so let's all take a deep breath
that's really just for me you can take a
deep breath if you'd like
but i do want to welcome everybody uh
today
to this really important presentation
this is the first
in our series of community presentations
leading up to bexley's first
annual juneteenth observance
this our juneteenth planning committee
is honored to
be presenting this program with the
support of the bexley
community foundation and in partnership
with bexley city schools
so to any students who are on the call
today
welcome and thank you especially to
michael featherstone scott king owen and
michelle riley walsh
and raquel armstrong for your help
in engaging our students in this really
important conversation
so what are we here for tonight we are
here to talk about the 1921
tulsa race massacre um tulsa's greenwood
district was one of the most
um affluent black communities in america
however on may 31st in june 1st of 1921
a white mob attacked the district
resulting in nearly
every significant structure within the
community being destroyed
as well as upwards of 300 people
being killed a hundred years later the
race massacre continues to reverberate
in tulsa and beyond and we
are thrilled i am thrilled in particular
i've been doing a lot of research on you
dr hill you uh
have a lot of really wonderful
presentations that you've given
that i have been lucky enough to find in
various platforms so i am
so thrilled to welcome you here dr hill
is the associate professor and chair
of the clara looper department of
african and african american studies
at the university of oklahoma he is also
the author of beyond the rope
the impact of lynching on black culture
and memory
and the murder of emmett till a graphic
history
his latest book the tulsa race massacre
of photographic history explores the
history of this really important event
through the photographic
images left behind and through the
first-hand accounts of those who
survived
so dr hill welcome and thank you for
accommodating my inability to tell time
you are too kind and too gracious and i
just appreciate
you and your invitation to talk to your
community
um in bexley bexy ohio about
what i think is probably the most
important uh historical moment
um that i've seen um in a decade
so i'm just i'm just i'm just so
thrilled
by the invitation and i hope i can
provide some insight some knowledge
around the race massacre and why this
event is so important
um today so so thank you for the
for the invitation and thank you uh
audience for your patience as we got all
the technical
difficulties out of the way um and so
i'm going to try to share my screen yeah
you should be able to
but okay i have our tech wizard
on standby so uh excellent okay
okay i think i've successfully
shared it so
okay perfect and so
dr hill can i just interject real
quickly um
there will be an opportunity for
questions at the end we did have some
questions submitted beforehand
but please audience feel free to use the
q a feature and we will get to as many
of those questions afterwards as
possible
and now uh dr hill thank you i'm going
to hand this over to you
and let me just actually one
housekeeping thing before i start
um i want to i know where we were
delayed so i want to make sure
how much time i have exactly the same
amount of time we just shifted
everything back
and the audio here yes so ideally
for maybe 45 minutes of just of me
presenting and then
15 or 15 or 20 minutes of questions
yes yes okay excellent thank you
okay stop myself
thank you so again thank you for the
invitation it's an honor and a privilege
to be here with you tonight to share
with you
my work and witness around the 1921
tulsa race massacre
um and i'm gonna tell you a lot about
you know what that what that history
means to me
and and what i think that history should
mean to to all americans i'm going to
try to
cover all of that but what i really want
to stress before i begin to
get into the the real uh the details of
this history and its legacy
it's just kind of position myself in
relationship to this history and so
um as as uh council woman
jen robinson mentioned i am a associate
professor and chair of the clara looper
department of african african american
studies
at the university of oklahoma um and
you know you know in addition to being
in those
being in those roles as professor and
chair
what i do in terms of scholarship really
revolves around
community really revolves around
community justice initiatives but also
just community empowerment
and so one of the things that that has
really become
central to my identity as a scholar is
is being a community engaged scholar a
community engaged teacher a community
engaged
leader if needed that's really committed
to
interrogating these very difficult
racial historic histories
right and especially what i'm most
interested in is their present day
implications how that history shows up
in the present
it impacts lives in the present and so
i'm really
in many ways trying to work at the
intersection of history
in in the contemporary moment uh in the
ways in which the history that i
know uh is a is is
is being felt in the in the present
in the in the ways in which we can do
things to maybe help
hopefully uh you know impact those
issues
and so you know when you know as i have
sort of grown in this work and
understanding what it means to be a
community engaged scholar i've often
reflected on dr king or dr martin luther
king jr's
uh saying or one of the things that he
was fond of saying
was quote life's most
persistent and urgent question
is what are you doing for
others what
are you doing for others you know for
someone who is service oriented
and particularly justice oriented you
know king was suggesting that
this is always the most persistent and
urgent question that a human being could
be
asking is what are you doing for others
and if
if one can position oneself in that way
the kind of impact that a person can
have
or a community can have um if it
orients itself that way in relationship
to the world
and so this is the the kind of core
insight for me
for my scholarship i'm always asking
what can i do in terms of research
and writing that can help support that
can leverage um
can be leveraged in ways to support
community
initiatives community um you know
struggles
and so part of why i'm saying all this
is that you know my time
in oklahoma being a community engaged
scholar
has really meant focusing in on the
history
and the legacy of the 1921 tulsa race
massacre
and so as a scholar who's a historian of
lynching and racial violence
community engaged
i had an understanding
of what the 1921 tulsa race massacre was
but it wasn't until i became a black
studies professor and chair
in oklahoma at the university of
oklahoma and began to talk to people in
the community
uh descendants um just but just
community members who understood the
history
i began to understand the magnitude
of what occurred in many ways the
cover-up
of what occurred in talking to
these you know community organizations
community leaders
community members descendants
about this history it began to dawn on
me
you know very shortly after i arrived to
the university of oklahoma
in in the fall of 2016 that this was
such a big story that even someone
positioned as i was as a historian of
lynching racial violence who knew about
it
i didn't understand the magnitude of
what occurred
