[Music] on may 31st and 21 i went to bed at my family's home in greenwood the neighborhood i felt the sleeping that night was rich not just in terms of wealth but in culture heritage and my family had a beautiful home my family was driven out of our home we were left with nothing i was blessed to live with my grandmother in a beautiful black community in tulsa oklahoma called greenwood i was a young child i didn't have any here i still smell smoke and sea fire i still see black businesses being burned i still hear airplanes flying overhead we were made breakfast in our own country white men guns came and destroyed my community we couldn't understand why what did we do to them we didn't understand i remember running outside of our house past dead bodies still see it today in my mind 100 years later my name is viola ford fletcher i'm a survivor of the tulsa race massacre two weeks ago i celebrated my 107th birthday our country may forget this history but i cannot i will not and other survivors do not our descendants do not greenwood should have given me the chance to make it in this country my name is hughes van ellis i am 100 years old and i am a survivor of the 12th race master my name is leslie evelyn benningfield randall i have survived to tell this story i believe that i am still here to share it with you please give me my family and my community some justice we were made to feel that our struggle were unworthy of jesus like we didn't see it with our own eyes 100 years and counting black wall street survivors and descendants have yet to obtain real justice we are talking about a state-sanctioned deputized white mob wreaking havoc by land and air on more than 35 blocks of tulsa's black community known as the greenwood district black wall street or in a report from the american red cross little africa as a result of this violence more than 10 000 people were displaced at least 300 killed many left in unmarked graves at least 1200 homes destroyed and an estimated 4 million in property damage in less than 24 hours for context calculations of all known damages are closer to 200 million dollars currently frozen assets at banks and the refusal of insurance companies many still in existence today to process claims based on a riot clause left those who survived hopeless some forced to relocate while even more found themselves impoverished and labeled refugees in their own country when they helped build and still some rebuilt in the face of ordinances that made that process prohibitive they repurchase homes and restored businesses in the face of redlining they survived they told their stories despite threats to remain silent 100 years later white mobs are still pillaging communities across the country including state capitals and most recently our nation's capital in the name of white supremacy and making america great again much like the mobs that caused the devastation in tulsa they have yet to be held accountable for their actions today we will determine how to organize at every level to ensure this never happens again and learn how to heal from the ancestral trauma we carry in our bodies after continually facing hundreds of years of systemic racism and oppression by developing a pathway for the re-imagination of black wall street today we will ensure that we are more triumphant than ever before the resilience and tenacity of the survivors and descendants of the black wall street massacre brought us to the threshold of justice and true repair now it's time for us to walk united through that door i have the great privilege and honor of sitting down today with the three remaining survivors from the tulsa race massacre [Music] how are you all doing today fair yeah mother fletcher how are you doing fun you're fine uncle red how are you doing i'm doing great doing great i'm very excited oh i'm so happy to hear that mother randall if i can come to you do you have some positive memories of what it was like growing up in tulsa at that at the time before the massacre well before the mascara i was such a small child but i do remember some things you know we just had regular things just wasn't too too much really but it's enough was enough for us at the time times were good we didn't have a lot of robbery and all that stuff like we had so we all enjoyed it really and mother fletcher i know that you were six and seven years old when everything happened but what about before it happened what are your fond memories we enjoyed living in tulsa that's the people was successful little night houses and parks and churches theaters well just so many things that we enjoyed doing and i had a lot of family members friends children that we played with but in parks and went to school oh i could say i can't mention so many things that we enjoyed at that time and i would yes i was only seven years old until that happened and then i left culture with my family and um if you can tell me mother fletcher was there a sudden moment was it the day was it on may 31st where you all were like we had to get out of here or did it take some time oh yes yes well then when we were there happily living until one night well we heard the noise of guns shooting and people running and screaming it smells and houses been burned and people get killed really and then someone came to the neighborhood and said for all the black people to get out of town if not you'd be killing said the white people are killing all the black folks so joining my family in a horse and buggy wagon well we got out of town that night yes and after then it was i was a teenager before i came back anymore through a process called epigenetics we've recently learned we carry the trauma of our ancestors in our physical bodies when we exist unhealed and events arise that re-traumatize us we can further pass all of this harm down through our lineage joining us is the author of the new york times best-selling book my grandmother's hands resma minikum tulsa native and community organizer greg robinson ii activist brittany pacnett cunningham and dr jelani cobb thank you all so much for being here and yes i do want to talk about trauma desmond tutu when he visited tulsa in 2004 said it was a powder keg how do people begin to heal to metabolize the trauma that's here the fact that they're gas-lit at every turn people who look like them are helping to perpetuate the harm what do we do first thing i think we have to do is acknowledge that something has happened and continues to happen to our people right i think one of the ways that gaslighting works is that the people that are being gaslit believe it right and i think for us what we have to begin to do is start to begin to do things um that allow us to turn towards each other instead of on each other this whole structure has been built on black people seeing each other as enemies and not as resource and so part of my work what i talk about in my book is for us to begin to cultivate that resource in each other and see each other as as actual people that can help us get through this stuff as opposed to believing what the structure has has kind of put inside of us and we've kind of metabolized greg listening to resma how possible do you think that is how hopeful are you that there can be real healing in tulsa yeah i i am hopeful because i know that there are fighters who continue to be on the front lines and who are undergirded by the spirit of our ancestors and currently in this time 100 years since the massacre still people survive i think that getting to truth and justice is what is going to free us though because when we sit here in tulsa we understand that there's been two pathways to black success black freedom was met with bombs and burning and murder and looting black cowering or or following coddling of white supremacy has been met with success in many ways and so i think the answer to this is to once again find success and black freedom and blackness and i think when that happens that will free the the multitudes of tolson's who are still suffering from what happened to us so long ago yeah brittany we know that um you know so many of these harms continue to show up it's not showing up as as greg just talked about with bombs and with fires and destruction in that way necessarily but there's still a lot of uh trauma in our communities police violence uh redlining gentrification you go down the through the greenwood district now and there's not a single black owner of a building here and we know that tulsa is just one example of that how do we move forward well first before i was anything i was a teacher and i came to tulsa in 2014 2015 to do a workshop for teachers and i asked one of them to take me to black wall street and i said okay so when when does this get taught what year what grade what month what unit no answer we're not required to teach it in fact i only started teaching it this teacher is telling me i only started teaching it