Tulsa Council discusses removal of BLM mural
TULSA — The Tulsa City Council is recommending that a Black Lives Matter street painting be removed from the historic Greenwood District.
The council's recommendation garnered enough votes for approval at Wednesday's virtual city council meeting, despite one councilwoman's warning that removing the mural would send the wrong message about the city, which is already under the spotlight due to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and a related lawsuit.
Councilwoman Kara Joy McKee represents District 4 which includes the stretch of Greenwood Avenues where the mural is painted. She said Tulsa will be the only major city across the country to remove a Black Lives Matter street painting.
She said she is working with a private group to vacate a nearby street so that a similar painting could be made there but plans weren't confirmed on Wednesday.
“I still don't think the haste is necessary ,” McKee said regarding removing the street art.
The council is recommending that the city move up a street improvement project set for spring 2021 to October. At that time, the city's street and stormwater department will perform a mill and overlay on Greenwood Avenue where the mural is painted.
The project would
effectively remove the painting.
By moving up the street improvement project the city won't have to pay an estimated $20,000 to remove the painting. District 7 Councilwoman Lori Decter Wright said she wanted the public to know that the street improvement project was already budgeted,
thus the city isn't spending any additional city funds for the mural removal.
The street painting is one of many similar murals that have sprung up in cities across the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd' s death in May. The murals are seen as a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice by supporters but detractors
have rejected the street paintings because they feel the national Black Lives Matter organization that started the movement is Marxist and anti-police.
The 250- foot-long mural consists of the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in large bright yellow letters along Greenwood Avenue, near the corner of Greenwood and Archer Street.
City council members have been wrestling with what to do with the street art for several weeks.
At the heart of the matter is that activists painted the mural on the street on June 18 without first obtaining a city permit.
The mural has drawn support from several quarters but also created a situation in which Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum and the council had to decide if the city was prepared to handle the long-term consequences of allowing it to remain.
District 7 Councilman Phil Lakin Jr. said he had been getting numerous phone calls and emails from Tulsa residents who wanted to know why it was taking the council so long to make a decision regarding mural.
He said the street painting was an “extremely divisive issue and I think there's more peaceful ways to express our opinions.”
Council woman Vanessa Hall-Harper, whose District 1 includes much of predominantly Black North Tulsa, voted against the recommendation. McKee voted in favor of it so that she could make one final plea for her fellow council members to change their minds. She made a motion to rescind the recommendation to move up the street project which would remove the mural. Hall-Harper seconded the motion but it failed to gain enough votes for approval.
Afterward, Hall- Harper, the only Black person on t he council, expressed her disappointment.
“I wish Tulsa could take a stance like other cities clearly have — an unapologetic, and unequivocal stance that this is important. That they are not concerned about graffiti ordinances,” Hall-Harper said.
“There are councilors who want to dictate what the Black community can say and can't say and that is the epitome of white privilege.”