2021 / Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience
1921
About Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience. Our Mission.
Synopsis
Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience is a historical fiction five-part series with five-minute episodes, created by Ayana Baraka. The first kiss is usually something that is remembered. This is the moment, our main character, 14-year-old, Agnes relishes—momentarily. Like most teenage girls, all she wants to do is spend time with the boy she likes, her first love Ernie. And it is through her love story that the audience gets to experience Greenwood Avenue, the main artery of Black Wall Street, in all of its glory. On this spring day in 1921, Agnes has her first kiss. However, something else happens on this day that makes her grow up quick. It exposes her to realities she’d been shielded from. 10-thousand deputized white supremacists kill 300 Blacks. For 2 Days—Black homes and Black businesses are looted, machine gunned, fire bombed from the sky and left to burn in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a.k.a. Black Wall Street, the most affluent Black neighborhood in America. Unfortunately, Agnes’ world is flipped up-side-down when the events of the Race Massacre begin to unfold. Her home is looted. Her father is taken. And she doesn’t know if she’ll see her beloved Ernie ever again.
Conversations Baraka had with the late Dr. Olivia J. Hooker, one of the last known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, informed the script.
Greenwood Avenue is not your typical thrill-based virtual reality experience. It is a story that transports you back in time to a place that no longer exists. It introduces you to a community and the great American entrepreneurs of our past. History organically unfolds because love is at the heart of this story. Love is something everyone can latch onto.
Greenwood Avenue is grounded authentically in the Greenwood District. Filmed in Tulsa, Oklahoma-on the last remaining block of Black Wall Street—Greenwood Avenue. With support from the community and local organizations like the Greenwood Cultural Center, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, and the John Hope Center for Reconciliation. Greenwood Avenue hired a cast and crew of native Tulsans, many of which had ancestors that either survived through or perished during the massacre.
Logline
Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience brings us into the 1920’s world of a 14-year-old Black girl experiencing first love & devastating loss in America’s Black Wall Street.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality 180: We want to give folks a tangible taste of what it was like living in the 1920's as a person of color. Lynching was on the rise but folks felt safe living in Northern Tulsa. It was a place to grow a family and build a business. Virtual reality is also a way to bridge gaps we have in learning processes in our educational system by opening up another avenue for students to learn about and retain history in an engaging way. This project is fiscally sponsored by Women Make Movies and was selected to be in the YouTube VR Creator Lab and is partially funded by Google.
Creator’s Statement
As an American woman, I am enamored with our diverse and storied history, but there are parts of American history that are not included in books. I believe and trust that folks want to know the truth about our history and want to do better for our future. This is a timely and urgent project as we approach the centennial commemoration of the massacre. We’ve built relationships with Tulsa community, including the Mayor, Senator, members of the centennial commission, Greenwood Cultural Center to ensure that this project will support their mission to preserve this important piece of history.