When @Mariannewest said describe the sunset, first thing that came to my mind was, whatttt? How can I free write about the sunset, of all things? But slowly, it started coming to me and I finally produced my first freewrite. I actually like it so much that I will have to develop it into something more; but for now, and the timeframe given, this is what I was pondering about.
Is it the beginning or the end? Depends how you look at it. Sunset, being either the beginning of the night or the end of the day, I’m going to tie it in to a hot topic, here in the U.S. especially among black Americans....integration!
It’s not a secret anymore that during the Jim Crow era, society was divided along racial lines. “Separate but equal” is what the US Supreme Court ruled. Everything was divided, blacks had their own schools, their own hospitals, own neighborhoods,etc. People like Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated for integration and got it. To some black Americans, integration was the end of their “golden” days.
When segregation was still king, the black communities thrived. We see examples of BLACK WALL STREET, in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had everything from shoeshine to physicians, lawyers, even banks. At the time, even whites came to take loans from black banks.
Blacks had more intellectuals during this period of time as well. They spent their dollars in their own communities by force. And then the sunset came. The end of the “golden” era.
Today,there are far less black success stories. Most businesses have closed because they can’t compete with the big franchises, education system is no longer producing black intellectuals, police from outside the community are killing the people.
As the sunset signifies one thing, depending on the individual, one thing is for sure, the world revolves and tomorrow the sun will set again.
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All photos were taken in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where once stood black Wall Street and were taken by me.