Part One

Prior to Memorial Day weekend of 1921, there was a thriving black community in Tulsa. This account from the JSTR Daily briefly introduces the events:

In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, the Tulsa Tribune reported that a black man, Dick Rowland, attempted to rape a white woman, Sarah Page. Whites in the area refused to wait for the investigative process to play out, sparking two days of unprecedented racial violence. Thirty-five city blocks went up in flames, 300 people died, and 800 were injured. Defense of white female virtue was the expressed motivation for the collective racial violence….

These African-Americans’ economic status could not save them from the racial hostility of their day. Greenwood survivors recount disturbing details about what really happened that night. Eyewitnesses claim “the area was bombed with kerosene and/or nitroglycerin,” causing the inferno to rage more aggressively. Official accounts state that private planes “were on reconnaissance missions, they were surveying the area to see what happened.”

(Note that the “reconnaissance missions” also firebombed the Greenwood District. Of course, this once thriving community didn’t recover. And it took the better part of century for the City of Tulsa to acknowledge what happed.

(For a comprehensive of this reprehensible event, read this article.)

Part Two

For years it was rumored that there were victims buried in unmarked graves. Early efforts did not support that contention, but lately there have been renewed efforts to locate graves. And just in the in the past week, approximately 78 sets of human remains were discovered.

Part Three

In October 2021, when I started photographing Route 66 as part of a collaborative photography project, it honestly seemed like a bit of a lark, a chance to find amusing things along the storied highway and gather up stories that were entertaining.

Part Four

This mural, though. Shocking. Stricking. Heartbreaking. Pointed. And not at all what I ever thought I would see.

Tulsa, Oklahoma
photographed 10.26.2025