because i'm not from here and somebody finally gave me the history and i realized it was my responsibility to pass it on so we cannot heal what we do not acknowledge and what we do not name um and the fact of the matter is the violence continues in all of the ways that you just described poverty is violence miseducation and undereducation is violence bad housing is violence unlivable wages are violence all of those things are perpetuated not just in tulsa but across our communities in this country and in the broader diaspora so when we call a thing a thing we enable ourselves to say look what we have survived think about what we can build you know from 1863 to 1923 at least 26 tulsa-like massacres occurred throughout this country why don't we know about these why don't we talk about them they're perfectly content with talking about the past when it's 1776. they're perfectly content when talking about the past and normandy and the american troops storming the beach to defeat fascism they're perfectly content in talking about the past whenever it relates to the glories of the united states well we have a version of the past that we want to talk about just as you understand that 1776 is foundational to what happens in 2022 to 2030 beyond because the past is not static the past is animate it's alive it's part of the present we have a history that is integral to our lives and to us moving forward and we have to begin with that premise the other part of it is i think that we have to begin to question the idea of moral culpability in this and the assumption that people share our sense of outrage and the reason i say that is this for all of those dozens of purges and attacks that took place in these communities and people who were marginalized people who were murdered people whose property was taken uh the people who just showed up and said by tomorrow we want all the black people gone from the town and we're going to presume ownership of all of your property and this happening again and again and again if you went to any of those mobs and said the consequence of this is that you will gain unprecedented economic value you will gain the political power and influence you will marginalize all these people and a hundred years from now your descendants will have to express mild remorse some hand-wringing have some slightly uncomfortable conversations but still be in a position to dictate the parameters which by which these events are memorialized that's a deal people would have taken and so even as we attempt to begin to memorialize what has happened we see the reinscribing of the very dynamic that led to the tragedy in the first place and until we are willing to grapple with that we will not be operating on the true terms of our subordination the reason i ran for mayor against mayor bynum who has a history of enslaving in his family who's whose family benefited greatly from the the trauma induced on my family is because you build hope from taking that first step and i think that i don't want to miss that like the the fact that our black king is coming back to tulsa from across the country from across the world and saying we didn't forget you all we see you that's about as powerful a statement that can be made because think about what happened right after the massacre there's a massive cover-up and for a hundred years the mecca that was blackness the achievement that was blackness the excellence that was blackness in the midst of jim crow was covered up and so by lifting the lid off of that which we're doing this weekend and locking arms from tulsa to chicago to dc to new york we don't allow for that lie to be told that blackness can't exist and blackness can't be great i think that when we talk about reversing that trauma we've got to start there it is true that white people who have profited off of our degradation off of our oppression they don't have the self-interest right to fix that the only people that have the interest in seeing blackness once again reach its throne is black people and i think that that is our pathway to freedom hopefully some white tulsians will see this too the the right type of body practice the right type of meditative practice to engage in to kind of help to open the door across that threshold that we know we need to cross to really get to a healing place a whole place a redemptive place right so first off you know i'm sitting here and i'm listening to all of my people talk and um and i'm picking up on this sense of resonance this sense of resource this sense of possibility when i just listened to to brother uh talk one of the things that that landed in me is this piece around resistance when it comes to resistance the way that trauma gets moved into the body is that trauma over time becomes decontextualized right so when something happens to me personally if time moves past that thing that happened to me will now look like personality right if something happens to my family it now looks like family traits right if something happens to me and happens to my people it now looks like culture the only remedy for that is voices to say something happened to my people something happened to us so when we continue to talk what happens is is that we put context to the thing and the body begins to recognize that as a resource that's why what we do and what you do is so important this panel the proceeding panel the next panel the voice allows for us to say i'm not crazy i'm not defective something happened and in that thing that happened when i hear another black body and see another black body say something about it it creates room for other things to emerge so what we do when we're talking about trauma is that we understand that trauma is not just personal it is historical it is inter-generational it is persistent institutional and personal and it overwhelms us so when my brother talks and my sister talks and my brother talks what happens is is that we can pinpoint that one thing and create discernment and then allow us to begin to heal right that's why what you're doing is so important because those black folks that for the first time hear this we'll go i'm not crazy stuff is still happening to people that look like me and we can heal through that [Music] when did you first learn about black wall street after getting out of college and coming back home and getting involved in the community i had ties with the greenwood cultural center and so it really really helped me to build a yearning for diving deeper into the history so i actually learned about black wall street here at booker t my history teacher her name is miss coleman she is passed away now but she was committed to making sure we understood who we were where we came from and uh that was the first time and that was the last time so between then and maybe me returning on a few moments you know after college i didn't really hear much about it after that what do you all think about the the current commission that's been formed um jamal i know you were a part of that commission yes what happened uh there were several things that took place that just didn't align with who i was and what i believed and one of the things so to speak initially it was the race riot centennial commission and the the fact that it was like pulling teeth to get them to change the one word from riot to massacre really showed me what some of them were about and what they what they truly felt there were some historians in there who a lot of people lean towards who really challenged the word of rewriting the history there was some philanthropic representation in the room who really challenged the rewriting of history and so it really made me see things in a different lens to see that it was not solely about what the community wanted because i was closely tied to the community and they knew that which is why they asked me to be the project manager and so i would hear from the community in the community and say hey we need to get this name changed and so i went in and said hey let's change the name because this is what the community is saying we need to do and there were some young people who i had placed on the commission who were like yeah let's do it if we're going to do it it needs to be done now we can rewrite history but then there were also some of our elders white and black so to speak who just simply said yeah it's been this for this long we need to just leave it there and leave it alone and so that was one of the things greg what has your experience been with the commission well what jamal talked about i'm going to talk about from a little different perspective there are people like myself people like representative regina goodwin people like city councilwoman vanessa harper who may have been invited to participate in the commission but because we didn't agree with their stances we declined and i think that that says a lot about the lack of support that they have from