For the more sensitive souls among us, the notion of monetizing and exporting racism is too obscene to think about, especially in today’s unceasingly polarized social and political environment. It is painful to acknowledge that some human beings have it in their character to behave with such callously predatory disregard. But it is every bit as much a growing trend as fake news and movies featuring characters from the Marvel Universe or DC Comics. So what does that even mean? Very possibly that an already-volatile situation in #America and elsewhere in our otherwise magnificent Global Village is on its way to becoming worse before it gets better.  I will contend that one of the benefits of having had an African-American president in the White House for the past eight years has been his calming influence upon other Blacks as #videos continued to accumulate showing one black man, woman, or child after another shot and killed by someone under highly-questionable (or pain...

An unidentified Black Man stands outside a tent in Tulsa’s previously-affluent Greenwood District. Following the 1921 riot many African American survivors were forced to live for months in tents and other makeshift accommodations. (photograph courtesy of the Black Holocaust Society) Most of us have seen a filmed interview or 2 where an African-American veteran of World War I or World War II talks about how they had to fight one war overseas and then returned home to fight a different kind of war—for equal civil rights—here in America. What many of us may not know is how truly war-like some of the confrontations at home could become. It is because of what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from May 30-June 1, 1921, and past those dates that many people’s thoughts turn to a different kind of commemoration when observing Memorial Day every year. I was unaware of the event that has become known as the Black Wall Street Riots until conducting research to write Encyclopedia  of th...