and so what i began to realize
it was that the 1921 tulsa race massacre
is not neces not only one of the
deadliest but i believe
the deadliest outbreak of anti-black
violence
in american history and
it's not even i would go even further to
say that
it's it's likely the darkest chapter
in oklahoma history and i think you can
make an argument
in our nation's history given the the
gravity
and the scale of what occurred um
to a community and so
what i want to do is just kind of share
with you
some some of the big points that i make
in my book on the 1921 tulsa race
massacre
of photographic history i really want to
share with you just sort of
my big picture argument for what
occurred
a hundred years ago or nearly 100 years
ago in tulsa
on may 31st june 1 19
21. i really want to just give you this
sort of the big picture perspective
that i'm trying to impact in terms of
what this
this centennial year really
means and so in in doing
all of that uh the main thing that i'm
going to be
trying to help the audience to
understand
is why should we refer to the events of
the 1921
um tulsa race massacre
why we should talk about it as a
massacre
versus a race riot um and i think
terminology terminology really matters
but specifically as it relates to this
history
those two terms have taken on not only
just cultural significance
but political significance as well and
so i want to talk about all that
in the context of trying to help
um the audience understand why it's so
important to be
talking about this history right now
and so before i sort of jump
into um talking about
um the history i just want to do a
little bit more
positioning um and
part of what is really driving me
in terms of this um
you know this history is for so many
years
um in oklahoma um the this history of
the race massacre
was simply not talked it was not
um something that was even written about
um
in newspapers in in oklahoma or in in
the
throughout the nation you know after
1921
and so part of what
is so um just so so
painful uh for the community
is for for nearly 100 well for
definitely for 80 years
the story of the massacre was covered up
and then for the last 20 years
it's increasingly become a national
story
and certainly during the centennial or
as we near the centennial
it's becoming not just a national topic
of discussion but an international
topic of discussion and so a big part of
all of that has been the you know
connected to
the educational uh initiatives
um that's connected to the centennial
commission
um and so i serve as a board member or
steering committee member
on the 1921 tulsa race massacre
centennial
commission and the the i think the
crowning achievement of the commission
will be
uh the creation of the greenwood the
state-of-the-art
greenwood rising museum um
that will uh will open its doors
i believe on june 2nd of of 20 of this
year
2021 and so
that's going to be you know sort of the
grand achievement but there have been
also um some teacher institutes that we
have created
that have touched you know hundreds of
teachers at this point
and now thousands of students through
those teachers
that have helped you know build
curriculum lesson plans
in in preparation for teaching those
lesson plans
uh and so there's been just so much um
educational uh work that's been doing
hard work by tulsa public schools as
well as other schools around the
around the state to really try to
develop the expertise
to understand this history but then also
teach it
to a very diverse you know
student population and so i've been
really
proud to be a part of that work
and that work has certainly poured into
all the scholarship that i've been able
to do
um on the race massacre and so that's i
want to just position myself because i
want you to understand
that i'm not just some an academic
talking about this lecturing about this
but i'm really actively engaged in
trying to
make change around how this history is
understood
uh around the state and so
in saying all that um i just want to
shift to the history
and i want to shift um
to helping you understand before we
understand
what occurred during the massacre we
need to understand
what was there what had been built um
so that the so that we understand this
incident
um this this deadliest incident in
american history
in full context and so um
what we need to understand about tulsa
and particularly greenwood in 1921
is that it's a it was a sizable area
it was an area that we have
typically talked about as a 35 to 40
block
area with as many as 200 businesses
and so the i hope you can see and let me
try to
magnify this a bit i hope that can come
through a little bit better
the area that is
shaded gray here and in here
represent the greenwood district and so
this 35 block area was
in north tulsa here and you can see
that it was a significant landmass
and so when we talk about a 35
block area that was you know
the greenwood district or black wall
street we're talking about an
expansive area in which nearly
11 000 black people resided
and so this was
i would argue at the time the most
significant
uh black community um in
the the state of oklahoma and certainly
one of the most
affluent in terms of wealth and business
creation
and so one of the things that
is really interesting about the history
of greenwood
is that it it's become known as
or it became known as initially the
negro wall street of america
but later the black wall street
of america and the reason why it's uh
interesting is that even though there
were
more than 200 black owned businesses
in the greenwood district circa 1921
none of those businesses were banks
or insurance companies and certainly
greenwood did not have a stock exchange
but nonetheless it was referred as
referred to as the negro or
black wall street of america
by booker t washington in 1913
and so i think the reason why it was
sort of
thought of as a black wall street
was not so much because it was a center
of finance or it was a center of
of uh finance capitalism or have a stock
exchange it was really rooted in this
idea
that in greenwood a black person
could own land a black person could own
a business and that a black person could
become a millionaire
um you know in the segregated south
if you lived in tulsa oklahoma and so
black
wall street was really about the kind of
economic possibilities
um that make that that created
this expansive uh area
uh where there were uh 11 000 residents
and you know amongst them
there were four millionaires in today's
dollars
who resided in in in the greenwood
district
and so um this
um this is the history of this community
i always say to people is not just
oklahoma in nature it's really national
in nature because of the ways in which
greenwood represented the best of
the best the highest aspirations of some
african americans at the time
um and it represented possibility
right and so when tulsa burned
and when tulsa was excuse me when
greenwood burned
and when greenwood was destroyed part of
what was being destroyed
was this idea of
of black business ownership
and economic prosperity
was possible part of that was what was
being
destroyed um or attempted to destroy
uh in the massacre and so
i just wanted to share these uh that
this this visual
to help you to understand um
just the the scope of the district
and then i just wanted to share just
very briefly
and i hope i hope um these
this is visible but again i wanted to