the community from the very start it's not a lack of support in commemorating our people and commemorating our history but it's a total lack of support and doing it the wrong way and it was just very clear from the outset that the commission was a commissioning name only in terms of honoring the race massacre survivors and our ancestors and people like myself just just were not going to be a part of that i was engaged by some people on the commission to help with the commemoration and the disbursement of funds and how that would go on an entertainment level and when i engage vanessa and some of the greenwood chamber of commerce and different people and when i go and ask questions about accountability who gets to decide where these funds go who gets to decide who makes a decision about what's a worthy enough cause to be supported during this time you know who are the voices and the people that are in the room it's very clear that they don't want uh us who have power they have a few people who are there for the sake of representation but are not holistically representing us and so when those questions of accountability came and it's like hey you have 200 300 000 to do what and there have been no reparations given what's happening and it was at that moment literally like on in the middle of a call it was like yeah we probably would just have somebody else take it from here and so i think the reality is like the majority of the community we don't feel like that's our that's not our commission that's not our community those are not just people it's tulsa's commission what's that it's a conservative white republican commissioner just like so who is senator kevin matthews his commission well senator kevin matthews did commission the start of this but senator kevin matthews like a lot of black people finds himself in a position where he can either compromise and do what the white power structure says or he can risk the status that he has he made the decision to compromise certainly those are those of us who wouldn't do that particularly with our history so those commissions have two different purposes the 2001 commission was led by leaders like representative don ross and senator maxine horner historians like eddie fay gates and john hope franklin they had one purpose to find the truth to tell the truth and then to provide recommendations on how to repair the horn the 2016 commission now the centennial commission they stated from the very beginning that this was about bringing attention to this issue so that they could create cultural tourism in the area and those are two very very different purposes i don't understand how you can move on to tourism before you've dealt with truth and justice except if your goal is to further profit off of the massacre [Music] we're sitting here at a white owned establishment in the heart of greenwood during the centennial i just wonder from you knowing that there's no black owned buildings in the greenwood district how does that make you feel it just i mean it's tragic yeah it's just as tragic as going 100 years without finding the bodies of people killed 100 years ago are you a descendant uh yes so i'm a distant descendant yes when did you first learn about black wall street it's almost embarrassing i'm 61 years old right now i was in my early 30s and i grew up here in tulsa it wasn't taught in school it was tulsa's dirty secret yeah this is a dirty secret that has been told to some descendants but not as many others and to that end i know as a state senator you introduced senate bill 17 which of course stands up the commission for the tulsa race massacre what was the impetus for that why was that important for you to do that well actually it was a special election for me to be have the opportunity to be elected in 2015. i'm in the legislature at that time i was the only black man in the senate and so i formed a coalition of elected officials many of them white many of them republicans and just said how could we create something that would be able to bring funds and on the way we saw the national african-american museum of history and culture was telling this story in a major way five million people went there in the first two years and i thought we need to do it in a big way a coalition of people ask the mayor and others to give five million to the cultural center the cultural center you're talking about greenwood the greenwood cultural center who owns that building uh i'm i'm not sure who owns the building i know that the city of tulsa has the land that they leased to the entity yeah and so then we came up with the big idea to build something to tell that story in a major way and that's how we went from there to raising now 20 to 30 million dollars to build the history center that you see now it was totally focused on how we could tell the story which is the first part of what needs to happen how important is it to you that all of the resources raised through the commission be designated specifically for the museum and the commission events that are being held this weekend it's extremely important that's what the law said and so it's extremely important that those resources are uh coming here for uh telling that story and and supporting uh the black history that we're talking about here have you been in contact with the survivors the three remaining survivors about their own stories i personally have not have you spoken to them throughout the whole five years that the commission has been established when the five years that the commission has been established as far as i know um this past year dr olivia hooker was the last known survivor that i'd ever even heard of and she passed away i didn't know uh of survivors but one i hadn't met with him uh we had actually even given him award uh probably early 2015 2016 right here on greenwood was it a monetary award no there was some some some type of uh uh acknowledgement absolutely well let me ask you this you said you were only aware of two are you aware of the three remaining survivors we have mother randall mother fletcher and uncle red are you familiar with the three of them i've heard of them this year since we've been in the legislature i think there had been a lawsuit had been filed and then i heard of those individuals we were told that they've been reaching out to the commission formally at least since november to connect and to have a meeting to ensure that they were able to shape what actually goes in the museum and have an opportunity to tell their stories to be engaged with the centennial events and you're not aware of any of that outreach i'm aware definitely that of a lawsuit filed our name is listed yeah before the lawsuit just the outreach to the commission because you're the chair of the commission correct i'm the chair of the commission yes you're not aware of any outreach from the survivors to talk about sharing their stories to be a part of a board ensuring that their basic needs are taken care of because you're i'm sure you're also where they're living in poverty okay i am aware of a lawsuit that was found that we were named in so you're not you don't have any you didn't have any contact with them other than the lawsuit that you saw filed mother fletcher mother randall and uncle red there is one person that had been working with the survivors okay working with i think they had started to renovate the home et cetera that reached out to me and talked to me about it when was that that was the day that we were um breaking ground on this when was that it may have been around i'm i'm assuming around um december december of 2020. so when you think about these remaining survivors who they're all who are left that we're that we know of what do you think they want well i think they want justice i think they want their lives repaired i think they want uh what all of us want for them well when you say us what do you want for them i want for what we offer i want them to have financial compensation i want their health care taken care of for the rest of their lives i want them to have representations from the government from the city the state and the federal government i think that uh they're owed all of that so what do you mean just let me ask for clarification the city state and federal government do you mean cash payments yes i mean everything that uh yes i'm not sophisticated enough to know what all the reparations should be but i think we should have those conversations and everything that they want should be on the table i think that there have been issues raised around tulsa 1921 who's culpable who's liable for that and then there's a continued harm argument about the commission that the commission has not engaged descendants adequately has not engaged engaged survivors has raised money off the image likeness and the names of survivors but haven't haven't given them any money so i think there are two separate harms