14 | American Dreamin’ | Black Wall Street
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Hey, Conja, have you ever left a movie in the mid, like before the movie was even done, just left the theater? No, I've never done that. I feel like I was raised to, once you walk into the movie theater, you gots to see it through, my boy. You gots to see it through. Really? That's so funny. I mean, not me. I've left a few times. One in particular, the movie was so good.

Terrifying. A few times. I think I left like 15 minutes in. I don't think I would stay that long. 15 minutes. You don't think that goes against movie decorum to like, you know? If the movie is not good, for me, the movie was genuinely, it was making me so uncomfortable, but I did not feel like I could enjoy it. You know what? I was being respectful of other people in the theater. Because if I stayed, I was going to be like, ooh, ah, ooh, ah.

I was making all this noise and nobody wants that. Nah, I feel like I gotta, I feel like once I paid that money in my mind too, even if I didn't pay, like once I've walked through the movie theater, I have to see the movie. I gotta see the end. I gotta see how it ended. Even if it's like trash, poorly written, no character development, gosh, to see it through my boy.

Well, you know, you are not the only one. There's a whole host of people that feel like they have to see a movie or a book through no matter how bad it is. So those people will probably feel some sort of way if they were in the middle of a screening and then suddenly it ends and they're told to leave. That's exactly what happened at Dreamland Theater in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the night of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Of course, the moviegoers in one of America's most affluent black neighborhoods would have been freaking out about much more than wanting to finish a movie.

Peep this. Imagine living in the black part of a segregated city, but it's wealthy enough to earn the nickname Black Wall Street. It is in this unlikely black mecca where you're having a grand old time at the movies that the lights blaze on and a distraught white man shouts that you should run for your life.

The warning was that a white mob was forming to lynch a Black teenager. The audience, full of business people and workers, must have known their lives would be forever changed the violence spread. But they could have never imagined how much it would change the course of history. Let's get into some Black history for real. It's May 31st, 1921, an apparently movie night in Black Tulsa because the popular Dreamland Theater is packed.

Lula Williams, who owns this integrated cinema in the otherwise segregated city, is posted up in the back of a dark room. She scans the theater with pride. There's a total of 750 seats, and nearly all of them are filled with audiences watching all Black productions. Lula has become one of the most prominent business people in the growing, affluent Black neighborhood of Greenwood. Dreamland is her crowning achievement, a place where people of all races can come and have a good time supporting Black art.

She's had success running a nearby confectionery, but nothing brings her as much joy as Dreamland's seven-year evolution into the safe space it is today. Nothing except for her son and her equally successful husband, John, of course.

John runs in, dressed in a handsome suit and a top hat, and urgently grabs Lula's hand. She resists and tries to pull him to stand beside her instead. Whatever tasks he wants to put on our plate can wait. John is always in work mode. Lula loves John's dedication to his work. It's a huge component of their success. She can be a hustler too.

But right now, Lula doesn't want to work. She and John have been working and working for years, building three successful businesses that don't exclude Black folks. At this moment, she just wants to witness what her hard work has achieved. But John is insistent. We need to speak outside. It's serious. Lula sighs. Of course it's serious. It's always serious.

John leads Lula to the lobby, where a neighboring businessman is waiting. John is sweating and disheveled, which is quite unlike him. The theater's projectionist, a young white man, is there too, looking equally disturbed, like he can't wrap his mind around what he just heard. All three men are staring at each other, waiting for someone to speak. Lula breaks the uncomfortable silence. Spill it. Finally, the businessman blurts out, "'You've got to turn up the lights. The movie's over.'"

This guy must be joking. Lula stares at her husband. Shut the business down before even getting halfway through a busy night? But the look on John's face couldn't be more serious when he finally explains. The whites are getting ready to hang a Negro boy downtown. Lula's heart skips a beat. She knows what a lynching can evolve into, especially given the anger and the animosity that's been simmering in the white part of Tulsa.

Taking their poor young boy's life based on unverified allegations would be horrible enough. But once the lynch mob reaches the stage of violence, it's common for them to move on to the rest of the black community, targeting the people in anything they hold dear. Lula's family, everyone inside her theater, the theater itself.

Everything she and John have ever worked for, the spaces they built so that people wouldn't have to always be on guard against this very violence, could be snuffed out in an instant. Lola looks at the projectionist and gives him a nod, and he runs inside the theater to stop the movie. Then she looks at John. Now she understands why everyone was too stunned to speak. They've got to come up with a plan to stop this, and fast, or face an alternative that is too horrifying to consider.

