(light music) - So let's start with Tulsa to New York.

- Yes.

- It's a long ride, but there's also some important significance to choosing Tulsa as the sort of beginning of that ride.

Talk about how this idea comes together.

- Yeah, no, 100%, right.

So what we do at Black Leaders Detroit is we're trying to create wealth again, right, in our communities.

And as we had thought about, like a ride that would kind mimic and show the world kind of like what we're up to on a national level, I guess, at least, riding from Black Wall Street to Wall Street- - To Wall Street.

- Was the only thing that kind of made sense at the end of the day.

And I've pretty much, because we'd know that there's been disruption to wealth that we've been creating in the Black community, and it's always been intentional, but I think Tulsa has the richest history or the most recognizable history.

So that's the reason that we're starting there.

- Yeah, for viewers who don't know, just give them a thumbnail of Tulsa, what it was and what happened to it.

- Yeah, so the Black Wall Street Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma was a very thriving Black community where there were homeowners and business owners that had some very successful businesses and it was disrupted in a very violent way, something that's called the Tulsa massacre built off of a lie.

And, you know, when folks came to stand up for themselves, they were attacked.

And I believe that historically it was the one time where you had, you know, bombing taking place in this country and it was done by countrymen.

- Yeah, yeah.

When you think about what happened there and sort of carrying that physically forward to New York today, I mean, there is still this gap.

I mean, I'm thinking of the distance between the two, you know, this gap that still exists between what African Americans had and what we have access to now, and that's really what your work is about.

- Definitely.

You know, what we do, we provide grants and no-interest loans to entrepreneurs of African descent here in the city of Detroit.

And we are still seeing huge disparities in the wealth, but we're also seeing huge disparities when it comes to accessing capital.

The access, yeah.

- Right.

So instead of waiting on the systems to self-correct, we figured we'd put something in place, be it the grants and no-interest loans that we've done for the last four years, and we've been able to deploy over $4.8 million to entrepreneurs in the city.

And we think we're just getting started.

- Yeah.

All right, let's talk about this bike ride.

It's an insane bike ride, Tulsa to New York.

How many miles is that?

- So we're talking about 1,643 miles.

- Okay.

- From start to finish.

- Yeah.

- And we're doing over the course of 35 days, as you mentioned, we're taking off May 31st, the anniversary of the Tulsa massacre landing in New York on the 4th of July, and we're going to stop in several cities.

The major cities will be St. Louis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Dayton, and then, you know, somewhere in New Jersey.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Wow, how many miles a day are you riding?

- So we're averaging 50 to 75 miles a day, so, you know, it's ambitious and it'll be painful, but we ride six days and we rest a day.

- Yeah, and people who are here who can't make the ride from Tulsa to New York can also participate.

- 100%.

- Because now we live in a world where you don't have to be in the place where you're doing something, you can actually be on a bike ride in your living room.

- Technology, yeah.

- And do it that way, that's pretty cool.

- Technology's found a way to have us together even when we're not like together, right?

So we are asking people to come out and join us in one of the cities if you're able to meet us there.

But if you are not, we welcome you to join us.

We're hoping to get 9,000 people to ride with us remotely, either from home, riding around your neighborhood.

If you're a avid cyclist, of course you can match the amount of miles we're riding on a given day.

If you have a Peloton, you can sign up and join us through that way as well.

And we just ask that you would register and tag us in a picture showing us that you actually riding with us.

- [Stephen] That you're actually riding with you.

Yeah, yeah.