being discussed our funders have even offered cash payments how much did the funders offer uh one hundred thousand dollars to each of them and a two million dollar seed gift to start a fund for continuous money a hundred thousand dollars per survivor basically gives them a thousand dollars per year since the tulsa massacre do you think that's sufficient no i don't think it's sufficient i don't think that i think that the numbers should be tremendously higher but i think it should be from the government i think it was a what about the companies that are also culpable there's there are banks that have purchased other banks in oklahoma insurance companies that refuse to process claims because of a riot clause are they also liable for i think so but i don't know that my commission has that oh i'm not putting it on this no i think that yes yes i there's definitely i think that the government the businesses that have benefited are all liable yes what about the businesses for example that contributed um as sponsors to the commission have you had any conversations with them about the culpability and the liability the responsibility they have for restorative and reparative payments to the survivors let me just be clear okay what my thought process is about this was i started this and raised this money to build this building after may 31st we will have built this building at that time i want to go deep into reparations that's happening on with the conversation is happening on a congressional level i want it to happen on the local level i think that the problem is that we're trying to put the two together why do you think that is why i think when you say that we're trying to put the two together why do you think that is i think that i'm 61 years old 2001 a report came out representative don ross and sent to maxine put out from then until i was elected in the senate nobody did anything i don't know why well there was a lawsuit filed by charles ogiltry johnny cochran demario solomon simmons was still in law school at the time who was a part of that lawsuit they were told that they had no standing for that lawsuit there have been actions taken on behalf of tulsa and in tulsa for years whether or not it's been considered or even moved upon i think it's the mentality of folks like mayor jt bynum that stand in the way of these things so i don't think it's fair to say nothing has been done what i'm saying is nobody moved the ball and offered any amount of money until now see there's there's uh two mindsets uh one is how much is enough and the other one is how much can be done i care about the enough part and so i would lead or be part of just that conversation because i think it's very important so can you understand why people might be a little frustrated with seeing a 30 million dollar building and not having any restorative justice or economic empowerment themselves not owning any of the buildings here on black wall street where we used on all of them yes i can see that yeah it's easy to see when we got to these serious discussions about the significance of changing the mission of what we were doing this we this a ton of this money had been spent how much money is still unspent i would imagine um you have access to these reports how much well i can i can look it up for you would you consider introducing a bill supporting reparations for tulsa for survivors and descendants with no hesitation yes the commission recently announced it was cancelling its largest event um after john legend and stacy abrams said they were no longer going to participate why it is my assumption because that you're the chair i am the chair and i'm the chair that's in session in oklahoma city while a team here is working on all of this work i think i'm safe to assume that they want what we all want is something to happen for these survivors and i can't tell you that's why i can't tell you why because they didn't talk to me are there survivors participating in any of the commission events this weekend the demands there were seven demands submitted to the commission after several months of asking for time with the commission the commission for the first time agreed to meet with the representatives of the survivors when there was a threat that john legend and stacey abrams may not participate so the first meeting was called on saturday the second was tuesday the demands are as follows one million dollars per survivor you agree or disagree with that idea regardless of who pays it one million dollars per survivor i think that the survivors if it's 10 15 20 million still would not take that as a yes yes what about two this is a 50 million dollar pledge which is different than cash payment right now pledge to our survivor and descendant fund do you agree or disagree with that okay this is what i this is what i i pledge yeah i pledge that we start a fund that everybody can participate in and i pledge that i want the government to pay reparations did you tell the mayor that uh i've said it publicly senator langford i've said it to senator langford directly yes that's good i want you to post it okay here's number three a lot 33 of greenwood rising revenue to directly benefit survivors and descendants and the north tulsa community the commission's work is over i won't be on the commission nobody will be we're gonna it's not this doesn't say that okay so i can't commit the new board to do anything with their revenues that i want to because this is probably a no so number four is greenwood rising board makeup they want six board seats for people who are supported by and directly related to descendants or survivors i think that a lot of the things that they say are reasonable but i don't think that i can be the one i mean i'm just asking you if you agree or disagree with these things you don't know i agree that there are a lot of reasonable things that are being requested that are necessary and needed i think that means i'm going to take that as a yes really quick next thing public support of the lawsuit for reparations which you said throughout this interview i support reparations would you publicly support the lawsuit which law the lawsuit that you refer to for the lawsuit that i'm in okay but publicly support lawsuit for reparations so the survivors can be made hold from greenwood i believe that that they should behold okay so then i'm gonna take that as a public supporters lawsuit the next is a public apology from you no why because i told the truth i did not lie what did you say i said that uh what was not spoken about in congress was that people that are the key people that are funding us are willing to and already in negotiations for paying cash payments to these survivors and you wouldn't apologize to the survivors for what was a perceived attack on their character i would apologize to survivors i would i would say i would do anything for the survivors okay so the survivor that's fine but this was supposed to be i took it as a public apology for making the statement that i made about the survivors which is what they when you talked about what was said in congress who testified in congress the survivors testified in congress three survivors so they wanted a public apology for the survivors you would be willing to do that no that would meet with the survivors and anything that they felt like i had done that hurt their would you stand would you stand with them publicly and apologize to them publicly the three survivors for saying that that that there were any perceived slight of the survivors based on their testimony before congress i did not i'm gonna take this as a note here's the last one okay for well the last one is off the last one was the rise and remember event they wanted to help shape the program but the program was canceled so i think we're about halfway there i think you should make the call mr chairman i should make one call we know that in addition to this money they raise they're building a museum they're commemorating events all weekend have they talked to you all about you know giving you any money anything from the money they've raised not a word mother randall what do you think is taking so long in tulsa in the state of oklahoma for you all to get the reparations you deserve for descendants to get the reparations they deserve this has gone on too long too long so i know everybody's tired i know i am but what god knows he only knows so i'm just going to leave that up to him [Music] the current state of black tulsa reminds us that this community's fight for restorative justice and reparations is a long winding road to walk us through what this fight has looked like i spent time with attorney demario solomon simmons advocate and lead counsel for the three remaining massacre survivors and executive director to the justice for greenwood foundation i also spoke to descendant dr tiffany crutcher the founder of the demanding a just tulsa coalition [Music] so tell me what you were saying about this black lives matter so they had planted black lives matter down on greenwood right in front of the buildings yeah and the city came through and said it was illegal graffiti and then they were like they will have to remove it and then as their cover they decided to put in a new road a new pave the street over something that they've been needing to do for you know a long time but they decided we'll go ahead and do it now yeah it was like this big deal where the the city council the mayor is involved it's the only place in america that we know of or a city pulled up yeah like live on greenwood so speaking of greenwood when did you first learn about black wall street you know it was funny i went to i went to school right there at carver middle school which as you see is on greenwood yeah but i didn't learn about the green woods like wall street until my junior year at the university of oklahoma and i was sitting in a class with who became a real good mentor in my dr kepler new raquel rest in peace he was in class talking about greenwood and all this and and i was kind of intimidated to say something but i raised my hand and was like yo i'm from tulsa that's not true i never heard that and he gave he he lit it to me gave me all the smoke ever since that day i've been obsessed with learning as much as i could and then as you know by the time you met me educating others and then advocating for it so that's that's how it happened people didn't talk about it why do you think that is well one for black folks is fear we can't even really imagine to have a full 40 blocks decimated over a 18 or 24 hour period you know so this was like a sustained campaign state sanctioned authorized and armed yeah one of the things that i think is so important for us to unpack a little bit is the re-traumatization of black people it wasn't just tulsa in the greenwood district of black wall street there were a number of things that the government has done and repeatedly done to continue the harms one of them as you just talked about with trying to take up black lives matter not trying doing it no doing it but and marking it as graffiti right as graffiti yes yeah you know that's interesting because we talk about uh 100 years of continuing harm yeah which we call is violence through policy yeah and so right after the massacre i mean days after the massacre the city passed a ordinance to make it more difficult to rebuild our people who had already lost everything money businesses lives had to use whatever resources they had to actually fight that yeah illegal unconstitutional ordinance two years later they built the largest kkk what they call a clever meeting hall in the nation at the time right next to greenwood so people had to just see it every day and be traumatized for the through the 20s and the 30s and the 40s up through the 50s parts of greenwood that was able to rebuild didn't have paved streets didn't have indoor plumbing this was all a ploy and policy because they wanted to run the people out of out of tulsa they wanted their land when that didn't work what did they do they turned to urban renewal and they received again policy violence federal dollars to come in and just take the whole place is blighted steal all the land yeah push all of us further north where i grew up and the final nail is the highway that they intentionally yep specifically yes purposely yeah put right through the heart of the greenwood business district yeah and that was it at that point they moved everybody out north they created a ghetto since i met you while we were both in law school you're the reparations chair staying on message um you know for the national black law students association i'm curious to understand from you for folks who don't understand what justice for greenwood foundation is all about why you stood that up you know what the challenges you've experienced are in trying to just get justice for the survivors well yes the foundation just for greenwood foundation will set up for four main points number one is we seek financial compensation for those who suffer through the massacre and financial compensation obviously from those who perpetrated the harm yeah but also those who have been benefited from the harm right and so they also have a responsibility to pay and to help the survivors and those who who've suffered secondly we want to make sure that we hold the perpetrators accountable yeah to this day no one has been held accountable and obviously most of the individuals were probably deceased but the institutions and the entities are still alive and doing very well like the city of tulsa the commission of course just announced that it canceled its biggest event two people with major national platforms stacy abrams john legend pulled out of the event they said if you're not gonna do right by the survivors we don't wanna participate that was real power yeah that was real power and that's what we need we need real power that we can exercise and not be afraid of it now we stood total told with the commission and said look if you don't do these seven things and do right by our community make sure resources come back to our people we won't participate that's all we said yeah we won't participate and then with john and stacy backing us up with that that's how we get things done yeah well we have tiffany crutcher here dr tiffany crutcher y'all playing this you got your purple on y'all serious for the attorney so we were just talking about the commission which as you know canceled his biggest event yeah i always tell people that that greenwood 10 000 people were displaced during the massacre because of racial terror violence and they didn't leave tulsa because they wanted to because they were immigrants they left as refugees and they went to chicago they went to kansas city they went to los angeles and so black wall street is everywhere and so on this 100 year anniversary we're calling it the homecoming everybody is coming home back home to this sacred land and so it is on all of us all over this nation because black wall street is a spirit it's a mindset we have black wall streets everywhere we should be trying to reimagine what black wall street could be in our own communities and so it's just not our phytosis simply the microcosm of what's happening all across this country and if we can get it right here we can get it right everywhere and so i'm just grateful for the national voices the people who have platforms that can echo our voices right here in a city that hasn't done black people right uh they've left the the community of north tulsa behind but on the south side of the tracks you see high rises you see rooftops you see condos you see restaurants you see banks over here we have nothing but but trees they just planted a tree right over here in honor of the massacre what are we going to do with a tree and now they're telling us to pull ourselves up and that oh it's just about money for them and so i'm baffled by the notion that okay yeah we'll give the survivors a few pennies but we don't want their descendants to inherit anything and so it baffles me when when they robbed us of our generational wealth but they don't want descendants to inherit anything they robbed us of everything that we owned even our spirits but guess what we're resilient we're here we feel empowered this weekend we've stood strong because of the support of people like you why is it that we have to acquiesce and go along to get along because they may give our foundations a hundred thousand dollars why is it so we said no more you have to go but i want you to answer me in one word what does justice look like reparations well i heard you sir come on reparations chair signing off you got to go i'll check in with you later sounds good tiffany so i think um the one piece that we haven't really talked about and i want to connect the dots for folks is you're the twin sister of terence crutcher you you know you run the terran scratcher foundation why is it so important to connect the dots of what happened when black wall street the violence against black bodies and the continuation of that harm all over the country too right well you know it hit me like a ton of bricks when uh we started talking about commemorating terrence was killed not too far from from here in this black community that's in fact what brought you back home that's what brought me back home terence was a third generation descendant of a survivor my twin brother and i always say angela that the same state-sanctioned violence that burned down my grandmother's community the same police department that deputized white civilians and klansmen is the same police department today that killed terence with his hands in the air unarmed he wasn't committing a crime he wasn't under arrest he didn't do anything they they killed him and i've drawn so many stark parallels