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From Wondery, this is Black History For Real, where we chronicle the stories of the movers and shakers from Black history all over the world.

The stories will inspire you, educate you, and more often than not, leave you shaking your damn heads. I'm Francesca Ramsey. And I'm Conscious Lee. Continuing our three-part series of Black Wall Street, today we're telling the story of Greenwood's prosperous rise. After Greenwood District was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1906, entrepreneurs like the Williams came to embody Black Wall Street's entrepreneurial spirit. But it wasn't just the bosses who were key in the town's success.

Working class black people and small business owners like Mary He Jones Parish had just as much to gain by moving to this well-resourced town where cooperation was the name of the game and just as much to lose. Their stories also demonstrate Greenwood at its height and reveal the full impact of the racist forces that conspired against it. This is episode two, American Dreamin'.

At its peak, Greenwood grew to about 10,000 residents. It quickly became one of the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the country, with 121 Black-owned businesses across 35 blocks, just a generation or two after the official end of slavery.

Though it's not usually emphasized in the history books, a lot of the most prosperous times for black people throughout this country, especially in the South, was during the Reconstruction era. And we see that Black Wall Street was going down in Tulsa is one of those illustrations of how black people was able to really move and groove with our spirits in terms of getting a little more bitterly after the plantation.

That's correct, they were really out here securing the bag. Greenwood featured the nation's largest Black-owned hotel. Six Black families in Greenwood owned their own planes. For context, the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports. But the most impressive aspect of the town was Greenwood co-founder Ottawa Gurley's vision of a self-sustaining community. It was built on the idea of cooperative economics.

You know how some of our elders talk about the importance of keeping money in the community? It's estimated that a dollar circulated 36 to 100 times and stayed in the community for almost a year before leaving the neighborhood. Comparatively, today, a dollar can circulate in Asian communities for a month, Jewish communities for 20 days, and non-Jewish white communities for 17. Meanwhile, a dollar circulates within your average modern-day black community for only six hours.

It's actually a few things that come to mind in front of statistics. The first one is I know that most of the companies and most of the things that black people would need on a day to day basis, especially today, it's going to be outside of our community because typically they put things inside of our community. You feel me? Or typically the people that own business inside of our community is not of us.

But I do know that when we start to have these conversations about the black economy and how much the black dollar circulates in the black community, there are different scholars that push back on a lot of these ideas. But I know regardless of that, this definitely demonstrates how those six hours does not represent the failure of black folks, but how this anti-black society we live in force black people to actually be dependent on things outside of us. Yeah, I mean, and I think...

This story itself illustrates that. Something that you talked about that has stuck with me is this idea that people are so often critical of black people. Why don't we support? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? Without acknowledging that when we do create for ourselves, it's taken away from us. So to your point about this not being a failure, right?

If we had the ability to pour back into more black businesses, and that's not to say that they don't exist, right? But I can't tell you in my neighborhood a black-owned bank. I don't know which stores have black CEOs in my neighborhood or in close proximity to me, whether it be...

you know, a convenience store or a clothing store or a grocery store. They're just not as prevalent where we live and have access to. And so, again, it's really not our fault when that dollar leaves our community because we don't have the same amount of options.

Oh, God, it sounds exactly like an illustration of Dr. Derrick Bell's entrance conversion theory. It says that nine times out of 10, the way that black people are able to progress is first and foremost, making sure white people, you know what I'm saying, also able to benefit. And what we see from this story is the entrance conversion theory says if too many black people are flourishing, there has to be some group of white people benefiting most off of the flourishing of black people. And, you know, just is what it is.

Well, as you can imagine, Black people from all walks of life found Greenwood really appealing. There was plenty of work for shoeshiners, domestic workers, gardeners, cooks, and chauffeurs. Black settlers came to Greenwood from all over, including other all-Black towns in Oklahoma. Many Greenwood citizens had been in the Tulsa area for generations. You didn't need to have wild dreams of great riches to move to Greenwood or to become an integral part of making Ottawa's vision reality.

Two years before Dreamland Theater was evacuated, 29-year-old Mary E. Jones Parrish passes by the bustling cinema on the way to her new home in Tulsa. Mary barely notices her surroundings as she holds her five-year-old daughter riding in a horse-drawn buggy. She's grieving the recent loss of her mother.