emphasize
the the size the scale of the greenwood
district
here and you can see
um the kind of even just by looking at
this
this overview of the map you can tell
that the kind of diversity and the and
the vibrancy
um of the community by that that there's
multiple hotels
churches schools um this is a
well-developed and prosperous community
that um that you know that was ex
not only was there expansive but
it it you know it there it made home for
um nearly or over 11 000
um black residents and so
we when we when we talk about the
deadliest
attack or the or the the
the largest outbreak of anti-black
violence
in american history we're talking about
an attack on a community
the size of the greenwood district that
was
approximately a 35 block
area
and so it's really important for me to
try to
um before we get into the details and
get into the imagery to just
help you to more deepen this this this
this this understanding of the the scope
of what occurred
and so what i like to share before
you know getting into that what
what makes this the most significant
outbreak of anti-black violence
is to just explain some of the basic
details of why
tulsa exploded and so
the
one allegation um in the
early 20th century or late 19th century
early 20th century
that would uh create tremendous
um uh you know community
outrage was the speculation or a rumor
that a black man had sexually assaulted
or had an inappropriate encounter with
a white woman and
and many as many as you know
20 as much as 20 percent of lynchings in
the united st
of sexual assault and so when
rumors that a black man dick rowland
had assaulted sarah page
who was a 17 year old uh we believe a 17
year old
young white girl um a white mob
began to gather downtown
around the courthouse where dick rowland
was being held after he had been
arrested
by police after this uh
allegation surfaced and so
the race massacre was you know
or at least the conditions that
precipitated it revolved around
this allegation and the ways in which
white men
particularly white tulsa men um were
enraged and went downtown
um threatening to lift uh to linstick
rolling
and you know in in in these threats
swirling around
dick rowland's eminent lynching this
began to concern
uh many members many prominent members
in particular
of tulsa's black community and so
in two groups one initially a small
group and then later
a larger group went downtown to offer
assistance to tulsa authorities
and both times tulsa authorities told
them
we don't need your assistance we have
this under control
nothing is going to happen but this did
not
in any way um quell their angst
about whether or not or whether the
police had a sufficient
control of this growing mob to prevent
the lynching of dick rowland
and so long story short and we could go
into
a lot of detail because there's a lot of
intrigue around
what actually happened that triggered
the race massacre but
long story short in this the second
group of men that go downtown
um and as they are leaving after being
told
we do not need your assistance uh a
white man
in the crowd tried to disarm one of the
black men
and in the struggle over the gun that
ensued a
shot is fired and that shot
uh hit or struck a white bystander
by bystander and uh
in in in in that stray bullet being
fired
whites began to fire upon the black men
who
are quickly now retreating from downtown
to to to to save their own lives they
came downtown to prevent the dick
the lynching of dick rowland but now
they are
they've been forced to try to save their
own lives from being
uh from being killed or worse and so
the key moment
that really transforms what happens
uh is the ways in which uh uh
white tolsons who came downtown to who
uh perhaps lynch dick rowland how those
same
individuals were later deputized
by white by tolston uh excuse me the
tulsa police
to suppress um the quote the
the idea was that they needed to
suppress
um the rebellion or the quote-unquote
negro rebellion
that those two groups of uh armed black
men coming downtown to tulsa
represented and so
um the the escalation
of this this this event really occurs
in the moments following the exchange of
gunfire
when tulsa authorities um
you know you know move went from
trying to suppress the
the the mob calling for lynching
to in just a few short minutes
um giving weaponizing that mob
and telling them to you know to
to join in you know putting down or
suppressing
this uh quote-unquote negro rebellion
and so this incitement i would argue
by the local authorities
is what ultimately creates the
conditions in which
a mob of whites invade the greenwood
district
and systematically burn or excuse me
burn down or excuse me loot burn down
the greenwood district and so
i can and i will try to
try to help you to understand the scope
of the destruction um through some of
the imagery i want to share with you
but it's really important to to
recognize that it wasn't just
buildings schools businesses
that were just homes that were destroyed
you know there were lives that were
affected you know
there were we believe based on
records connected to the american red
cross
that there was there was
perhaps 300 um deaths connected to
this this violence and particularly
those those deaths of black people and
so
it's not just also the the people who
died it's also
the people who were wounded and just
from american red cross records we know
that
uh more than 800 um
you know black people receive medical
attention
for wounds they're immediately following
the massacre
there were you know
you know eleven thousand you know
everyone in in greenwood
who had a home uh did not have a home
um on june one of
1921 and so a community the size
of greenwood was rendered homeless
in less than 24 hours and so
when we try to think about the scope of
the history we have to and
the magnitude of it is a community the
size of greenwood
in that community everyone literally
everyone was impacted by what happened
and in that is
just just mind-blowing to me
um and and so
when when we think about the the scope
and the scale of this history
that is what we need to sort of be
thinking about
and in many ways for me and i've said
this
um say this in in my book but i've said
this to
multiple audiences that um we used to
talk about
um this as a tulsa race riot and it was
really controversial
when it became a tulsa race massacre it
was controversial for some
to begin to talk about it as a race
master because it has certain kind of
implications for
the city and so forth um but
you know in my estimation because
this event this this this
this outbreak of rape white racist
violence against a black community
we should be talking about this as a
community lynching
because it truly touched and negatively
impacted everyone in that community
and so i i when i when i talk about this
i i just want to
make sure that we understand why
this is why this is talked about in the
ways
that it is talked about and so
certainly one of the
pop cultural moments that have made
my life easier as a history teacher as a
black studies professor
uh is the watchmen series um as well as
lovecraft
love craft country um but the watchmen
series in particular which
um for those of you may not be familiar
familiar
uh the watchmen as well as lovecraft
country is a
h these are hbo miniseries
and these series um or at least a
portion of the series