you know i often wonder what my grandmother was thinking when she had to flee from from mobs of white folks terence the same thing just walking with his hands in the air slowly and a mob of white police officers fled to the scene like he was the new york bomber when you consider your legacy the legacy of your family that is so rich also so painful what do you hope your legacy will be i always say that i can't bring terrence back who was murdered at the hands of state sanctioned violence in tulsa but the last words he spoke to me on our 40th birthday 30 days before he was killed he said god is going to get the glory out of my life and i'm going to make you proud so i have to make sure that i fulfill his prophecy and fight like hell to make sure that terence jr who is the spitting image of terence doesn't have his same fate that's the legacy i want to see i i imagine what tulsa could be like for little terrence i too have a dream like martin luther king that one day we won't live in a food desert here in tulsa that one day terrence will be able to to to walk outside free and not be concerned with the police pulling him over i too dream that that that one day he won't be discriminated against when he goes to buy a house or goes to get a loan that's the dream that i have for for my legacy and my nieces and nephews and and so i'm going to fulfill terence's prophecy and i believe that this weekend and the words that he spoke and the fact that you're here and everybody is here echoing our rally cries living proof of that prophecy i love that sis i know he's proud of you thank you thank you thank you i love you are you trying to make me cry just a couple of weeks ago you all went to washington dc was that your first time being in washington in my first time yes and you all went to testify you and your brother uncle red mother randall you testified um on the computer but i saw all of your testimonies yeah yeah what was it like to testify before congress well it was wonderful and we hope that it was a help for us to you know go through with all of that traveling and time consuming and everything to say those words and a pleasure for them to allow me to say that to be you know to represent them yeah yeah mother randall what was it like for you to be able to testify before congress well i just told it like i saw it like it happened it wasn't a pleasant sight it really wasn't and i i thought we should be able to overcome all of it but there have been some good changes one of them is we had our first black president and now we have our first black vice president yes indeed and woman you all got to meet her while you were you were in dc talk about that experience well it's just a big experience for me to you know to live long enough to see that yes so that but i think it's wonderful and i think she's doing a good job and it's time that we should have you know someone like that so so far we've i've seen the president and the vice president so i've been pleased from that yes yes sir uncle red what about you how was meeting kamala harris it was a pleasure to let the world know speaking to a vice president it was a pleasure and an honor and just i just let well know what's going on uncle red mother fletcher talked about how sad it was for you all to depart and as you talked about you were a baby at the time but i know you know that airplanes were dropping bombs on the area but you still went and served in the military was it a hard decision for you to make to serve your country after your country seemingly betrayed you yes uh it was hard we had a segregated army it was a black honor in the white house we had a white captain we had two black lieutenants when i got out of the army the muslims i paid they gave you so much money and i had i think i could i think i got about 93 93 yes i understand looking at the history it supposed to be more than that yeah see when i left to go to service i had a wife and a three-month-old child you go you go to the mailbox look at the mailbox say report for study duty so you were drafted yes wow i was just only 21 years old so let me ask you this uncle red i saw i talked about the red cross report from 1921. in this report there's field order number four in field order number four it says all the able-bodied negro men remaining in detention camp at fairgrounds and other places in the city of tulsa will be required to render such service and perform such labor as is required by the military commission and the red cross in making the prom proper sanitary provisions for the care of the refugees the refugees were your friends some of them your family members right they were drafted too so to speak on june 2nd 1921. so the day after some of the people who were incarcerated some of the people who were seeking help they made the black people come serve but not the white folks that's right and you got drafted again yes this will be arnold used court march which that puts you in prison yes so you face two injustices yes literally fleeing your home there are people who um weren't babies yet but they talk about the number of stillborns mothers had at that time of the massacre people who would have been your contemporaries you made it out alive and they didn't yes yeah it's just lucky i made it all alive this you know so much of the remaining injustices and frankly the all-out assault on black economic power in tulsa can only be addressed through the policy making process policy changes can always be influenced through the power of the people we need to see some major shifts on the federal state and local levels joining me to discuss now how we do this are congresswoman maxine waters state representative regina goodwin tulsa city councilor vanessa hall harper and last but certainly not least rashad robinson president of color of change who knows firsthand just how powerful we can be in influencing policy through petitions thank you everyone for being here thank you we've started almost every conversation in tulsa over the past few days with what does justice look like in one word so i want to just go down a line and ask you all and we'll just jump in so congresswoman what does justice look like in this situation well uh one of the reasons i was so interested in being here with you today because you made it clear this is about reparations and so this has been a subject that's been banded around for a long time been talked about been alluded to and now i do think we're at the point where real decisions are going to be made uh how we move forward and what we're going to do on reparations as you know the congress of the united states have taken it up uh the judiciary committee led by miss jackson lee sheila jackson lee and others our allies are moving forward and giving real leadership and so the discussion uh not only because of what's happening on the judiciary committee but george floyd and that murder uh has helped people to understand what was going on some people who maybe didn't really believe us or didn't really realize how bad it was and so now it is time for us to talk about what is this country going to do to compensate people of color black people in particular for what has happened to us and our past and the way that we have been robbed of wealth and the way that we've been discriminated against and the way that we've been murdered so reparations is what it's all about now yeah one word would be reparations i agree but we got to be very clear what we're talking about when we say reparations so in my mind reparations is land and cash period everything else is good policy land and cash slavery reparations or reparations for massacres land and cash rashai well i want to associate myself with the comments about reparations and then i just want to add to that justice is also about the path forward and it is about changing the rules for the road ahead because as much as we have to restore we have to understand that if we keep the same rules in place more harm will continue to take place so let's contextualize this reparations ask or demand of land and cash with what's happening in the state we know the oklahoma governor recently signed legislation that would make it more difficult to teach critical race theory in the classroom any student that is uncomfortable with the subject on race a teacher could be penalized so we're just talking about educating people about black wall street what can really be done with the governor you have and frankly the mayor right the mayor is is saying that uh nothing there's no uh liability for the city because folks were not acting under the color of law which is of course a federal standard when when they were a part of the massacre and so therefore there's no cause of action so what is the path forward really at the local and state level here if you're getting that kind of objection from the mayor and the governor if you don't mind yes please that's such a loaded