It's all she can think about these days. A husband, Simon, excitedly points out one of the Greenwood's biggest attractions. Honey, take a look. This is amazing. Mary finally notices the happy black faces falling in and out. She's excited to support the business and has the means to do so. She reminds herself why she came to Tulsa.

Many have come to Tulsa lured by the dream of making money. I'm here because of the wonderful cooperation among our people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Born Mary Elizabeth Jones in Mississippi in 1890, Mary and Simon had moved to McAllister, Oklahoma just months ago to take care of her ailing mother. In her visits to nearby Tulsa...

Mary had been so impressed by the way the community around Greenwood Avenue came together to support one another. She had never experienced anything to this level outside of her mother's home. So when her mother finally died and she needed more community support than she ever had before, there was no question that this would be the perfect new start for her family. They had to move to Tulsa. It's so interesting that

This neighborhood or this area got the moniker Black Wall Street because it's kind of a misnomer, I think, especially because today's modern association with Wall Street is one, a negative one, but feels like.

Yeah.

How do you how do you feel about the way that we now understand this community versus the name Black Wall Street? I think that the whole concept of Wall Street is one that our society has kind of deconstructed and reconstructed, especially like how the Occupy Wall Street movement happened. So I give like Booker T. Washington and the black folks at that time to being fitted out, recognizing that this probably was the best time.

and best comparison they had to how they was able to fathom what was going on in Greenwood. But to your point, yeah, I don't think Wall Street is a cooperator of, I'm saying economy, to say the least.

The buggy finally pulls up to Mary and Simon's new home. The place is not much, especially compared to some of the other homes around Black Wall Street, but it will do. Mary's got her supportive husband by her side as she processes her loss. He reminds her to pay attention to her blessings. And she's got her daughter, her biggest blessing. And now they're in a city that is built to encourage everyone to chip in and support one another. She is exactly where she needs to be.

On the other side of town, Mabel Little was on a walk with her husband thinking about her own blessings or lack thereof. You might remember her from the last episode as the little girl with the big dreams.

When she moved to Greenwood, she was first turned away by her mother's haughty high school friends, only to turn around and meet her charming husband, Presley, and make it big as the owner of the popular Little Rose Hair Salon. From the outside looking in, Mabel's got everything. Her salon is doing numbers, and so is Presley's shoeshine operation, making them a pair of Black Wall Street's most notable entrepreneurs.

Her mother's high school friends hide from Mabel in embarrassment. Mabel could buy their house in cash twice over. Her late grandfather, who inspired her ambitions, would have been proud. But when Mabel sits alone at her expensive decor, even across from Presley, their home seems too quiet. She can't help but feel like something is missing. These walks help a little. Let's open the cafe.

Presley feels something is missing too, and thinks expanding even more might fill the emptiness. It's worked before, at least for a time. But Mabel knows there's at least one fix that will last longer. I was thinking more along the lines of finally starting our family. Presley knows she's always wanted a big family. The wiser Mabel gets, the more she realizes her true desire, having a family.

Her growing relationship with God also supports this new motivation. Like her grandfather, Mabel wants to provide a good foundation to children in need and watch them become the best they can be. She knows that spiritual fulfillment could come from any child, which is why she wants to adopt. She can't imagine a better foundation than what she and Presley have already built. But as they approach their home at the end of the walk, Presley frowns. He wants a family too.

But Presley isn't as confident as Mabel. He worries their foundation isn't sturdy enough yet. He always worries. Mabel knows that his worst nightmare is that his children might grow up with a father who can't comply. And he does everything in his power to prevent that. Look at this house. What more could we possibly do?

Presley has trouble answering. As beautiful as his home is and as successful as they have been, he can't help but feel like it could all be wiped out in an instant. Maybe if they had just a little more cushion. If the cafe is a success, I promise. Mabel affirms the compromise with a smile. But she doesn't notice Presley's struggle to match her energy.

He won't break his promise to his wife, but he'll never stop wondering how much does it take to protect a black child in a world that doesn't see them as human.

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In a building across from Mabel's salon, Ottawa Gurley sits at the desk in his immaculate office. It's been a long day of brokering real estate deals in Greenwood. His business partner and Greenwood co-founder J.B. Stratford sits across from him. J.B. is nervously reviewing their books. Ottawa is trying not to show his annoyance. Whatever is making you nervous, you won't find it in our accounts. Our investments have already begun to pay off handsomely.