depicts what occurred in greenwood
um during the race massacre um and so
you know i have you know watched and
really studied most carefully
the watchman and i've kind of studied
the impact that it's had
on how the race massacre is understood
not just nationally but internationally
and one of the things that
i have been so pleased about
in terms of the watchmen and my
estimation is that
um it gives us a
understanding of the race massacre from
the vantage point
of victims survivors and their
descendants
and so for me that's that's the most
important
vantage point from which we can
understand this history
and as i said before um the reason why
it's so important
is because for so many years
the perspectives of survivors
were ignored they were discredited and
and and so to have hbo's the watchmen
series that's been watched by millions
of people
around the world that at the center of
that storytelling
is survivors of perspectives
for me it is a tremendous um
just just um gesture
um to sort of their struggle to be
heard so i'm very fond
of that series and and just their
support
for trying to get this story out they've
no their they've supported and will be
very present
um in tulsa during the commemoration
uh trying to support national and
international awareness around this
so this history so i'm i'm indebted to
them because they've made my
job easier as a historian
to tell this story um you know
before i conceived of my book um
before the though i think the
the watchmen series debuted um and so
my in a world where there's no watchmen
there's no lovecraft country there are
no documentaries
on the horizon to tell the story
uh as vividly as possible of the race
massacre
in 2016 2017 i'm trying
i'm thinking about how can i tell the
story
of victims survivors and their
descendants
in the most vivid way in the most
impactful way
in a way that will touch people's minds
and their spirits
their hearts and maybe move
them in ways and so
i'm not a documentary filmmaker i'm not
a you know filmmaker you know
and so i i use the tools of history
and and ultimately i i i began
understanding and and sort of my
research my initial research
on deep research on the race massacre
that not only was this
perhaps the deadliest outbreak
of anti-black violence in american
history
it was likely in my estimation the most
photographed instance
because just in the archival
photographs that i was able to
assemble and and review and many of them
you know make a part of the book i i
i review over 500 images
um and i selected of those
about 150 to try to tell the story
and i wish i fought to get it up to 150.
uh i wish i could have had 250
but that would have made the book uh
really big and expensive and
and so we we really i think we set it on
a good number um
and trying to tell not just the story of
the massacre but also
the sort of humanitarian efforts
following
the rebuilding and then stories of
survivors and so
you know part of what you know that
my book is about um is not just
sort of trying to document what happened
from you know through photographs i
wanted the photographs
to lend themselves i wanted the
photographs to amplify
the oral histories that survivors
have have left us about
what occurred to them on those two days
uh in in the summer of 1921
and so this this book is dedicated
you know to the memory of victim
survivors and their descendants
this book um in many ways
tries to tries to position and center
their their perspectives and the telling
of this history
and and help us uh and actually i would
argue narrate
uh what what what is in those
photographs even though they were
most of the photographs um that i have
in the book
uh were taken by by whites um
and and so you know what my challenge
was was to try to select those
photographs
that would lend itself to telling uh and
amplifying
the the voices of survivors through
sharing their oral histories
alongside those photographs
and so what i want to try to share with
you
[Music]
is just some images
um from the 1921 tulsa race mask and
particularly from my book
and um i'm going to say
just off the bat that these images
um are horrific they contain
um and they depict um you know violence
extreme violence um you know
the you know the destruction of a
of a of a beloved community it depicts
the most some of the most horrific
scenes i think
that have been captured in american
history um
and so i i do this with with great
uh trepidation but also i want to do
with great care and so i just want to
make sure that you that we understand
that these photographs are really
hard to look at um but we really
need to look at them because
without understanding
i don't think people can fully
understand
what the race master means without
interrogating
these photographs and so it's in that
spirit
that i want to share them with you so
i'm going to
very slowly i'm going to very slowly
transition between the slides
just so that um you can
kind of really kind of um
absorb what what what i want the image
to kind of tell you so i'll start
uh
okay
thank you
and so as i said um
those images are
are very hard um to look at
and um you know i
have said head uh you know
into to to my friends and family but
also
you know i even say in the book that it
would
if if you didn't know anything
and you just looked at those images you
would not believe that was a
so that that happened to a
civilian-american
community you would think that was sort
of
you know a scene from world war ii you
know
europe um and but but it's actually
it's actually tulsa oklahoma it's
actually the greenwood district
that appears to be a city that has been
bombed um you know to
to oblivion and so you know
the the photos i think or at least i
hope
makes real the stories that survivors
have told about what occurred to them
um i think there's a way in which the
photographs
make undeniable um the scope the scale
the viciousness even of what occurred
um to tulsa's black community
and you know i would say um you know
just
just in closing that um what
what i've tried to just talk about
in summary but hopefully incisively
is that you know tulsa's black wall
street circa 1921
was one of the wealthiest black
communities
in the country and not just the
wealthiest one of the also the most
educated in the state of oklahoma
and so this community
was destroyed in
less than 24 hours by
a mob of whites who were aided and
embedded by local authorities
and that violence that mob violence
resulted
in a 35 block area nearly 200
black home businesses and much of the
land in greenwood
was owned by black people
this area um was completely destroyed
and 100 years later um
not no one
has ever been held accountable for any
of
the the the criminality that occurred
um during the massacre um no
reparations or restitutions have been
paid to victims
survivors or descendants um
and there is uh still
a search an ongoing search uh for mass
graves connected to
this event and so
this history
um is such a prism for you know trying
trying to connect the current moment
that we're in
to the past i mean the story
of greenwood is certainly connected
to the story of the now and so i'll just
close
um with this the painting
behind me which you i hope you can see
is a relatively recent painting painting
uh by a incarcerated or who was an
incarcerated artist
but was has been uh liberated um
fulton washington he goes by mr wash
and this is his one of his most recent