question and i think a fairly simple answer the bottom line is this it was a stupid bill 1775. uh uh enough with the nice words and and and all right it made no sense we had black clergy that tried to meet with the governor to say why would you do this and it is a fact that representative don ross right senator maxine horner some 20 years ago a 200 page report was done and reparations were recommended that's a matter of historic fact and i wanted to put that in a resolution to acknowledge this time a hundred years later and the super majority republicans said they were not going to hear that resolution wanted to be a joint resolution and when we talk about documenting who we are as oklahoma i said that makes oklahoma at least look like you tried to do something 20 years ago you didn't do anything about it but at least you gave thought to it right they came up with their own resolution in their own words and it was not befitting of the time or the lives that were lost or the generations that are here now that may go forward so when you talk about 1775 it's not only in the classroom they don't want it happening at the capitol for us to acknowledge history and i think it's shameful that oklahoma has this kind of leadership right now and we had to fight to get it passed and the only reason they passed it on the last day of session is because then they said to me we're not going to do this i said then choose you this day who you're going to serve but if you don't do it we're going to be national about it and that is the only reason they allowed it to be passed because they didn't want that national light right so they heard it off the floor we did it very ceremoniously and we're going to keep pressing on counselor i want to ask you at the local level in addition to the very clear opposition that you have with the mayor what else are you experiencing as you all try to move ordinances along or get the type of recognition that we know black wall street deserves the experience when we're talking about the black community on any issue is always resistance it's always an automatic no and the reason for that is quite frankly racism it's racism and it's white fragility and what we have to do is continue to do is is just fight to push the line to if they don't as representative regina goodman just said if they don't do it then we're going to put you on blast and so this is an opportunity for us in tulsa that we can't let these opportunities pass us by the eyes of the world are on tulsa oklahoma right now and so we have to use that and take advantage of this opportunity to let the world know what's going on yeah rashad i did not realize that you all began this petition process in 2019. of course the existing commission that's raised 30 million dollars off of the massacre has been in place since 2016 when senator matthews introduced the legislation at the state level why did you all get involved and how important it is it for people at home to engage on this issue when they're saying what does tulsa have to do with me well like a lot of issues we get involved because people invite us in yeah they say you know we need some help we need um people to engage and what we every single day try to do is channel outrage energy um into strategic change how do we get people to focus energy and the work around reparations um has been work that we've done at color of change for years and and reparations both in terms of supporting legislation federally um the you know hr 40 um reparations at the local level but also as we engage in uh holding corporations accountable um doing it with a reparations sort of state of mind right not just asking for charity but structural change not just asking the companies to apologize but actually asking them to make amends in really clear ways that are measurable i'm not simply asking them to give us write-offs that you know they can walk away but actually making sure that the changes are things that they can feel and that the community can feel so for us this sits inside of that larger work um you know our our advocacy has been in deep partnership with folks at the local level and we are really proud of that and we're also proud that as part of this work that we're you know being able to tell this story to a whole new generation of people um through this work uh 7.2 million uh black folks and allies of every race 6.2 on our sms platform um folks on our social media are hearing about these stories and are able to then share the content engage on social media and for us that's incredibly important as well because we have to build the type of awareness that allows us to be able to move people quickly to the type of action the type of demands that are going to be necessary to produce real change congresswoman waters when did you first learn about black wall street i'm not sure when it was but i think it was prior to getting elected to the california state legislature i was basically an organizer out working with you know head start parents and all of that that i was becoming more and more aware of what was going on not only in our country but internationally but i didn't really get involved in it until i was in the united states congress with mr ogletree attorney ogletree who was such a wonderful man who had passion about this issue and he engaged me and others i came here and i was involved in a town hall meeting and i was a little bit surprised there was not the kind of support for uh reparations or anything substantial i think they were talking about statues and i left here thinking we can do better than this but i want you to know mr ogletree attorney ogletree was involved in trying to get rid of the limitations on being able to file lawsuits and so this picture that i brought with me today is a picture of us in front of the supreme court yeah with survivors that you all know fighting for justice for the people of greenwood and tulsa and so you know i'm really more woke now than i've ever been because you know god bless i've been able to become the chair of the financial services committee of congress and it's dawning on me i should have had the banks and the insurance companies a long time ago and so i've instructed my staff uh that there to get started uh with us doing what we have to do in order to engage the private sector uh because i'm gonna clap for that too right now yeah well i want you to know uh that when jamie diamond and all of the big ceos come before us we're gonna we're gonna bring them back in when i sat down with uncle red just the other day i said what's the thing that's standing in our way of progress and he said we have to vote yes we have to vote and it's so crazy it always comes back down to that lowest common denominator but whether you're talking about the mayor here or the governor the power is in that crossing that first threshold into exercising our franchise so we've got to do that i wish we had like another hour but thank you all so much for doing this today thank you thank you thank you so much in order for black wall street to not be limited to a physical location black wall street must become a mentality a way of being that permeates our culture that means new sources of income new tools renewed minds and the discipline to organize black economic power not just around consumption but around ownership black wall street is also about innovative economic solutions our calls to action most often focus on much needed policy changes but we also need innovative economic solutions joining me now are natalie cofield an assistant administrator at the small business administration kevin matthews ii author of burning to blueprint rebuilding black wall street after a century of turmoil angel rich founder of credit rich author of history of the black dollar and tyrants billingslead ii founder of black tech street thank you all so much for being here so we spent a lot of time over the last several days with folks talking about the history of black wall street but not enough i don't think anyway on the mindset the mentality the resilience the tenacity the self-determination that was really needed to open his doors to begin with what do you all think we need to do in this generation to ensure that black wall street really becomes a mindset i'll start with you natalie um so first off angela thank you for having me as you mentioned i'm with the u.s small business administration and one of the biggest priorities we have is around ensuring that minority communities and black businesses recover from the covid pandemic and so much of this is about the innovation that we have continued to endure time over time and this example of the tulsa massacre is just but another example of the ways in which we have continued to evolve and so the biden harris administration is committed to infusing capital to infusing programs to infusing supports and to infusing the resources that our community needs