We are glad Tulsa and Oklahoma City are only a little more than a hundred miles apare. Prufrock was out of battery power, and we had not showered or run, and just wanted to get someplace where we could plug in, clean up and get our act together.
Karen is using Campendium, an app, to find many of our Prufrock camping sites. Based on location and reviews, we picked a camping site near the Keystone Dam, about 10 miles from Tulsa. The campground is run and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Boy, were we impressed. These folks know how to build things. I guess if you can build and maintain a dam and its waterways, you can build some electric plug-in outlets and water hookups for campers. The Keystone Dam was our backdrop. We were downstream, and could not count all the herons and other birds standing in the shallows, waiting for fish.
We plugged in Prufrock and everything was back to normal. The voltage meter was immediately on the rise. We ran a few miles, showered, and headed into the city – less than 20 minutes away.
The Tulsa Race Massacre
Our first stop was Greenwood Rising, a teaching museum dedicated to telling the story of Black Wall Street and the Greenwood massacre. It has been open for two years. We are grateful – and are learning so much – as previously hidden history is coming to light, particularly after the murder of George Floyd and thanks to the work of scholars like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Michael Harriot.
Greenwood Avenue was the heart of a prosperous Black Tulsa neighborhood in the early 20th century – and the site of a horrific massacre in 1921. This powerful, interactive self guided museum provided deep context about what led to this event.
We learned a lot about the history of Oklahoma – comprised roughly of a third Native Americans, a third Black and a third White as the territory was populated after the Civil War and Trail of Tears. Around the time of the land grabs, Blacks banded together to create dozens of Black-only towns – places founded by Blacks after Reconstruction came to an end.
Oklahoma is also filled with Sundown Towns – places where Blacks needed to leave by sunset, or fear the worst. In fact, the museum contains a January 2020 resolution adopted by the City of Norman, OK, apologizing for being a Sundown Town and noting in a “whereas” clase that “the record shows no African American residing within the city limits of Norman from 1889 to 1967,” in part because of the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan.
Powerfully, every display that mentioned the KKK (including one that contained a full white hood and gown) described it as a terrorism organization. Good.
Once oil was discovered in Tulsa and elsewhere, prosperity grew – including for Blacks. This infuriated many whites. The KKK had a resurgence with the release of Birth of a Nation, and in that climate, on May 31, 1921, two people got on an elevator in Tulsa – a Black man and a white woman. The woman claimed assault. The man was arrested.
Members of one of the wealthiest Black communities in the nation rallied to the jail, fearing he would be lynched. Whites responded to fight them off, and a massacre ensued. Thirty-five city blocks were burned. White people took to airplanes – AIRPLANES!!!! – to fire at Black people. Dozens of people were killed.
Black Wall Street was destroyed. And if you walk the community now, you see lots of placques noting were hotels and newspapers and businesses were, but not the businesses themselves.
Why? Part of the answer is that they built a freakin’ highway through the neighborhood as part of “urban renewal” in the 1950s.
As Faulkner said, the past is never dead. It isn’t even past.
Woodie Guthrie
We weren’t done with museums. We walked a few blocks to the Woodie Guthrie Center. Guthrie is a native son of the Sooner State. There’s a whole bunch of notable natives – included Kristen Chenoweth, Mickey Mantle, Brad Pitt, James Garner, Will Rogers and Garth Brooks. (Also, we learned “Sooner” is a reference to people who snuck into the district – in pre-state days – and claimed land (really Indian territory) “sooner” than legally allowed, but staked a claim anyway. So, the university mascot is….a cheater?
Guthrie is best known for “This Land is Your Land,” but he wrote thousands of songs, and was also a prolific artist. The line from Guthrie to Bob Dylan to Pete Seeger to Bruce Springsteen to John Mellencamp is pretty clear (as the museum shows you.)
He died from Huntington’s Disease in the 1960s. Hot take: I appreciate the authenticity and talent, but I don’t think I fully get why he’s so huge.
It was time for dinner. We picked East Village Bohemian Pizza. It was great. As we walked toward the restaurant, a barrier was set up nearby, and a firetruck with a hose connected across the street. A few hours earlier, a fire destroyed one of the most popular restaurants in the city. The building might not be saved. We could smell the smoke in the air.
The Deco District
After eating, we walked around Deco District. There is phenomenal architecture in a few blocks – all built in the 1920s when Tulsa was booming with oil money (and killing its Black residents). Many buildings are perfectly preserved – and others are being renovated and reclaimed. We took photo after photo.
River path system
The next day, we were ready for a longer run, and as always sought the trail system – this time along the Arkansas River. We drove downtown and began a loop that started at Route 66 and crossed the river. We spotted a ton of construction of new parks and a pedestrian bridge across the river, so we stopped a walker and asked her what was going on. She explained that billionaire George Kaiser, the CEO of BOK who also made a fortune in oil and gas, was investing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the river park system. It’s centerpiece is the Gathering Place, a collection of ponds, pavilions, playgrounds and more that is well-designed, clean and modern.
Again, you can learn so much about a city walking and running through it, and stopping and talking to people. Money. Booms and busts. Racism. Tulsa and Oklahoma are fascinating. We had hoped to drink it all in, and we did.
