Tulsa

 

Tulsa author and National Magazine Award nominee Victor Luckerson will discuss the personal and political impacts of urban renewal with nationally recognized local photographer Don Thompson at OSU-Tulsa Auditorium on Feb. 1, 2024, juxtaposing visuals from government sources with Thompson’s on-the-ground photography of how Greenwood residents experienced those tumultuous years.

 

Urban renewal efforts in the 60’s and 70’s, fueled by federal policies like the Federal-Aid Highway Act, radically changed Tulsa’s landscape by destroying businesses and homes in the Greenwood district in favor of highways. The Greenwood neighborhood – who rebuilt after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and rose to even greater prosperity by the 1950s, was partially seized by the city and largely destroyed by the new highway system.

 

The event is part of the Deep Greenwood series, which builds off the history captured in Luckerson’s book Built from the Fire, an epic story of Tulsa’s Greenwood district. Each event is anchored by a set of chapters from the book, which attendees are encouraged to read ahead of time. The conversation with Luckerson and Thompson will be guided by Dr. Erica Townsend-Bell, director of the Center for Africana Studies at OSU.

 

Luckerson is a journalist who has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine. He moved to Tulsa in 2019 to tell the story of Greenwood from the perspective of race massacre survivors and descendants. His text brings to life more than 100 North Tulsa residents, past and present, and draws on thousands of primary-source documents from his archival research.

 

Thompson, whose work has been on display at Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Philbrook Museum of Art, considers himself a “social justice documentary photographer.” His Black Settlers in Tulsa: The Search for the Promised Land collection, which includes photographs of 45 of Tulsa’s earliest settlers, is currently on display on the OSU-Tulsa campus.

 

The Deep Greenwood series is being sponsored by the OSU-Tulsa Library, the Tulsa City-County Library and the University of Tulsa’s Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. Additional sponsors include The Center for Africana Studies at OSU, All Souls Unitarian Church, the Historic Big 10 Ballroom, Fulton Street Books, Magic City Books, the Black Wall Street Times, the Oklahoma Eagle and the North Tulsa Unity Book Club.

 

 

Don Thompson's "Black Settlers in Tulsa: The Search for the Promised Land" collection is currently on display in the OSU-Tulsa Conference Center.