By Joanne M. Braxton

Arrival in Tulsa: A Day of Reckoning

When I heard the news, I was at the airport in Salt Lake City, on my way to a retreat in Tulsa for 50 regional reparations leaders. On that day, June 12, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a reparations lawsuit by the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher, 109, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108. When I arrived in Tulsa, it was an impressive 100 degrees just an hour before midnight.

Remembering the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

What happened in Tulsa on May 31, 1921, and the days that followed? Historian Al Brophy summarized those events in his 2002 book, Reconstructing the Dreamland:

"[W]hite mobs, aided and abetted by state and local law enforcement authorities, destroyed the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a vibrant African American community whose entrepreneurial verve led some to call its main thoroughfare 'the black Wall Street'."

Brophy described this as the worst and deadliest race riot of the twentieth century. Prosperous Black people owned homes, stores, movie theaters, hotels, and airplanes—all destroyed.

We now know it was not a "race riot" but a massacre. The term “race riot,” an unnecessary insult, made it impossible to file insurance claims for loss of life and property.

Black Tulsans share this history isn't often taught in schools, and parents seldom spoke of it to their children for fear of retaliation.

*The Honorable Michael Blake, Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, Robin Rue Simmons*

A Gathering of Purpose

It made sense that we came to Tulsa, for as Brophy wrote, “The question of reparations in Tulsa provides a concrete context for analyzing claims about reparations throughout American society.” There had been many more survivors when the lawsuits began “the direct, living connection between past harms and the present.” Now, only Fletcher and Randle are left, still looking to see justice while in the land of the living.

Representing Reparations for Lakeland Now! and my hometown, I was, like the other leaders invited, the guest of First Repair, the Evanston, Illinois-based non-profit “working nationally to educate and equip leaders, stakeholders, and allies who are advancing local reparations policies that remedy historic and ongoing anti-Black practices,” and headed by the dynamic Robin Rue Simmons. I was also chaplain for this three-day convening. Afterwards, I would stay on two days longer to talk with community members and worship at the Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal church, where most of the retreat was held.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court decision, paired with a substantial lawsuit filed against Evanston’s reparatory housing program by Judicial Watch, formed a powerful backdrop for Simmon’s gathering. Though the three days clearly planned to shine a light on Tulsa and the decades-long lawsuit, no one, not even Simmons, had known the court decision was imminent.

Yet, somehow, 50 reparationists arrived in Tulsa from all over America, from Washington State to Louisiana, from places as diverse as Kansas City, Missouri and College Park, Maryland, where Reparations for Lakeland Now! is based. We arrived as if we had planned to be present for the decision, asking openly, “Why, at this moment?” Someone quipped, “the ancestors are in charge.” Given coincidence and timing, this assertion was not easy to shake off.

Historic Vernon AME Church: A Site of Memory

Our work began in earnest on June 13 at Tulsa’s Historic Vernon AME Church on Greenwood Avenue, the only church in Greenwood to survive the horrific events of 1921. In many ways, Vernon represents what novelist Toni Morrison might have called “the site of memory,” a location of "proceedings too terrible to relate.” More than that, Vernon is a testament to faith and the sheer audacity to survive such terrible proceedings and then to thrive with excellence while still under threat.

Some call urban renewal and the building of the interstate in the '70s and '80s “the second Greenwood massacre.” After the massacre, some returned to Greenwood to rebuild, but destruction was soon to follow. Walking from my hotel down Archer Street toward the church, I took note of the bronze markers embedded in the sidewalk along the way. Each marker stood for a building that had been destroyed in the mob violence of 1921, most of them never rebuilt.

On approaching Historic Vernon AME, I did not find the church easily. I turned left on Greenwood Avenue and expected to see Vernon, which was only two blocks away, but a highway overpass occluded my view. A friendly Greenwood resident confirmed that “Vernon is right there.” And so, it was.

The Prayer Wall and the Memory of Survival

Emerging from the shadows of the overpass adorned with memorial graffiti celebrating the historic Black Wall Street and lamenting its loss, the first thing I saw was the Prayer Wall for Racial Healing, along the side of the building where 200-300 survivors hid for a week while Greenwood burned. For some reason, the pastor of the church had insisted that the walls of the basement should be double thick, and for this reason, many lives were spared, even when the church was bombed from above. And this is how Tulsa’s Vernon AME became a site of memory.

Preserving the Past: The Fresh Burn Marks

Later, I would be shown a small room inside the church where the char marks have been intentionally preserved by a congregation determined to remember and witness to its past. Architects and archaeologists who have seen them call these marks “fresh burn”—fresh, even though they are more than a century old.

Our guide was Kristi Williams, a descendant of massacre survivors. I first met Kristi, a National Geographic Ambassador and winner of the Wayfarer Award for her educational advocacy for Greenwood, at a convening of reparations leaders sponsored by the Department of the Interior in Hampton, Virginia, almost a year earlier.

Later, Kristi would accompany some of us to Woodlawn Cemetery, where we stood on the site of a verified mass grave. Those buried here included men, women, and children, their names known but to God. Kristi had carried the remains of eight children from the place where they were taken from the ground to a makeshift morgue. “They were just skeletons,” she said softly, “but I could see their faces.”

A Testimony of Faith and Resilience

It is impossible for an ethical person to hear this testimony and view this evidence and not be changed. But it was the chairs that moved me almost as much as the mass grave. After the massacre, the burnt-out Black undertaker who was forced to work for a white undertaker and embalm those Black folks whose bodies were still in a state where they could be embalmed went back to his place of business to see what he could salvage.

All he could save was the chairs. He took them back to Vernon, where they have remained ever since. A week after the “terrible proceedings” of 1921, the congregation met for worship in what was left of their church seated in those chairs. Sitting in those very same chairs in the church’s prayer room, I thought about all those folks who had ever sat in those chairs in their grief, either before the massacre or since.

For me, this was a moment of reckoning and also a testimony to faith—faith that is stronger than terror.

Strength in Faith: Finding Solace and Support

In my role as chaplain and spiritual caregiver, I learned to be attentive to my own needs so that I could be present for others, and, for my part, taught a few techniques for managing moral distress. It wasn’t easy to attend to both. I found the strength to do that on my knees at the prayer wall outside the church.

I felt surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, living and dead—Jesse Jackson, William Barber, Carlton Pearson, James Clyburn, Barbara Lee, and others who dedicated that wall on the hundredth anniversary of the massacre on May 31, 2021. On my knees, a strength that was not of my own making rushed in and calmed my distracted spirit.

Looking Forward: The Future of Reparations

Looking forward, we should be mindful that, as Brophy put it, “Tulsa speaks to reparations claims generally. It is a laboratory in which to test ideas about reparations, to ask the question, can justice be done? What are the benefits and what are the costs?”

In my opinion, we ought to be asking more frequently, “What are the costs of not making repair?” Not everyone agrees on what the best path is for the reparations struggle in America, but Fletcher and Randle and their attorneys will fight on, as will Justice for Greenwood.

Now there are more witnesses who have seen and touched the fresh char, sat in those chairs, and seen a mass grave site. And this is one thing we learned—touching and being touched by the “site of memory” is to become a part of it forever.