On the heels of a successful first season of Underground, John Legend is gearing up for yet another periodical-based TV series.
Legend and the Get Lifted Film Company are in talks with WGN to produce the Black Wall Street series— the story of a bustling Black middle-class community in Tulsa, Oklahoma destroyed by white rioters in the 1920s, Deadline reports.
To help tell this story, Legend has enlisted The Haves and the Have Nots star Tika Sumpter who will join the team as an executive producer.
Black Wall Street was the name given to the Greenwood, Oklahoma community where mostly Black businessmen lived and worked.
A two-day looting and burning campaign led by a mob of white men leveled the city, erasing the bustling Black community from the grid.
The riot is believed to have killed 300 people while injuring 800 and leaving 10,000 more without homes.
The sobering account of this American tragedy is often left out of the history books. Referred to as ‘the night Tulsa burned’, it is one the worst mass killings of African Americans in American history.
If Black Wall Street is anything like the breakout series Underground, then fans of the show have a lot to look forward to.
The show is in early production and if picked up by WGN, will begin airing in 2018.
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