When Matthew Pearce was doing his graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma, one professor assigned to his U.S. history students a book by James S. Hirsch: Riot and Remembrance.
“Students would tell him that reading that book was their first exposure to the Tulsa Race Massacre,” says Pearce, who is now the state historian for the Oklahoma Historical Society. And, he adds, many of those students had even grown up in Oklahoma.
More people have learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre since its 2021 centennial, and with the opening that year of Greenwood Rising, a museum that has drawn more than 60,000 visitors. It tells the story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District and Black Wall Street before and after the massacre, and is committed to the pursuit of justice through reparations and racial reconciliation.
Volunteers in Oklahoma’s historically Black towns also help to keep Black history alive – and taught. The towns that flourished early in the 20th century saw dwindling populations during the Great Depression. Town leaders now work to secure grant funding to restore historical sites, enhance infrastructure and attract economic development.
“The all-Black towns give people a sense of Oklahoma as a place of refuge and uplift,” Pearce says.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols, who assumed office in December 2024 and is the city’s first Black mayor, was raised in central Texas with a knowledge of Oklahoma’s Black history. The state is rich with the history of Black Americans who fought for civil rights, Nichols says, including Clara Luper, who led her students in lunch counter sit-ins, and Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, who in 1948 won her U.S. Supreme Court case seeking admission to the University of Oklahoma law school.
“Oklahoma was pushing the envelope on some of those big questions of civil rights,” Nichols says. “I hope there is a certain level of pride that people have, that we have always had people in Oklahoma that were fighting for justice.”
Pearce says he is inspired by the work of women such as Maude J. Brockway, for whom the Brockway Community Center in Oklahoma City was named.
“She was a milliner by trade, and very active in the women’s club movement. The community center housed club meetings and was a temporary boarding house for women needing a place to stay. She managed that house for them.”
Pearce says Brockway, who attended Arkansas Baptist College before moving to Oklahoma around 1900, “symbolizes someone who came to Oklahoma during the Great Migration. We commonly portray that as a mass movement of African-Americans from South to North. But she’s a reminder of that movement from the South to the West.”
Nichols says public and private initiatives in Tulsa include affordable housing, support for small businesses owned by race massacre descendants, and scholarships for descendants, “to do things that those visionaries would have been able to do had the Greenwood District not been burned down.”
Black History Month Must-Visits:
■ John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Parkin Tulsa memorializes the history of African-Americans in Oklahoma, including those whose lives were lost to racial violence.
■ The Fort Gibson Historic Site currently features an exhibit Dawes Commission in Cherokee Nation, which focuses on African-American Freedmen formerly enslaved by members of Indian tribes.
■ Honey Springs Battlefield Site near Checotah welcomes viewers to experience the Civil War battle of 9,000 troops – many of whom were Black – in 3D at their visitor center.
■ Bill Pickett’s grave site near Marland pays respect to a pioneer in the sport of rodeo. Pickett invented a cattle wrestling technique called bulldogging after joining the 101 Ranch Wild West show in 1905. Pickett, who moved to Oklahoma in 1908, was also the first African-American cowboy movie star.
■ The Oklahoma African-American Educators Hall of Fame in Clearview recognizes and honors significant contributions made by African-American educators.
■ The Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City prominently features Black history and culture in permanent and temporary exhibits, many of which can be discovered in the Research Center.