We're building the cooperative town you've always talked about, JB. And we're on the right track to finish. All it will take is a few more business-minded people like the Williamses who are soon to open Dreamland Theater on Greenwood Avenue next to their successful confectionery. Or the Littles, who feel like out of his own personal success story. Eventually, the town will be able to provide everything that its residents need.

Now, Ottawa, you know it doesn't matter what track we're on if Jim Crow cuts off our coal supply. Ottawa frowns. JB's not just making up concerns.

After Oklahoma received statehood six years ago, the state legislature immediately began to pass a slew of restrictive race laws. They'd been relatively normal for mixed-race families to live in the territory in the late 1800s. Now segregation lines were coming into greater focus, threatening to turn black towns like Greenwood into ghettos. JB insists, "'They'll never let us win at their game. Not if we don't play it like they want us to.'"

Ottawa takes the ledger from J.B. and implores his business partner to relax. But he can't relax. J.B. has an almost religious conviction for the revolutionary potential of economic cooperation. He believes it could shield black people from the way America's capitalist system always undermines their growth.

But he worries that Ottawa is losing sight of the collective goal for the sake of immediate personal rewards. He's becoming more wary about the whole concept of Greenwood as Ottawa becomes bullish. Ottawa holds up the ledger. What do the books say? The books are good. Not good. Great. Which means we're great, JB. You're overthinking.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Trust me. The revolutionary potential that JB had been so concerned about was very clear to Mary Parrish when she first moved to Tulsa. She quickly got a job as an instructor. She's teaching typing and shorthand at the all-black Hunton branch of the YMCA. Her husband Simon found work as a presser in the textile industry. Mary is able to pour her energy into writing and teaching. They become a balm for the grief over her mother's death.

This pays off in more ways than one on Greenwood Avenue, where she offers classes in typewriting and shorthand. But as Mary continues to carve out a good life for her family within this supportive community, violence is growing beyond the idyllic borders of Greenwood. White mobs were lynching Black people

over Oklahoma. White police, politicians, and community leaders weren't just letting it happen. They sometimes took part in hanging people themselves. In 1918, the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce brought the Sons of Confederate Veterans 28th Annual Reunion to town.

It was the largest gathering of Confederate veterans since the Civil War. The reunion was hosted by a man who had served as a KKK Grand Jagon and was promoted on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World. Mary wasn't naive about the Jim Crow South, and none of the dangers were unheard of.

What was new was the unprecedented cooperation amongst the citizens of Greenwood. That was enough to let her guard down in a time when she desperately needed to. But not everyone is experiencing the same ease in letting their guard down. Amid the growing tensions, John and Lula Williams can't think of anything else as they drive John Calmers back home from a trip out of town on a cold night.

The car's got a special place in John's heart as the first one owned in Greenwood, but it's no longer brand new, which is probably why it breaks down in the white part of Tulsa. Shit, not now. As the owners of three popular businesses, John's Auto Shop,

Lula's confectionery and her movie theater, the Williamses have clearly become some of the most notable business people in Greenwood. Local newspapers have even referred to John as the Negro Rockefeller and to Lula as the foremost businesswoman of the state. Although he sometimes wonders if being the Negro version of a white person is a compliment, there aren't many others on Black Wall Street who can match their success.

Mabel and Presley Little, perhaps, but there are situations where their success means nothing. In fact, many white people resent Negroes living an upper-class lifestyle and seek every opportunity to put them in their place. That sentence could be describing right now. I mean, literally, you look around and the way that

Black people who have achieved any success deal with this double-edged sword of like their success means racism has ended, but also their success opens them up to a new kind of racism that is unbearable.

Yeah.

And you see that so much in educational spaces, not just financial, not just how much money you have or the car you drive, but where you go to school, how you dress. I mean, the way that you talk, it's one of those things where it's like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You're being told to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, but then what?

If you do that, you're punished for it. It's just... Well, I don't got you. It's triggered me what you just said. Because, like, when I was in college, you feel me? In Norman, Oklahoma, I had just got this, like, this little red Lincoln Town car. And this is, like, 2010, 2011. And this Lincoln Town car was probably, like, a 99. You know what I'm saying? So it wasn't even a brand new Lincoln Town car. Long story short, I get pulled over by the police in Norman, you feel me? And...

