Morris Chestnut is executive producing Greenwood Avenue. The feature film is about The Tulsa Race Massacre.
Daryl Spiveys scripted the film that tells the story of a Philadephia lawyer who follows a lead to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and unveils the events of the massacre as well as her family’s connection to it.
Casting for the film is currently underway.
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The true story of the Tulsa Massacre occurred one hundred years ago, in 1921 thirty-five blocks of the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma was a thriving town of black entrepreneurs, businesses, and wealth. The segregated town was famously coined Black Wall Street.
However, on May 30, 1921 when “[a] chance encounter between two teenagers lit the fuse that set Greenwood District alight,” that all tragically changed.
On May 31st and June 1st, a mob of white people tore down and burned Black Wall Street. They killed hundreds of black people and destroyed millions of dollars of property and left nearly 10,000 blacks homeless. And before whites destroyed the properties, they looted.
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City officials provided some of the weapons and they also flew overhead in airplanes, firing rifles and dropping firebombs. They also prevented firefighters from putting out fires. However, due to the perpetual systemic racism in America, news of the massacre was kept under the lid for decades. And like most Black history in America, many have only learned it from documentaries and movies.
Chestnut is teaming up with Tarek Terk Stevens of Terk Entertainment Group and Tressa Azarel Smallwood of MegaMind Media to produce the feature
Greenwood Avenue is set to begin filming in the fall of 2021.