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Because this year’s Memorial Day commemoration coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, it is particularly poignant. More than 400,000 Black men served in World War I, according to the PBS documentary “Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten,” and several of them returned to, or established themselves in, Tulsa after the war. All of them were forced to return to a country that did not reciprocate their affection. A 48-hour siege on the area known as “Black Wall Street” by Booker T. Washington, a neighborhood of Black-owned businesses and real estate in the Greenwood district, was carried out on May 31, 1921, to express that sentiment. It is estimated that hundreds of Black people were killed by a racist White mob, and the entire area was completely destroyed by the fire. In addition to ground assault, planes bombing the district carried out aerial bombardment of the area. No one was arrested or charged; in fact, the mayor of Tulsa blamed the deceased for being “uppity” and “bringing about their own demise,” according to the mayor.
If this sounds familiar to you, but you didn’t learn it in school, there’s a good chance you’ve been watching HBO’s “Watchmen” television show. It’s beyond pathetic that one of the worst mass shootings to occur on American soil had to be taught by a superhero television show rather than by actual classroom instruction. The fact is that neither my Blackety-Black grammar school nor any of the history classes I took throughout my education taught me anything about it. It was such a heinous crime, as reported by DeNeen L. Brown of the Washington Post, that Black people who survived it did not want to speak about it because it was too heartbreaking to revisit, let alone potentially dangerous to talk about in polite company. White residents and politicians in 1921 Oklahoma immediately reframed the brutality as a righteous act, rewriting history in ways that sound disturbingly similar to what is happening right now in the United States of America.
A native of Tulsa, Brown penned the 2018 article that served as the impetus for the city’s reexamination of the incident. Aside from her, there are forensic archaeologists, preachers, historians and current residents featured in this documentary’s gallery of talking heads, which includes forensic archaeologists, preachers, historians and current residents. Brown talks about her grandmother, whom she visited from time to time and who she occasionally questioned about her childhood in the South. The response was always a polite dismissal, a refusal to return to the place of whatever trauma she had endured previously. Furthermore, and the documentary makes this point several times, discussing events like this could have resulted in your death if you were caught. This hampered the transmission of information because Black history is more often than not an oral tradition rather than a scholastic tradition.
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“Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten,” one of a number of related documentaries that have been broadcast on television this week, focuses on the efforts to locate the graves of the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Currently, there is some discussion about how forensic scientists and archaeologists scan beneath the surface of the ground for anomalies that could lead them to mass grave sites. There are numerous sites where this activity is carried out around the world, with the hope that any discoveries will enable descendants of the victims to be reunited with their murdered relatives, while also allowing the deceased to be properly interred and remembered. Oaklawn Cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in Tulsa, has been the site of several attempts to assassinate the mayor. Only two of the tombstones in Oaklawn are marked with the names of African-Americans, but there are vast swaths of land where there is no evidence of their presence. Brown is present at each excavation site.
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Throughout the film, terms that may be offensive to some viewers are repeated, including “systemic racism” and “reparations.” Those assertions are backed up by in-depth investigations into how history is repeating itself at the expense of African Americans. Tulsa police officer Drew Diamond recalls officers referring to the Black neighborhoods they patrolled as “war zones,” and he believes this is because they’ve been taught to believe this is the case. In his words, “when you hire and train people with the idea that they are warriors,” they will look for a battle to fight. This is supported by the Human Rights Watch report on the Tulsa Police Department, titled “Get on the Ground,” which was released in 2019. With footage of Black men being shot by police officers, director Jonathan Silvers adds to Michel Martin’s narration on this subject matter, which is far more triggering than any phrase or terminology. The presence of armed, White militiamen at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, as well as the city of Tulsa’s outrage over a street painting eerily similar to the one that adorned a street in Washington, D.C. following the murder of George Floyd, are both troubling.
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‘Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten’ is a documentary that devotes time to residents who are seeking change and improvement in their communities. Greg Robinson II, a community activist and mentor who works with residents in North Tulsa, speaks with us. Tyrance Billingley II, one of his protégés, talks about how Black residents leave the city after high school because they do not believe they will be able to achieve success there. When a talented graduate announced that they were leaving Tulsa, they would “elicit applause.” Consequently, Billingsley developed an enterprise plan to bring a technology center to Tulsa, an opportunity that may deter young talent from jumping ship the moment they have the opportunity to do so. Even though I would have liked to have learned more about this particular project, the documentary has a lot of other information to cover in its 84-minute running time. I also wish that more time had been devoted to the science and research of uncovering hidden mass graves, which I believe should have happened. These two subjects are deserving of their own documentaries.
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A film like this is only as good as the people who appear in it. All of the people who appear have something useful to say, from current mayor Gt. Bynum on down to engineers Eric Stover and Betsy Warner, who are both involved in the excavation projects. The pastor of the AME Church, Greenwood’s once-dominant house of worship that was destroyed and rebuilt, is also featured in the documentary. It is brought up that the cruel game of “what if” is being played, as in “what if the successful hotel owner had been allowed to build his brand over time, sowing the seeds of generational Black wealth?” Vanessa Hall-Harper, a member of the Tulsa City Council, is the person who best bridges the gap between the past and the present. Specifically referring to the armed militia men who were “patrolling” during the protest, she claims they “represented the same mob that was represented in 1921, when the massacre occurred.” If one pays attention to current events, her words do not come across as hyperbolic.
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“Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten” is best used as a teaching tool, filling in some of the gaps in American history that were purposely redacted by the same types of people who wish to keep the redactions going in the future. The documentary will air on PBS on May 31st, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riots.
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