paintings
and it's entitled targeted insurrection
and this painting um was
inspired by the january
6th insurrection
on the capitol and
mr mr washington fulton washington
decided that you know he he just
he said he's felt the spirit of
this of what was occurring in him and it
he said he knew very little about tulsa
but all of a sudden he was thinking
about tulsa and
in painting tulsa and so he in
in this in this painting targeted
insurrection
tries to connect or connects three
things
the insurrection to the race massacre
to the killings of unarmed
black people and particularly black
children
as we've seen in the in the media in the
last
month and so but also
for decades so
for me this these are all the reasons
why
tulsa is so important right now it's
helping us to
really think through the depth
of this this moment and what we're
really up against
in terms of institutional violence um
and and just in many ways the lack
of institutional response around that
violence
and so i've probably spoken too long
but i'm i'm certainly i'm excited to try
to
dive in into any questions you have
about anything that i've said
so far dr hill thank you so much
as you were um closing i something came
to mind
um that i had seen um probably on
instagram or or some
social media platform but you know you
talk about this history
wasn't that long ago it might feel like
a long time ago
but this is something that i i jotted
down this morning and your words made me
think of it
when harriet tubman was born thomas
jefferson was alive
and when harriet tubman died ronald
reagan was alive
we've not been around that long and the
distant past
is not so distant um thank you for
uh for that presentation um i
actually have the book and have been
sharing it with people around the
community and our local bookstore
is going to be ordering it for for those
who after this event
want to to to order it as
well um we've had a couple questions
come
in um and i kind of want to jump in
to a little bit of the history if that's
okay
um you you covered it so well but i want
to talk about
um and you mentioned in the book and of
course this is your area of expertise
but
what role did the turn of the century
lynching culture
play in in kind of the days that
followed the massacre and
and kind of in tandem with that what was
the relationship before the massacre
between
white tolson's and greenwood was there
an indication that something like this
could be coming or was this just
kind of part of that lynching culture
that it just takes something very small
to incite something much bigger
yeah i got the hard questions right off
the bat
oh my god
[Laughter]
oh my goodness oh my goodness okay
well i'm gonna try to this is this this
should be in my wheelhouse but
um you know i i would say that
um you're right that um american culture
is lynching culture um and
you know during the early 20th century
for sure
um so much so that mark twain in 1901
uh referred to jokingly referred to the
america
as the united states of lincoln and he
argued that
you know in a decade america would be
known worldwide
not for democracy but for the lynching
of of innocent people
in the eyes of the law that is and so
um you know par so part of what
makes the race massacre possible
and particularly the scale of it is
because of lynching culture
right because you know lynchings um
particularly lynchings with allegations
connected to sexual assault
could draw thousands of people who who
end up you know as spectators or
participants
in it and these the spectacle lynchings
um really um become these events that
really
signify the distance between black
people and white people
in american society and so that culture
was
definitely strongly rooted in the south
it was certainly
strongly rooted in oklahoma oklahoma had
um between 1907 and 1950
these are the years of early statehood
oklahoma had nearly 80 lynchings
right in those years and so
lynching culture was present um and
in oklahoma and and so
you know the re and i would say just say
this and the one last thing
the reason why there's so many
photographs
of what occurred is because of lynching
culture because part of what made
lynching culture work is the photographs
of the lynchings that depicted sort of
the you know the expelling
or the murder or the killing of a black
person
and the ways in which the community had
organized
uh and the whole community had organized
and participated in this
the ways in which that sort of um you
know
you know you know neutralized the threat
so to speak but also admittedly
important ways
uh consolidated this this consensus
around white supremacy and so
the certainly lynching culture is a big
part of
why the race massacre occurred but also
why we know so much about it through
these photographs
one of the things i found really
fascinating it kind of speaks
to uh why this is an important history
to be taught outside of tulsa can you
speak to
because in some of the images we saw
writing um
on um some of those those photographs
and i was
shocked to learn why that is the case
can you share that with our audience
sure so um so
most of the images in the book are are
actual just just photographs um that
white participants or spectators took
um they that held on to for many years
but ultimately
they donated to the university of tulsa
or the tulsa historical society oklahoma
historical society and there's a
maybe a few others that they donated to
but
ultimate over time and particularly
since the 1970s over time
there has been you know hundreds of
photographs
that have been archived through this
process
and so part of what you know i
discovered in in looking at all these
these photographs
was that about two dozen of them were
postcards
and these were postcards that were
likely created by
a professional photographer
as a way to you know make a little money
you know profit from this horrific
incident and so they were only able to
profit from it because there was a
market
for um photographs
particularly um that
you know pictured right someone
you know someone in someone who
participated in it they that they wanted
to
make sure that a family member or a
friend knew that they
were a part of it um part of the
violence or participated in the violence
um you know those prints
um you would of sometimes see often see
turn into postcards but for me the most
probably the most compelling um
photographs are not necessarily the
postcards
but it's the the photographs they have
the inscriptions or the
the scribblings on them and probably
you know for me the most valuable images
are those
because they help us to understand the
intentionality
of of participants and spectators
and so the most chilling uh inscription
for me
is the photograph i believe on page 59
of the book
uh and then that photograph it's uh
it says the inscription says running the
negro out of
tulsa um and for me
it captures may not capture
all of the people who ultimately came as
a spectator or a participant
and and what the goal or objective was
but it
certainly was a sentiment among some
of those who came and burned and looted
and ultimately destroyed the greenwood
district and so for me
when i talk about it as not just
a massacre but also a community lynching
i'm trying to draw on all those things
yeah yeah
that that picture in particular really
does depict the massive
destruction to the greenwood district to
