In 2 U.S. cities haunted by race massacres, facing the past is painful and divisive – By Scott Neuman (NPR) / Dec 11, 2022
Shortly after going to work for the Tulsa Historical Society in 2001, Michelle Place recalls historian Richard Warner hefting a large cardboard box atop her desk. “This is the most important collection that the Tulsa Historical Society has,” he told her. “Guard it with your life.”
Warner had co-authored the final report of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission, created by the Oklahoma Legislature to present a historical accounting of the infamous massacre that left upward of 300 African Americans dead and resulted in the destruction of “Black Wall Street,” in the city’s prosperous Greenwood enclave. The box contained all of the research the commission had collected.
Place gravitated toward the photographs inside but couldn’t stomach what she saw. “It was so horrific,” she says. “Burned bodies and dead in the streets.”
Just a few weeks earlier, Place had known nothing about the death and destruction depicted in those black and white images. It was only after fielding a call from an overseas journalist wanting to speak with someone about “the Tulsa race riot” that a colleague clued her in. “‘You don’t know, do you?'” she remembers the co-worker asking.
CONTINUE > https://www.npr.org/2022/12/11/1137090651/elaine-massacre-tulsa-race-riot
