The older we get, the more we begin to think, “My memory isn’t what it used to be.” With each successive decade, we seem to remember less, and less accurately, than we used to. Sometimes we look back and see what we want to see, rather than what really happened. We see this in Numbers 11.
The older we get, the more we begin to think, “My memory isn’t what it used to be.” With each successive decade, we seem to remember less, and less accurately, than we used to. Sometimes we look back and see what we want to see, rather than what really happened. We see this in Numbers 11.
In the second of three events commemorating the centennial of the Tulsa race massacre, Imagine Tulsa 21 and the Synod of the Sun’s Network for Dismantling Racism (N4dR) participants were called to “reflect and respond” to the initial conversation with Hannibal B. Johnson, an attorney, author and consultant specializing in diversity and inclusion as well as chair of the Education Committee for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission.
There’s no doubt that the Tulsa race massacre was one of the most reprehensible moments in the history of the nation. Known as America’s “Black Wall Street,” the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma was burned to the ground in the Tulsa race massacre on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which white residents massacred as many as 300 Black residents, injuring hundreds more, and leaving 5,000 people homeless. As the country commemorates the 100th anniversary of the massacre this week, the situation begs the question: Were was the church and what was the church’s role in the ensuing events?
Imagine Tulsa 21 and the Network for Dismantling Racism (N4dR) hosted the first of three events to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
The Synod of the Sun will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”
When the City Council of Tulsa, Oklahoma, voted last month to remove a Black Lives Matter mural from the city’s Greenwood District, the site of the infamous 1921 Race Massacre, the session at College Hill Presbyterian Church and the church’s pastor, the Rev. Todd Freeman, knew what had to be done.
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing those who were enslaved, in January 1863. However, it wasn’t until two years later, on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. After this, more than 250,000 slaves across Texas learned that they were free.
Some symptoms of racism might be obliterated with a wrecking ball approach, but a new Synod of the Sun network aims to help dismantle the structure and proactively remember grim events of the past, including the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
