It's almost as if the heat is still kind of rising up.
It's crazy.
I am LaToya Rose.
I am a third generation Black Wall Street
entrepreneur and descendant.
My generation is not waiting on no handout.
We coming to get everything that's ours.
Period.
[HIP-HOP MUSIC]
I am the owner and operator of Rosa Tax Solutions
as well as the executive producer of the Black
Wall Street exchange.
[THOUGHTFUL MUSIC]
We're partnering with other small businesses--
hello, good people--
so that we have a better representation
of registered voters.
And then also doing those action pieces leading up,
so that we have more people that are actually voting
and taking action and being empowered on November 3
for election.
We have registration forms in every merchant
here at Black Wall Street.
We want everyone to get registered to vote.
Own your vote in 2020.
It's more than just government trying
to keep African-Americans from voting or brown and blacks
from voting.
It too within our own community is are we
really putting the right leaders in place
to do what we need them to do.
We individually have things that we hope are addressed.
For me, it's--
I'm big on economics, you know, access to funding.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
Oh, look at the people, OK.
I'm a descendant of Black Wall Street.
You know, my grandfather, my great aunts and uncles, they--
they operated businesses in the original, the rebuild, and now,
what we have here.
So I had an obligation to invest back into my community,
and I didn't take it lightly.
We are located here in the heart of Black Wall Street district.
At the corner, I'm looking at Archer and Greenwood,
overlooking the last burnt bricks from the 1921 massacre.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
They're reconstructed, but these are the two last structures
from the massacre.
What we're approaching is the original burnt
brick from the massacre.
Sometimes, you can kind of smell it.
You can smell that burn still in a way.
Where a lot of people--
they see it as, oh, this is so much character on the building,
and I'm like, that's the last--
that was burnt brick, baby, from when the blood
was shed on the sidewalk.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
I was in New York for the Thurgood
Marshall conference in college, and someone
said, oh, you from Tulsa.
Oh, that's Black Wall Street.
I said, no, no.
Wall Street is here.
He said, no, baby.
He said, you don't even know your history.
It was such a gut punch for someone to tell me that there
was something that I should know,
and I should have known it, and I didn't know it.
It really does push you to want to figure out,
how can you best be of service in Tulsa or to Tulsa.
[THOUGHTFUL MUSIC]
We really want to ensure that all Tulsans own their vote, OK?
Because when you cast your vote, it is your vote.
Do not go into that ballot box, OK--
do not put that ballot in the ballot box
saying to yourself, my vote--
I'm just going to vote for this person,
because that person ain't gonna win anyway.
It's very important, OK?
So not just the presidentials, but also the locals.
Local elections are really important
simply because we got to think about the issues at hand.
In order for us to address issues,
that's on your local level.
When they are unaddressed, they become problems.
I'm helping the legacy of Greenwood Avenue
by ensuring that small businesses, individuals,
that they actually scale to-- to stimulate the economy--
by ensuring that my daughter knows what happened
and what will never happen ever again.
[LAIDBACK MUSIC]