M4F in Tulsa - Study Trip Blog

After visiting John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park we walked through historic Greenwood, eventually arriving at Greenwood Cultural Center, one of the earliest interpretive spaces focusing on the 1921 massacre. Inside the Greenwood Cultural Center, newspaper clippings and photographs from the time of the massacre, detailed the events of the day along with a documentary that played on a continuous loop in the lobby. Other clippings told the story of rebuilding Greenwood and efforts at reconciliation over the subsequent decades, including financial claims made by Greenwood residents regarding the value of their obliterated property. A separate room displayed names, faces, and stories of survivors. After the Center closed, we sat outside on the grass wondering whether the focus of the day’s memorials on the destruction of property and the deaths of talented Black professionals created or reinforced the idea of a ‘worthy victim.’ Is there too much of a capitalist framework applied to the memory of the Greenwood community, so often remembered as Black Wall Street? Or is such remembrance more a way of emphasizing what Black communities in America—so often prohibited by white America from prospering in the way that white communities had within the capitalist framework—can achieve?

We also brought up questions about how ordinary Tulsans—not tourists like ourselves—interacted with the sites of memory we saw today. What do they know of the history? How have they experienced change in the community of Greenwood, especially in recent years as more attention has been given to the 1921 massacre?

It should maybe come as no surprise that our first visits to sites for public memory and reconciliation in Tulsa resulted in more questions than answers; after all, the processes that led to the realization of today’s sites were neither short nor easy, and even less so clearly defined. We started with John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park on North Detroit Street in the Greenwood District. Greenwood is the site of what was known as Black Wall Street prior to its near-total destruction at the hands of white Tulsans in 1921 in what may best be described as—some of our discussions centered around the use of this word and its applicability to the Tulsa massacre—a pogrom. Reconciliation Park’s memorials raised questions about how we think about ‘victory’ after tragedy and what effect a linear telling of history has on our memories of past events. We wondered about whether there was real hope for a better future displayed at Reconciliation Park, or if there was a sort of resignation to constant struggle towards a future that will never come. The theme of vague, undefined victory continued at the recently-completed Black Wall Street mural painted on the side of an I-44 overpass next to the Greenwood Cultural Center. An acrostic inscription to the left of the artwork ended on “T is for transformation, always possible when we keep our eyes on the prize.” What is the prize? What is victory following the systematic razing of an entire community?