Importance of Teaching About the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot

[sheshe2]

May 31, 2018, will mark the ninety-seventh anniversary of the cataclysmic 1921 Tulsa Race Riot (the “Riot”), a man-made calamity more accurately described as a massacre, pogrom, holocaust, assault, or burning. This defining moment in Tulsa and American history, despite its significance as the worst “race riot” [or massacre] in America, remains a mystery to many and an unknown to many more.

We need to teach and learn about the Riot and, importantly, the community in which it occurred–about famed “Black Wall Street.” We need to know what happened and why. We need to remember so that the carnage and chaos Tulsa witnessed in the spring of 1921 never happens again. We need to hold people accountable; assign moral responsibility for the gross depredations and injustices perpetrated on Tulsa soil. If, and only if, we teach and learn about the Riot may we: (i) begin the process of reconciliation in earnest; (ii) recapture our too-often unacknowledged sense of shared humanity; and (iii) create for posterity a community more open, inclusive, and loving than the one in which we live today. Healing the still-festering wounds left by the Riot is possible, but we must incorporate this potent, painful, poignant legacy into school curricula in deliberate, systematic ways. Curriculum counts.

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The history surrounding the Riot is but one case in point. Some believe a conspiracy of silence enveloped the community in the wake of the Riot and muzzled it for decades thereafter. Tulsans scarcely spoke of this traumatic event privately, let alone publicly. No one dared to address it through education—pedagogically. Textbooks omitted references to this ugly chapter in our history.

The full dimensions of this epic tragedy, buried layers-deep in the City’s community consciousness, have only been recently realized. Arguably, that years-long obfuscation stunted Tulsa’s growth, both physically and spiritually. Our failure to come clean about Tulsa’s dirty little secret undermined the ability of the community to: (1) understand Tulsa’s role in the twentieth-century American race drama; (2) build trust across the great chasm of race; and (3) use history as a catalyst for strategic, transformational change.


More: https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2017/10/09/curriculum-counts-the-importance-of-teaching-about-the-1921-tulsa-race-riot/





Dick Rowland stepped on Sarah Pages foot while entering an elevator. She screamed...and so it began.

[FoxNewsSucks]

1. I think maybe one of the most important things is

that it was not actually a riot. It was a massacre. Murder.

I first read about this a few years ago while on a trip to Tulsa. I don't remember where the article was, but the information I've seen this week is far more detailed, and depressing.

[sheshe2]

2. The article mentions a massacre.

Calling it a riot downplays the reality of what happened.

[FoxNewsSucks]

3. Definitely does,

I drove through the Greenwood area on that trip, and obviously today there is nothing at all that would give a clue to the devastation that happened. I think I did see one of those "historical markers", but as in the article you posted, it downplays the shocking reality.

It's not just "more accurately" called a massacre, it's exactly that. And just one of who knows how many things swept under the rug by not being taught in school or told anywhere else.

[sheshe2]

4. Yes it does.

Thanks, FNS.

[bobbieinok]

6. Also 'riot' indicates to whites that blacks caused it

[sheshe2]

7. Yet they, whites...

Burned it down.

[bobbieinok]

8. Yes. Good word choice to slant the view of the event, right?!

[sheshe2]

9. Yes.

Then did their best to hide what happened.

They couldn't handle the fact that 'blacks' were more successful than they were. So they burned it down and massacred hundreds.

[bobbieinok]

10. It's telling that white developers wanted to buy up the property after the buildings were burned dow

Some powerful city leaders prevented that

Many blacks spent several months living in tents

John Hope Franklin, famous historian, professor at Duke, lived in Tulsa as a child. After the massacre his dad moved the family out of Tulsa as quickly as possible

[bobbieinok]

5. Article is by Hannibal Johnson, a black Harvard-trained lawyer Native of Tulsa

He's written several books about Greenwood, Black Wall Street, and the Race Massacre