to come back from this pandemic and to come back from future circumstances that we may experience and i think part of this also is about and just personally speaking always making sure that we have examples of black entrepreneurship front and center for everyone to see thank you natalie um kevin i want to come to you natalie talked about a pandemic that's not the first pandemic black folks have experienced right i think that this is this was a tremendous one the massacre at black wall street when you think about what's happening now in the greenwood district super gentrified not a single building owned by a black person what has to happen to make black wall street black again and will that be just confined to a geographical location i think the one thing we have to do is is to think about that shift because a lot of times we think about one location and real estate being the only asset class that's not necessarily necessarily the case uh for example in 2008 when the housing crisis hit black wealth dropped 50 whereas white wealth only dropped 17 primarily because we were not investing in the stock market cryptocurrencies were not a place that we were investing so i think we do have to make that shift because also in the stock market in the crypto market is left much less discriminatory for example black homes are devalued at forty eight thousand dollars per home if we all buy the same stock at the same time we're all getting the exact same price so let me let me just turn to you for a second and and switch gears a little bit angel how have you personally adopted a black wall street mentality what do you do to ensure that you every new venture you take on right has that a little bit of that mentality associated with and what do you say to folks who are trying to figure out how to embrace and walk in that same mentality yeah so i actually take this very personal my great grandparents were some of the original black homeowners in the country i come from the d.c black wall street my great-grandparents came from a pretty much what used to be a plantation and lancaster south carolina was able to work their way up and owned a home in capitol hill which my family still has to this day and growing up my great-grandmother she always emphasized that we spent money within the black community that we spent it within our actual geographic community and that we understood the importance of the black dollar and a lot of that has gotten lost over time and i really think that it boils down to that community mindset that collective shared dollar is what we really need to get back to surely we will rebuild black wall street i want to come to you tyrants what is the most important takeaway from black wall street pre-1921 before the massacre what's the most important takeaway for folks to have so the most important takeaway is that was a couple of things one that economies can and should work for everybody and for two black wall street was a four minute mile black people can do anything in this country against the worst odds that's what black wall street represented and that's what it should represent to everybody who thinks about it the phrase that i've come to learn to use when it comes to describing black wall street is to tell young black kids your blood is noble that's what you come from that's who you are if we can build that in the midst of jim crow in the midst of having the lack of resources and in the midst of a world when it's okay for people to kill you and you will have no recourse what could we do if we had the resources behind us that everybody else did this world would benefit in a way that hasn't been seen so it's not charity work and the message to the rest of the world is imagine what could happen if you were to stop oppressing everyone you know our powering partners second news always have a phrase that says racism is the glass ceiling for all of human history only a small number of of people's innovations have pushed the world forward whether it be feudal lords kings or whatever because you're oppressing people via race gender or all of these other all these other structures and things we create to make some people worth more than others imagine what a world looks like where everybody's creative capability is able to contribute to pushing society forward so i want to ask you all um from your vantage point from your experiences if you would call the massacre terrorism would you say it was terrorism was it an act of terrorism what happened on may 31st and june 1st 1921 i think it was we have certain people united states different organizations so yes in the the red cross report it also talks about where were the police where was where was the the government and you all from experience um and also from all the research been done know that they were also involved yeah right they allowed for this to happen have you all um received and uncle red i'll start with you has the city of tulsa ever taken responsibility for or paid for the damage done mother randall i'll ask you has the state of oklahoma ever taken responsibility or paid for what's been done no no not that i know of and then mother fletcher i'll ask you has the united states ever taken responsibility or provided justice for you all after what's been done he said not my knowledge to heaven yeah but i think they should yes yeah we've seen restorative and reparative actions taken for 9 11 survivors for japanese internment and some other displacement some other massacres including rosewood in history but never for tulsa and so i think what we know just like with black wall street before where you had to take rebuilding into your own hands even with a commission commemorating your own history once again we're having to take matters into our own hands so there's the justice for greenwood foundation that we are directing people to utilize to raise money for you all so that you all don't have to live poor we want to see you all living well and that is our commitment to you going forward you got me uncle red since those tears on capitol hill you got me i'm right here so on that i want to hear from you all we talked about what justice looks like what do you want your legacy to be after all of this what do you want your legacy to be for young tulsa coming up now i would say i'll talk to the young folks out today and i want to hear first stride and ask questions and keep going ahead with your education we are one one we want to be treated like one i love that thank you uncorrect mother randall when you think about your legacy for this area and for young people coming up what do you want that to be sometimes i think we're making progress and again what is progress so just about what he said i think it's responsibility mother fletcher i haven't had a very small income all of my life and i certainly would you know appreciate a little health of myself well i can tell you all you've been so courageous and you've inspired so much in so many not just when you testified on capitol hill but it certainly made a difference and i think you all fight inspire so many others who are pursuing justice whether it's in police violence or it's in pursuing reparations that they know they deserve in their communities so i do want to thank you all for all you've done oh thank you thank you i appreciate sure appreciate getting very inviting into this yes i often tell my brother i said well they're wondering where did they find that little old lady well i'm glad that you are here and i'm glad we are one right black tulsans all agree on these three things we must educate the world on what happened here get economic justice for black tulsa and most immediately obtain justice for the survivors mother randall mother fletcher and uncle red but when we consider all of tulsa the state of oklahoma and the nation this question remains if there's no path forward without justice why hasn't the collective focus in tulsa been placed on ensuring the survivors are actually lifted from the jaws of poverty so they can finally enjoy the lives they once lived before this tragic massacre triumph can't happen without intention and it definitely cannot happen without a commitment to radical truth today we heard that truth from the survivors descendants activists healers and national voices who are engaged in this fight every single day while there's more work to be done recent victories demonstrate the impact we have when we come together around a common goal we must be reminded that on the road to triumph we have to embrace this power that is uniquely ours uncle redd asked that we not let him die without seeing justice we have a collective obligation to answer that call by making the demands clear at every level of government with corporations that are responsible and requiring war from each other triumph must define us more than tragedy the spirit of black wall street lives on welcome to greenwood [Music] you