185 / 326
263
●
(FILM.) NORMAN FILMS.
“Black Gold. Action Love Thrills. With an All
Colored Cast. Lawrence Criner and Katherine Boyd.”
Color poster, 21 x 40 inches,
some restoration backed with archival paper.
Jacksonville, FL: Norman Films, 1928
[1,500/2,500]
AN HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT FILM
.
”Black Gold” was of course oil. In Oklahoma, land owned
by African American farmers trying to eke out a living under harsh circumstances turned out to be
golden indeed. A number of small and well off black townships emerged led by oil-rich black million-
aires. In Tulsa, the Greenwood district, or “Black Wall Street,” as it was called so galled working class
and poor whites, that when a racial incident took place in 1921, white rioters, including some from out
of state, literally leveled the entire area, hanging blacks from bridges and lamp-posts. Well documented
in “Events of the Tulsa Disaster,” a first-hand account by Mary Jones Parrish (reprinted 1998).
262
263
FILM
LOTS 261-270