to rank the best and worst US states for working women. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico were also included.
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Working conditions in Oklahoma allow women contributing to a family of four to earn about 80% below the cost of living.
Ranking us#45.
DOES YOUR CITY HAVE A BLACK-OWNED BANK?
Access to capital matters. It is crucial for home, business ownership and, for short, for increasing high wage jobs in communities, creating amenities, stabilizing families, schools and all other institutions. Better banking could help transform America.
And then there's the question of simple dignity. About a year ago a local association honored me for work I'd been doing providing a free year round youth program in our community for over 15 years. It came with a $500 check. I went to cash the check at their bank, though not Black-owned, but, located in a majority Black community. After being asked to step aside because I did not have an account at the bank and nearly half an hour's wait, while watching the customers, all Black with accounts, also waiting, finally, a bank manager assigned to me asked Did I have a bank account at another bank? The beginning of a sales pitch? No. It was the start of an interrogation continuing with If you had an account elsewhere, why haven't'you chosen to deposit the check into your own account? Where in the world was I, apartheid South Africa in 1970? Add a new category...Banking while Black.
Total #of US Banks: 4,300+
ASIAN-owned 72
BLACK-owned 42
HISPANIC-owned 30
NATIVE AMERICAN-owned 18
WOMEN-owned 13
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So, do cities with Black-owned banks also have higher numbers of Black-owned businesses? It's kind of a trick question. Of the over 4,300 FDIC insured banks in the US, only about 20 banks are Black-owned serving only Black communities. Only 42 banks, overall, are Black-owned. Worse, a single non-Black owned bank, TIAA, has more assets than all the Black-owned banks in the United States combined. That aside, the answer seems to be not necessarily. Maryland, the state with the most Black-owned businesses per capita, has only two Black-owned banks. Alabama, the state with the most Black-owned banks, at 7, does not make it into the top 10 list of black owned businesses per capita. These stats may not show, of course, whether Black-owned businesses that are most profitable to their communities and their owners are or are not located in states with more Black-owned banks.
OF OVER 4,300 FDIC BANKS IN THE US 42 ARE BLACK-OWNED
THE NUMBER OF BLACK-OWNED BANKS SERVING MAJORITY BLACK COMMUNITIES 20
In 2020, there were 4,377 FDIC-insured commercial banks in the United States. The FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is an agency that insures the banking system in the U.S. The number of such registered banks has been declining since 2000, when there were over 8,300 FDIC-insured banks in the country. Nov 9, 2021
• Number of U.S. FDIC-insured commercial banks 2020 | Statista
Top 10 States for Black Owned Businesses
(Highest # of Businesses Per Capita)
MARYLAND
6,570
GEORGIA
8,929
NEW YORK
11,395
CALIFORNIA
10,286
VIRGINIA
5,294
TEXAS
9,728
NEW JERSEY
4,028
MASSACHUSETTS
1,893
NORTH CAROLINA
5,845
FLORIDA
11,932
MEMPHIS
#1 CITY
Black Population 62.8%
Memphis .Tennessee
US City with Highest Percentage of BLACK OWNED BUSINESSES
48.3%
Black Owned Banks By State
List includes OneUnited Bank
ATM-only locations
ALABAMA 7
GEORGIA 6
TEXAS 5
ILLINOIS 4
LOUISIANA 4
NEW YORK 4
NORTH CAROLINA 4
SOUTH CAROLINA 4
TENNESSEE 4
MICHIGAN 3
MISSISSIPPI 3
MISSOURI 3
OHIO 3
PENNSYLVANIA 3
ARKANSAS 2
CALIFORNIA 2
DC 2
FLORIDA 2
IOWA 2
KANSAS 2
KENTUCKY 2
MARYLAND 2
NEW JERSEY 2
VIRGINIA 2
WISCONSIN 2
OKLAHOMA 1
OneUnited Bank Online 1UB ATM Locations:
ALASKA COLORADO CONNECTICUT DELAWARE HAWAII IDAHO INDIANA MAINE MASSACHUSETTS MINNESOTA MONTANA NEBRASKA NEVADA
NEW HAMPSHIRE NEW MEXICO NORTH DAKOTA OKLAHOMA OREGON
RHODE ISLAND SOUTH DAKOTA UTAH WASHINGTON
WEST VIRGINIA WYOMING
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Note: OneUnited Bank, the largest Black-owned bank in the US,has branches or ATM access located in many of the states listed above, counting as only one bank in the overall total of 42 banks.
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