Kenneth Bowens

Kenneth Bowens was born in Tulsa Oklahoma. Thirty-four years earlier, in 1921 the most affluent African American community in U.S. history Greenwood's "Black Wall Street" was bombed and destroyed. The National Guard flew airplanes and dropped incendiary devices right down on Black Wall Street. Some folks believed that the fiery explosives were nitroglycerin shells. The Tulsa Police Department united with fifteen thousand white vigilantes and they machined gunned and killed three hundred and maybe as many as three thousand black children, women, and men. They looted and burned fifteen thousand homes, six hundred black businesses, twenty-one black churches, twenty-one black restaurants, thirty black stores, and two black movie theatres. Kenneth lived in Seattle, Washington for fifteen years, where he wrote two plays, and studied improvisation and acting. He's moved back to Oklahoma and lives in Oklahoma City.