I never forget this. I was questioned on what type of clothes I had on. You feel me? And like where I got them from, you know what I'm saying? And I never forget that. I thought I'd show you how country I am, but they had asked me about these brand new 501 jeans I had on. I guess they could tell that I'm saying that it was brand new, but they literally asked me like how much they cost, where I got them from, you know what I'm saying? Where I was headed. And at this time, I'm literally one of the top,

policy debaters in the country and I'm being treated like I'm a goddamn dope dealing, drug dealing, robbing ass fool. You know what I'm saying? And I feel like it impacted me so much. I think it's one of the reasons why I'm so like unapologetically radical about particular things because I've been under that law enforcement gaze and shit. That was 20 years ago.

2010, 2011. We's right now. We read a narrative from 1920. So we see, you know what I'm saying? Almost a hundred years later. Yeah. I mean, I, I feel that too, in the sense that like, there is something really liberating about the moment that you realize that

Well, they're going to think about me. They're going to see me as black no matter what I do. So I might as well just rock. I might as well just like talk the way that I'm going to talk. Listen to what I'm going to listen to, wear whatever these clothes do, all these things, because there's and this is like a conversation you and I keep having. Right. Like this trying to respectability politic your way out of out of racism. And when you realize it's not possible.

It sucks. But also there's like a liberation and going, okay, this is how I'm going to act no matter what. I'm just going to be me. The last thing I said on this part right here.

Though we pit Malcolm X and Martin Luther King against each other and what type of resistance and strategies we should use for white supremacy, never forget both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X got popped wearing three-piece suits and now one of them used the N-word or listened to hip-hop music. It's something to marinate on. The sun is setting and the headlights of another car flash over the horizon behind them.

John starts to sweat. The last thing he wants is to be caught out here in the dark. The damn car won't start. The car behind them slows as it approaches, and Lula clenches John's legs from the passenger seat. They can almost see the face of the driver in the other car now, which means the driver is close to identifying John and Lula. And racist white people aren't fans of the Williamses.

Just in time, the calmer starts back up. John slams his foot on the gas and speeds towards his home as Lula holds her breath, praying that the suspicious driver isn't rash or bored or angry enough to chase after them. How wild that their lives could depend on such a simple shift in a random white person's state of mind.

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It's been a long week and school teacher and writer Mary Parrish treats herself to a night out at what has become one of her favorite neighborhood spots, Dreamland Theater. As a storyteller, she's obsessed with the new art form. Movies are the perfect example of the magic you can create when like-minded individuals come together and support each other just like Greenwood itself.

Although she's not in the position to come see a movie whenever she likes, when she's saved up a bit extra and Simon is able to watch their daughter, you'll usually find her here. One ticket to Within Our Gates, please. As she waits for a ticket to be printed, Mary feels a tap on her shoulder and she turns around to see Mabel Little waiting behind her.

Mabel's wearing a nice fur coat and a smile. And standing next to her are her husband Presley and their football team full of kids. See Mary, she likes to sometimes attend the popular maid's night out at the Little Rose, which is Mabel's hair salon. The gals there begun to affectionately refer to Mabel as the matriarch for her ever-growing family.

Hi, Mabel. Didn't expect to see you here. Where else would we have gone for a movie? Presley jumps in. Certainly not one of those segregated theaters, no matter how fancy they are. If we wanted our kids to be treated like that, we wouldn't have moved to Greenwood. Mary nods in agreement. Although she's a business owner now, too, it can feel as though the really big entrepreneurs in the town are living in a different world. In some ways, they are. But

But Greenwood has a way of bringing worlds together and making everyone feel like they're on the same team. How many black people live their own lives without access to this type of community? If Mary is getting this much from living here for only two years, how much would she have benefited if her mother raised her in a place like this? It's almost impossible to imagine. Like something from a movie.

But movies have endings, and her mother, like too many other Black people, will never get the chance to watch this one. Feeling a bit of survivor's guilt, Mary wipes away the hint of a tear. See you inside.

Dreamland's success was a reflection of Hollywood's early promise as much as it was a reflection of the success of Greenwood. When Lula Williams opened the theater in 1914, the film industry was just getting started with the first major Hollywood studio established in 1913. By the end of Dreamland's first year, film studios were popping up all over the country.

It's May 31st, 1921.

