The VR-180 project Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience is now available for viewing on YouTube.

Created by Ayana Baraka, the project immerses viewers into Greenwood Avenue, the Tulsa, OK neighborhood and business district known as “Black Wall Street.” According to the official description:

“Greenwood Avenue” is a VR-180 experience, created by Ayana Baraka, about a 14-year-old Black girl who lives in the Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street, during the 1920s. This scripted five-part series follows her coming of age story while revealing the history of Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

When Shadow And Act covered the development of the project in 2018, the team wrote about their goal to provide a way for people to be as close to the history of Greenwood Avenue as possible.

“We want to give folks a taste of what it was like living in the 1920s as a person of color,” they wrote in a statement. “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. We want people to experience it firsthand.”

The project was part of Seed & Spark’s Keep It Colorful initiative and was sponsored by Women Make Movies. Google also partially funded the project via Google-YouTube VR Creator Lab.

The trailer for the series is below; watch the full VR series at Greenwood Avenue’s YouTube page.

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Tulsa Race Massacre VR Experience ‘Greenwood Avenue’ Crowdfunding Through Seed & Spark

 

Photo: Greenwood Avenue