In Tulsa's Greenwood District, a dollar circulated at least 19 times inside the community before it left. That's where the name comes from, and that's the whole idea behind this platform.
In the early 1900s, segregation forced Black Tulsans to build a complete economy of their own. Banks, grocery stores, hotels, theaters, doctors, lawyers. Because there was nowhere else for that money to go, it stayed inside the community and kept changing hands.
On May 31, 1921, a white mob burned that neighborhood to the ground. An estimated 35 blocks destroyed in less than a day. Hundreds of people killed. Generations of wealth gone, and never repaid.
Tulsa is the one most people know, but it wasn't the only place this happened. Black towns and Black business districts were built and burned down across this country, and almost none of that loss was ever made whole. Read the fuller history →
Every time someone chooses a Black-owned platform instead of the default option, that's a dollar, or an hour, or a download, circulating the way it once did on Greenwood Avenue. 19TIMES exists to make those platforms easy to find, so that choice is easier to make.
When Black households build wealth, that wealth gets spent, invested, and taxed like everyone else's. Underinvested communities have less to spend, less to invest, and less to put back into the broader economy. Closing the racial wealth gap would add an estimated $1 to $1.5 trillion to U.S. GDP annually, according to research from McKinsey and Citigroup. Group economics is not a zero-sum game. When one community rises, the whole economy benefits.
19TIMES launched on Juneteenth on purpose. June 19th. The 19th. The day freedom finally came, two years after it was supposed to. That's not a coincidence. The number 19 carries the economics and the liberation at the same time, and this platform is built on both.
The exact number is disputed. Sources cite anywhere from 19 to 100 times. 19 was chosen because it traces back to the Library of Congress and is one of the most repeated figures.
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