what extent
um or was there any burning or looting
in the white community
i do not know of any
damages to homes but there were
several white businesses in downtown
tulsa that were vandalized um you know
gun stores sporting goods stores were
looted for guns from
munitions um and and and
interestingly enough maybe not
interestingly
um those store owners
are the only entities only individuals
that received any form of restitution
from
the state or the city connected to what
occurred
and so the gun owners
the you know business owners uh sporting
goods stores that were looted
those were the only
businesses uh that to receive
restitution and so the president there
is a precedent for
restitution connected to
the massacre is just never focused on
victim survivors or the descendants and
so
that is what my book and and there's
many other efforts
um uh in the community there's a justice
for greenwood campaign
there's there's a number of just enough
there's a lot of
energy social justice energy around
this issue and so part of
you know what you know my book is is
ultimately trying to do is to sort of
make clear um just the
the the viciousness and and
of the violence the scope of the
violence but also highlight the
resilience
highlight the uh the the courageousness
um the resourcefulness of the community
to rebuild
in a really really hostile climate
for them but nonetheless 20 years after
the race massacre
the greenwood district is larger
it's more prosperous um there are more
businesses
um than it had been in 1921
and so that's a testament to the
survivors
and this is the store part of the story
that typically hasn't been told
even when people have recognized it as
you know the tulsa race riot or
one of the deadliest incidents or
outbreaks of anti-black violence
the only part of the story that is
emphasized is what
happened to the community
what the community has always tried to
uphold is
what they did in response to what
happened to them
in rebuilding the community and the
community experiencing a renaissance a
golden age
20 years later and so the story is not
just one of
you know of of of just
you know sacrifice and suffering it's
also
and what sort of guides me and and
and gives me energy to tell
the story um is
their resilience is their strength is
the
is there faith um
and so for all those reasons you know
what i would say is that um you know
there's going to be a lot of there's
going to be a lot of
options there going to be a lot of
choices for people
as the centennial approaches um
and you know i would say support those
platforms that are really
um trying to portray
um and highlight the perspectives of
victim survivors and their descendants
and in doing so i think that can shift
the scales of justice hopefully
hopefully hopefully hopefully
in the direction of justice for them so
absolutely there's a particular image in
the back of the book and for those of
you listening you do need to get the
book
so that you can understand what image
i'm referring to but there are
um three greenwood residents who are
standing
inside the driver that has been rebuilt
and that is
it is one that stays with me because it
does speak to the resilience and the
grit and the drive and the faith and all
of those
qualities that you talk about and is
such an important part of this history
i am going to pivot for just a second
we've had a number of
questions come in about um
of course the uh topic of reparations
and and what that looks like and one of
the things i find
um so compelling about this particular
history is it
really is kind of the most sobering
reminder of the loss of generational
wealth and prosperity
um again it wasn't that long ago but
we're talking generations beyond
if greenwood would have been and
continued
there would be a very different reality
in tulsa now so when you talk about
reparations and when people in the
community talk about reparations
what does that look like what um you
know i think
oftentimes it's kind of the buzzword
where we think money oh we have to pay
but what does that actually look like is
that
compensation in terms of financial
compensation or
or is there more to it than that
yes so this is a part of my work
that um i don't have
the bandwidth to give as much attention
to
but um but certainly uh i give attention
to
and so today is interesting today i was
on the phone
with a senior program officer at an
international transitional justice
sort of organization and
transitional justice is all about how
how you
how communities who have been afflicted
by
mass atrocities or or just you know
civil wars that devastate the community
of the country
how do they transition from those
disasters
to um you know peaceful democracies
um and so there's this whole restorative
justice process
that's connected to transitional justice
and so
there's a there's a methodology there's
a language
for how you restore a community
that has been harmed by virtue of state
violence
and so there are methodologies out there
but what what so but but i want to talk
about this
more not in sort of the concrete things
that need to happen in order for justice
to
um for for us to begin to
treat this community in ways that
justice matter
um i just want to talk about sort of
you know sort of
you know this intergenerational wealth
question
um there will be a smithsonian article
that will be published
uh in the next few weeks i believe
um that will talk about the economic
history of the greenwood district
and part of the one of the claims
in the piece will be that
greenwood circa 1921 the land holdings
in greenwood inclusive of homes
businesses value of those businesses
the land that they they were on would
have would be
worth in today's dollars
600 million dollars
and so when you think about 600 million
dollars
in 19 or in today's dollars but
in in 1921 that's a lot of money
and imagine if that
if we just take you know you know how
economies grow
one two three percent in a good year
three percent maybe
but one percent or so over the
last 100 years what could
what would greenwood be today even with
economic depressions even with all the
all the all the economic upturns and
downturns
the kind of intergenerational wealth
that have been that
would have been passed on had it
been allowed to flourish is a question
that
that i often asked and so
but the one of the questions that i you
know and
ask in addition to that is what if
simply
the city had invested you know
in the community or had or had helped
rebuild the community
in the aftermath what would have been
possible if
that would have occurred because what we
have to realize is that even though
the green will a version of the
greenwood district
um was rebuilt in the aftermath
there were many businesses uh prominent
businesses
at that that did not rebuild the gurley
hotel
uh o.w girl who was you know the the
you know you know kind of understood as
the founding
visionary of greenwood he built the
girly hotel
one of the first uh businesses in the
greenwood district
it was destroyed and he never rebuilt
um you know the stratford hotel which is
one of the finest black hotels
um in in america black america
it was destroyed never rebuilt
um and so as much
resilience as resilience as there was um
there was also um you know just
crippling uh despair
in ways in which people either because
of terror or because they had lacked the
resources
or for numerous reasons um
