The Oklahoma Eagle started in 1922 after the
1921 Tulsa race massacre. African American businessman Theodore Baughman salvaged a printing press from the burned-out building of the
Tulsa Star. The
Tulsa Star was Tulsa's first Black-owned newspaper and was known as the "voice of Black Tulsa" with its coverage of the everyday lives of black Tulsans as they celebrated weddings, mourned at funerals, and marked graduations and anniversaries. and added the slogan, "We make America better when we aid our people" to the paper's masthead. Edward L. Goodwin was a businessperson who owned rental properties in the
Greenwood District of Tulsa and a shoeshine parlor. and he relocated the paper to 126 North Greenwood Avenue. Edward Goodwin said he purchased the Eagle, because he was tired of being vilified by the white Tulsa “metropolitan press” that disparagingly labeling him as “the black mayor of the City of Tulsa… because of the fact that I had become involved in all of these illegal operations. … So, the metropolitan press was so strong in their accusations against me, I said, ‘Well, I guess this is a good thing for me to do. I'm going to buy one of these papers.’” Goodwin said he was initially motivated to use the Eagle to help restore and reshape his reputation as a successful businessman. Goodwin said he also discovered that his mission was far more consequential as a newspaper owner. “… I decided that I would dedicate the rest of my life fighting for the things that I knew that black people needed and never had in order to elevate them to a higher social level, a higher economic level, then that they'd been accustomed to.” He stamped this mission below the masthead, “We Make America Better When We Aid Our People.” Two years later, Goodwin moved our headquarters to 123 North Greenwood into a building owned by his father. In 1966, the Tulsa Urban Renewal Authority declared plans to build the Crosstown Expressway by bulldozing our land and displacing dozens of black-owned businesses and properties. The Goodwins built a new, modern building across the street at 122 North Greenwood. (The site today is
ONEOK Field and home to the
Tulsa Drillers’ Double A minor league baseball team). The paper remained in Greenwood until the 1980s, when it moved to three different locations – before settling at current headquarters, 624 East Archer Street, formerly home to Mabrie's Garage and Storage.
The Oklahoma Eagle is the last surviving original black-owned business still operating within the historic
Black Wall Street footprint.
The Oklahoma Eagle also publishes sister editions, such as
The Okmulgee Observer, The Muskogee Independent (in the 1940s and later renamed as Eagle newspapers),
The (Lawton, Oklahoma) New Community Guide, The Wichita (Kansas) Observer, and an
Oklahoma City Eagle edition. == Ownership ==