The audience inside of Dreamland Theater still has no idea about the news of a possible lynching. For the patrons, it's just like any other night in Greenwood these days, filled with fun and laughter. A reprieve for white racism? They couldn't be more wrong. The film stops suddenly, and the lights flash on. Everyone turns to see a white man making his way to the front of the room.

Some recognize him as the theater projectionist, one of the respectful white folks they haven't had to worry about. His face is flushed red from running. Or is it fear? He finally makes it to the front of the theater and scans the confused, anxious crowd. He hopes this isn't the last one Dreamland ever sees. Everyone remain calm. He wishes he could follow his own advice. There's trouble brewing outside and we've got to shut the movie down.

He decides not to mention plans for a lynching, hoping to avoid feeding their panic. But his trembling hands tell him, go home and please be safe. The projectionist runs to the lobby to inform John that the theater has been evacuated, but he's nowhere to be found. He runs outside and sees John jumping into a car with a shotgun in his hand. He prays it's not the last time.

He sees Mr. Williams alive. John Williams clenches his shotgun to the chest, staring out of the car window in silence as it heads towards the courthouse. He hopes he won't have to use it. He hopes this is a nightmare and that he'll soon wake up. His wife, Lula, has reluctantly agreed to let him go with a group of a dozen or so armed men from Greenwood. They are attempting to save Dick Rowland, the black teenager accused of assaulting a white girl.

Lula understood that this was the best chance to save the boy, and by extension, the town. This type of bloodlust is rarely satiated quickly. Something that grounds my gears or really chaps my ass is how...

A lot of gun enthusiasts like to point out the Second Amendment is, you know what I'm saying, always an American right and X, Y, Z and X, Y, Z. And black folks been in this country since the beginning. But it's always something deviant and criminal that white people see black folks for guns and just, you know what I'm saying, just sigh.

You feel me? They don't have that same enthusiastic, bright to bare arms, Second Amendment come and take it type energy when they see a black person with a gun. No, that's when they want to start talking about gun control and background checks. Suddenly they're like, yeah, yeah, wait a second. I think we should do something about these guns. Yeah, we see you NRA. We ain't going to forget what you did to the Black Panther Party. That was the first time and only time you did that. That's who exactly I was about to mention. I mean...

Again, we see so many of the same themes throughout history. It's jarring, but also disorienting to realize like, damn, this happened so long ago, but this sounds like something that could happen today.

And with that being said, see what happened was John and the men armed themselves to drive toward the courthouse where Roland is being held by the sheriff. They're hoping to show enough force to convince the sheriff to release Roland to them so they can take him to safety. But as they reach the courthouse, John's not sure if any amount of force can convince anyone to doing anything in the face of all this.

At least 2,000 frothing white agitators stand outside the courthouse, yelling at the sheriff, pining for blood. John gulps hard, but the men in the car exit undeterred. Before he follows, John takes a look at the mob and then at a shotgun. He decides to leave it in the car. Any diplomacy that happens won't be done most effectively with weapons, especially if they want to survive.

John and his comrades do their best to avoid the crowd and ignore the slurs as they make their way to the steps. When they get the nervous sheriff's attention, they demand that he let Roland go with them. But the sheriff insists that he can handle the crowd. He tells John and the men they need to go back to Greenwood. They push back some, but it's clear they won't be able to do much more than the sheriff to hold off the mob.

All they can do is pray that he genuinely intends to hold them off. Dejected and terrified, John and the men finally turn to go. Before they can leave, a white man grabs one of them. He's got a gun! Unlike John, his comrade is carrying a weapon. The comrade tries to pull away, and the white man reaches for his waist.

If you like Black History for Real, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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and me, Conscious Lee. Black History for Real is a production of Wondery and DCP Entertainment. The episode is written by Hari Ziad, sound design by Greg Schweitzer. The theme song is by Terrace Martin. For DCP Entertainment, associate producers are Quinn Hill, Brittany Temple, and Chris Colbert. The senior producer is Ryan Woodhull.

Executive producers for DCP Entertainment are Adele Coleman and DJ Treesy Trees. For Wondery, Lindsay Gomez is the development producer. The coordinating producers are Desi Blaylock and Taylor Sniffin. Sophia Martins is our managing producer. Our

Our producer is Matt Gant. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. The executive producers for Wondery are Marsha Louis, Aaron O'Flaherty, and Candice Mariquez-Wren. Wondery.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.