decided that um
you know they could not continue to to
to to to exist in in this place
and so uh they had took everything from
them
so um it i think
when we and i'll just say this final
when we really um listen to the voices
of the survivors
that's when i think this history really
becomes real
and we understand um the scope
and the scale the magnitude of what
occurred and
and just not just the the shocking
violence but also
in the aftermath the deprivation of
civil liberties
um and the humiliations that were
suffered
and the detention um it's just it's so
much here
to unpack and so my hope was that the
images would kind of
to help us wrap our minds better
around those uh survivor testimonies
yeah we've had a couple questions come
in about
education actually somebody's suggesting
the
500 images that you um you
went through in creating this book could
they be
created into a or bound into a graphic
novel to use
as a as a education tool in the
classroom
um and that made me think as i read that
question that i know you've done a lot
of work in particular
after arriving in oklahoma realizing
that
this was not being taught to people who
actually
lived in oklahoma that many people
didn't know about this
this event and um were shocked i think
even the mayor
at one point in a video that i saw had
no idea that this had happened and saw
these
images and thought what in the world so
um
talk about if you could and this could
be a very brief answer because
you know when you get into how you
translate this to you know teaching in
the classroom you can get you know
i'm sure yeah very cumbersome yeah
um what has been the hesitancy
and do you find that people especially
in this moment where we are right now
that people are more open to
kind of engaging with this material in
the classroom
yeah i mean what i've discovered and
talking to teachers
since 2016 is that there was a real
hesitancy because
one they didn't have a lot of support
in teaching this history they didn't
know where the resources were they
didn't know how to administer the
resources
um they certainly you know were had
angst about how to talk about this
issue because it is and and will remain
a very polarizing history
in this state there are people who
believe that
calling it a race massacre is
overblowing it
and making it appear as if
this was a it was a conspiracy uh you
know white tulsa against black ptolesins
um and so there is real hesitancy to
talk about it as a massacre
you know more comfortable with race riot
and and the ways in which
the historian history has been typically
told as
black people and and and why are people
at war with each other
and whites just happen to wipe out the
black community and so there is
there are these narratives that are
embedded in
these these terms race riot race
massacre
um but so so i would say just that um
you know that that's kind of why you
know i
i have been emphasizing um you know
race massacre uh so much
i have to say this is one of the reasons
your work and doing research on you and
seeing the work you've done was one of
the reasons that we entered into this
partnership with our
school district so um i did notice a
couple kids on the call so
i'm really glad that you know we can
provide um an
outlet and and hopefully as we go
forward this will be
um something that we can continue to
learn about
two more questions one that is going to
allow you to dream a little bit
and one is going to allow you to brag on
your city a little bit
so the one question um that came in is
do you have any hypothesis on what
greenwood would be like today
if there were no um oh if it were
allowed to survive
yeah i've been hearing a lot of
greenwood as wakanda
and you if you're not familiar with
wakanda it's sort of
it was this this powerful african
secretive african kingdom depicted
um in the black panther but it was this
uh community that had tremendous wealth
um and in superior technology to
the outside world to the white world but
use
its power for good and so i i can
imagine
um greenwood as a kind of
in the 21st century had it been allowed
to survive and not just survive
but allowed to thrive um it could be
a kind of wakanda um
this place of great wealth but also
great you know one of the the things
about
um greenwood that gets over
overshadowed is that not only was one of
the most affluent black communities
in the country it was also one of the
most educated you had
a very sick you know you had a
significant for the time
and for tulsa's population a sizable
black professional class that included
doctors lawyers
dentists pharmacists um
you know not just teachers and clergymen
and so
you really had you had journalists
that you had a true sort of
educated black middle class black elite
um who were you know who were
very community conscious engaged not in
in
in race struggles and so this was an
exceptional
community um it was law-abiding
peaceful educated
and wealthy and it
for no fault of its own was destroyed
because of a faulty allegation
and the belief that black men who came
downtown
came downtown to rebel against tulsa
and that is the motivation for the
invasion and destruction of the
community
to suppress those you know
you know in comparison to the mob you
know
75 men and so
um so that's the the painful realities
of this history
um that the photo sort of uh photographs
tell
um and i'm hoping to you know move
people
intellectually and and hopefully
emotionally
yeah well the book certainly does that
and i want to
offer as a companion to this book um dr
scott ellsworth and his book death in
the in a promised land
which is another really wonderful
account um
it doesn't have the it's not told from a
photographic perspective but from a
historic perspective it's really really
good
and i i believe you know um scott
ellsworth so uh
yeah he's uh he's a great historian um
really really knowledgeable guy in the
book is very very good okay so
now last question um you get to um
perhaps brag on your city a little bit
the last question is are there any
memorials or museums at greenwood now
to make sure that the massacre has not
forgotten and educate those who are
traveling there
yeah one of the things that inspired me
to do the book as well as
to write you know op-eds and and
and and try to lead a you know teacher
institute in oklahoma
around the race massacre
was how i encountered this history
through public memorials and so there's
a beautiful
um sort of public
art memorialization of this history
it's uh it's reconciliation park
um and it's one of the nicest most i
think most elegant sort of
artistic depictions of of of what
occurred
and so it's you know this is um
this uh park is within the greenwood
district
um and it's open to the public free and
open to the public that's
i would start almost there at john hope
franklin reconciliation park
um but then i would definitely schedule
a tour
to visit vernon and historic vernon amy
church
which was you know uh one of the i we
believe
the first sort of institution
um within the community and certainly
uh vernon ameen i think is the longest
continuous land holder
in the greenwood district um and and the
vernon amy
was near totally destroyed um the only
the basement
survived the massacre and so if you go
to vernon ame
uh as i have multiple times you
you you walk into the basement and
you're walking into history you're
walking until 1921.
