Tulsa begins street project, removing BLM mural
TULSA — The city of Tulsa began a street improvement project on Monday removing a Black Lives Matter street mural in North Tulsa's Greenwood District.
Nevertheless, A local artist vowed that the street art's message of racial justice would live on through other murals throughout the city.
“We're going to keep painting the town yellow and we're going to keep spreading the message and the fact that Black Lives Matter,” Briana She a, a Tulsa artist and writer said Monday.
“It is heartbreaking because this was the one thats parked the fire to get
all the other ones painted (around the city) and this is the one that brought the community together time after time after time and it was a beautiful thing.”
The mural is on Greenwood Avenue in the historic Black Wall Street area of North Tulsa. The street project's targeted area is Greenwood Avenue from E Archer Street, north for 300 feet and will involve removing the top surface of the road, patching underneath the surface and then overlaying the roadway surface with asphalt, according to a city news release.
The Tulsa City Council recommended that the street project initially planned for March 2021 be accelerated to remove the street mural that sparked a wave of controversy across the city. A majority of council members recommended the mural removal because it was painted on the street without a city permit and they received numerous complaints about it.
The city's Oct. 1 new release made the public aware that the street improvement project was to begin on Monday.
Shea and other supporters of the mural expressed disappointment that the project began about 4 a.m ., a few hours earlier than they said they were led to believe it would start.
“I'm sorry friends. They've already began (sic) the removal process. The City of Tulsa and Mayor G.T. Bynum decided to be sneaks and start before 5:00 am this morning,” Shea said in a Facebook post.
Shea helped lead a group of artists and other community members to paint the mural beginning about 11 p.m. June 18. The group worked overnight, wanting the mural completed in time for the Juneteenth celebration in the Greenwood District on June 19 and President Donald J . Trump's June 20 campaign rally less than a mile away at the BOK Center.
Shea said the artists thought mistakenly the donated paint they were using was water soluble so the mural would be temporary.
When the mural remained intact, the city received inquiries about groups possibly painting messages like “Back The Blue” and “Babies Lives Matter” in Greenwood. Some council members shared their concerns that not only was the Black Lives Matter mural painted without a permit but it would also set an unwanted precedent making city leaders the unwilling arbiters of which messages are OK for street murals on public streets. Several council members said they had received numerous complaints from their constituents who wanted the Black Lives Matter mural removed.
Shea and other supporters of the street art said the Greenwood District was a fitting home for the mural as the historic site of the prosperous Black community called Black Wall Street. It was destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre when white mobs descended upon t he community, killing hundreds of Blacks and burning down homes and businesses.
Street murals bearing the Black Lives Matter message have been contentious in some cities across the count ry. Several of t he murals, many bearing the words of the Black Lives Matter mural in large yellow letters, have been de faced. The mural in the Greenwood District was defaced with blue paint in August but artists made repairs andre painted the mural. Some critics of the murals say they don't like them because they promote the Black Lives Matter organization and movement, which detractors call Marxist, unpatriotic and anti-family.
Vanessa Hall-Harper, the Tulsa council's only Black council member, and council member Kara Joy McKee were among the supporters of the mural. The pair hoped the city would allow the street art to remain at least until the planned street improvement project originally set for March 2021.
Hall-Harper has said Greenwood Avenue is divided between District 1, which she represents, and District 4, with the Inner Dispersal Loop, or IDL, as the dividing line. The Greenwood business district where the mural is located is in McKee's District 4.
McKee has said she was aware of a proposals by a private group to vacate a street in the Greenwood District so that the mural could be placed on a private street. She said she was hoping that would happen before the mural on Greenwood Avenue mural was removed.
McKee told several news outlets she was heartened by a recent effort by some Tulsa churches to paint Black Lives Matter murals on their church properties.
Leaders at Fellowship Congregation al Church United Church of Christ, All Souls Unitarian, College Hill Presbyterian and St. Paul's United Methodist said the murals were painted on their properties because their predominantly white churches wanted to show solidarity with those who supported the Black Lives Matter street mural in the Greenwood District and t he movement behind it. The Rev. Chris Moore, senior pastor at Fellowship Congregational, said more
churches planned to paint the murals in their parking lots.
Shea said she has been part of the church mural project and recently helped paint murals at Centenary United Methodist Church and First Lutheran Church. She said the mural project is in partnership with Tiffany Crutcher and the Terence Crutcher Foundation to continue to spread the Black Lives Matter message and to honor Terence Crutcher on the fourth anniversary of his death. The artist said she also helped paint a mural on the side of the building that houses the ahha art gallery at 101 E Archer.
Other supporters of the street mural on Greenwood Avenue included Tulsa' s Black Lives Matter chapter, led by the Rev. Mareo Johnson, and the Rev. Robert Turner, senior pastor of Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church on Greenwood Avenue. Several organizations also expressed support for the mural including the Terence Crutcher Foundation, Greenwood Arts & Cultural Society, Greenwood Chamber of Commerce and the Tulsa Arts Commission, which said the mural should remain because it was“a work of public art.”
Meanwhile, the street improvement project on Greenwood Avenue is expected to take about a week, according to the city's news release. Access to businesses will remain open throughout the project. The street work is part of routine and preventive maintenance funded by the 2014 Improve Our Tulsa General Obligation Bond.