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Tulsa has big plans for the centennial of the 1921 race massacre that left the city’s Black community in ruins. Many residents say these efforts are important. But members of the city’s Black community say they’re just starting the process of mourning what they’ve lost – even as they’re trying to build something new.
The Greenwood Art Project aims to make sure Tulsa and the country know the history of both the massacre and Black Wall Street. Program director Jerica Wortham sees art as an opportunity to invite others into the story, and to capture the spirit of the city’s thriving Black community. “I’m so excited for the world to be able to come here and experience this story, to experience it in real time, and to feel the energy of the space being reignited,” she says.
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When our reporters met the Rev. Robert Turner in September, he was deep in the fight for reparations for the victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Every Wednesday for two years, he’d marched from City Hall to the Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church, the church where he serves as pastor. He’d preach to anyone who would listen about the need to repair the harm done to the Black community – in Tulsa and across the country.
Now, as Tulsa commemorates the massacre’s centennial, we reconnect with Mr. Turner. He shares his frustrations over what he views as efforts to stall progress toward racial justice. He also talks about where he does see change, and what he hopes Tulsa can show the rest of the country.
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2021 was always going to be a fraught year for Tulsa, Oklahoma. On May 31 and June 1, the city marks the centennial of a racist massacre that, over a 24-hour period, destroyed the Black neighborhood of Greenwood. The event left at least dozens dead and displaced thousands.
Over the past year, city officials and civic leaders have planned events to commemorate the victims and survivors. Yet the city is also facing a reparations lawsuit from those same individuals, and the commission in charge of commemoration plans has been accused of whitewashing the city’s history and marketing a narrative of unity that doesn’t yet exist.
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Tulsa is commemorating the centennial of the 1921 race massacre, a violent incident of racism that almost entirely destroyed the cityâs Black community. The events are putting a spotlight on Black Tulsansâ long, painful struggle toward racial equality â a struggle echoed throughout U.S. history in Black communities across the country. Both historically and in todayâs political environment, the sense among many Black voters in Tulsa is that neither party really has their interests at heart.Â
âThey feel it doesnât matter either way, Republican or Democrat,â says Mareo Johnson, a local pastor and founder of Black Lives Matter Tulsa. ââNothing is going to change in my situation, my circumstance, my surroundings.ââÂ
Kay Tobin Lahusen, Gay Rights Activist and Photographer, Dies at 91
She and her partner, Barbara Gittings, were on the front lines long before Stonewall, and Ms. Lahusen photographed protests during the movement’s earliest days.
The photographer and activist Kay Tobin Lahusen, right, at a gay rights demonstration in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1967. She and her partner, Barbara Gittings, helped organize a number of protests in the 1960s.Credit.Associated Press
May 27, 2021
Kay Tobin Lahusen, a prominent gay rights activist whose photographs documented the movement’s earliest days and depicted lesbians who were out when they were virtually absent from popular culture, died on Wednesday in West Chester, Pa. She was 91.