uh you can still see burn marks
from the violence in the church you can
see
the part of the basement where there was
fire and then part of the basement where
there
where it wasn't fire and so you know in
the days following
or the neck the following son that they
held church
in the basement um and so
you know vernon amy is decidedly
um you should go there because it's the
only
structure from 1921
or the pre-1921 race massacre
um in in the district but then just
across the street from
uh vernon amy is the mabel b little
house
and this is a home uh that was created
post uh the massacre uh
it was the home that that um
it was a home that was rebuilt um you
know
i think by 1927 and so besides
the the church this is the
also the oldest structure um you know
in the community uh or the second oldest
structure in the community
and so i would say those are the three
places there are going to be there's
actually many more and i think
are the ones that i won't get into
because if there's another question i
want to take it but
there's a new history museum greenwood
rising
that will open on june 2nd
of 2021 and this museum
will for the first time try to tell
to the world um in a very you know
sustained way this not just the history
of the race master but the history of
greenwood
and why it matters and why we you know
why we should care
and so um i'm really excited you know
for
what that museum can do
for not just understanding greenwood's
history
but other histories of racial violence
in america um
yeah that's amazing and i know you
mentioned your work with the
uh centennial commission and um i just
i just want our audience to know that if
you visit tulsa 2021.org
um many of the things that dr hill has
just mentioned
on that website as well as kind of the
list of things that are happening
um as we approach the the centennial of
this event
um we did have one last
question and i think this is um this is
an interesting one to ask because i
think a lot of people
wonder how you can do this kind of work
um where you really are submersing
yourself into
such a an ugly history and there really
is no other
other way to put it how do you then
get up and continue to work and engage
with
um you know with the white community and
uh the black community and how
do how do you i guess you uh you carry
yourself
in and that relationship with history
and and reckoning it so that you can
move forward
yeah i mean so
yeah that's so that's a lot but um i can
try to
hopefully get it all get to it all um i
would say that
the two things that come to mind for me
is just
intensive self-care um
you know that's really important to me
i recognize several years ago
that carrying the weight of this history
with me all the time
when i say that i mean teaching about it
writing about it um you know doing
presentations about it
um being interviewed by the media about
it
on a daily basis takes a toll on you
and can jade you can make you angry
if you don't engage in intensive
self-care and so
you know i i do a lot of meditation
i do a lot of reflection and journaling
and most importantly i have an academic
coach
and an executive coach that i talk to
weekly
that i process all of this with and so
i do a lot of work to do the work
to do this work because i know that if i
don't exercise
the pain and and the suffering that i am
reading about
if i don't process that and deal with it
it will impact me it will impact my
relationships etc
and so i've i've gotten really good at
intensive self-care that allows me
to do this work without breaking down
without really you know getting tired
because
you know part of what i get i've gotten
really clear about
is yes i'm studying the
history of brutality and horrific
killings
but what i'm really trying i'm writing
toward is justice and i'm writing to
support
a a flesh and blood community
in a struggle for justice and so it's
that
hope it's the hope that
i wake up for and wake up with as i do
this really horrific history
and so it's it's my perspective that i
have about what i'm doing
and then it's that intensive self-care
um aided
by the support of a coach aided by
just you know meditation and and lots of
reflection and journaling around this
and so
all that allows me to do these
presentations on a daily basis
and smile you know and not not be
so mad because i'm carrying all of that
all the time yeah i i imagine that
weight
is very heavy and i know i think i speak
for our whole community when we say
thank you
for for being here and for sharing um
your expertise with us um
i am personally thrilled i i i'll be
very honest i was anxious about today um
i wanted to make sure that we were going
to do this
topic justice and i am so glad that you
were here
to uh to really lend such a great
perspective
um and and share some real truths and
again i will say
please go to gramercy tomorrow
and order the book it is really really
powerful even multiple things in case i
had to
we had to fill in anything the book is
so
powerful the juxtaposition of imagery by
white photographers and the personal
stories of survivors
is incredibly moving
and as you mentioned in the book and i
believe you mentioned
here on the call it's you have to look
at these images
you are you are called to look at them
um
and um we are called as a greater
community to
make sure that we write this and that
something like this doesn't happen again
so i thank you um dr hill for being here
um if anybody i don't think we have any
we've answered
all the questions how often can you say
that at the end of the day
very good i'm i'm proud i'm proud it was
really really such a wonderful event i'm
so i'm so appreciative of your forgiving
my
um inability to tell time zones
apart and i do before we jump off this
call i want to
just make sure that the community knows
that this was the first
in a series of programs in our run-up to
juneteenth
the next one will be on may 19th another
virtual event by our very own favorite
local historian dr scott king owen who
will talk about the emancipation
proclamation
as a freedom document it will be
really really very interesting and he
does
always such great work so mark your
calendars
and again dr hill thank you for being
here
i so appreciate your time i appreciate
you answering
um some really personal questions and
and sharing
this with our community i know we are we
are all very grateful and the better for
it
so thank you now get back to you i heard
some kids crying in the background when
we spoke earlier sorry
yes
i look forward to following up with you
in the near future i feel like i need to
come to oklahoma um it is since i've
been reading uh yours in dr
ellsworth's book i feel like this is
something that um
is is a must very soon so thank you okay
and have a great evening and back to the
community thank you for tuning in
and i hope all of you have a great
evening and
stay dry i think it might be raining out
there and we will
talk soon thank you all