What have we learned in 99 years?
On the morning of May 31, angry and anguished Tulsans came together in the field across the street from the Greenwood Cultural Center to mourn the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota six days earlier.
Floyd’s killing, only the latest in several high-profile cases of unarmed blacks being killed by whites, including many slain by police, sparked outrage and unrest throughout the nation. Protests and marches sprung up in dozens of U.S. cities, but the assembly in the Greenwood and Archer neighborhood held a particular significance.
99 years ago this week, Tulsa earned its place in ignominy when a white mob descended upon the city’s “Black Wall Street” area just north of downtown, murdering everyone and destroying everything in its path. Houses, churches, businesses, and bodies burned after overt racism birthed a lie that fueled a two-day rampage of hatred and greed that was to leave an indelible stain on the city. A year shy of a century later, the neighborhood that now stands as a phoenix in the annals of American racial history was the launching point for a rally and march in protest of new black lives lost at the hands of police, vigilantes, and thugs.
Although national attention is currently on the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in South Georgia, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, as it focused in recent years on the deaths of Treyvon Martin in Miami Gardens, Florida and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Tulsa too has been the scene of blacks killed by white law enforcement officers. These victims include Terence Crutcher, Joshua Barre,
Eric Harris, and Joshua Harvey, names that were remembered by hundreds of protestors who marched from Black Wall Street to the South Tulsa home of Mayor G.T. Bynum, and then on to Brookside by Sunday night.
On Monday Bynum and Tulsa
Chief of Police Wendell Franklin met for three hours with the organizers of the “We Can’t Breathe” protest march that was held on May 30 to discuss unresolved issues of tension, and progress was reportedly made in several areas.
The mayor emerged from the meeting expressing his support for an Office of the Independent Monitor to review police internal investigations and uses of force, although this would also require action by the City Council as well as agreements with the police union. Bynum said the city would explore mental health initiatives with the police department and, perhaps most visibly, would end its contract with the controversial Live PD television show.
“We agree there is a better, non-commercial way to communicate the work of the Tulsa Police Department than a for-profit TV show, and we will develop a nonprofit alternative with broader programming for utilization moving forward,” the mayor said after the meeting. “I’m incredibly proud of the work of the men and women of the Tulsa Police Department, and I want Tulsans to be able to see the broad range of what your officers do. Utilizing a show that sells ads based on the work of our officers is not necessary to achieve that.”
Both the mayor and the police chief have downplayed brief outbursts of vandalism that erupted on Brookside Sunday night and near Woodland Hills Mall on Monday night, saying the actions were taken by a few individuals who were not affiliated with the protests and did not reflect the spirit of the demonstrations.
Although Tulsa still has work to be done to satisfy the concerns of the city’s black and Hispanic communities, it is hoped that discussions such as that held between the mayor and community leaders on Monday will continue in the weeks and months ahead, and will lead to real and lasting change as the city moves toward an important centennial milestone this time next year.