Bloomberg | Black Wall Street — Greenwood District, Tulsa

Client: Bloomberg
Project: Editorial Photography — Tulsa's Greenwood District
Year: 2020 | Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma Published: June 2020
Context: Timed to President Trump's Tulsa rally; Bloomberg's national political/racial justice coverage

Overview

CreeseWorks contributed photography to Bloomberg's coverage of Tulsa's Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, as national political attention descended on the city ahead of President Trump's controversial June 2020 rally. The piece examined the intersection of historic racial trauma and contemporary political tension in a neighborhood still shaped by the 1921 massacre.

The Assignment

Bloomberg needed a photographer already embedded in Tulsa with established community access, someone who could move through Greenwood authentically and quickly, as the news cycle compressed. Christopher Creese documented the landscape, atmosphere, and community of Greenwood during a period of intense national scrutiny.

30 images were delivered to Bloomberg's photo desk and published in their digital coverage. The assignment was completed within a 1 day turnaround.

Deliverables

• final edited images delivered to Bloomberg's photo desk

• 24-hour turnaround from shoot to delivery

• Coverage of specific areas in Greenwood, e.g., Vernon AME Church, Greenwood Ave, the massacre memorial site

• High-resolution press files formatted to Bloomberg editorial specs

Results

Bloomberg's Greenwood coverage reached a global audience of business, finance, and policy readers, a readership that doesn't typically encounter documentary photography from historically Black neighborhoods. CreeseWorks' images lent ground-level authenticity to a story being told primarily from Washington and New York.

Bloomberg | Black Wall Street — Greenwood District, Tulsa

Why It Matters for Your Project

This project demonstrates the ability to move fast on a breaking national news assignment, embedded in a community, delivering publication-ready images to a global outlet on a compressed timeline. Bloomberg's editorial standards are rigorous; the work had to hold up.