Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation
The Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) at OSU-Tulsa is part of a nationwide, community-based initiative by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to "plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism."
Each TRHT center focuses on topics of racial equity specific to their location. Because of the deep history on and around the OSU-Tulsa campus – from the meeting of Creek, Cherokee and Osage Nation land to Black Wall Street and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre – the work at OSU-Tulsa's Center for TRHT involves engaging community stakeholders to create programming and initiatives that benefit the north Tulsa community as well as the OSU-Tulsa campus community.
An additional initiative of the center is to investigate how diversity and inclusion manifest in every aspect of campus life, including curriculum and university governance. The Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation will work closely with other entities at OSU-Tulsa such as the Center for Public Life and student organizations to help students, faculty, staff and community to feel welcome and included, and to know that there is a space for all ideas.
Racial Healing Circles
Based on a framework developed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, racial healing circle sessions consist of conversations between participants to discuss experiences with race and conscious and unconscious biases. Trained racial healing circle practitioners ensure these sessions are safe spaces that promote compassion, empathy and truthful conversations.
Racial healing circles provide opportunities to reflect and acknowledge the participants' unquestioned assumptions and biases in a way that is non-threatening and encouraging. Participants may share personal experiences in a way that promotes empathy and understanding. Participants also have the opportunity to confront the historic and contemporary causes and effects of systemic racism while being empowered to promote equity and social justice.
Watch Now: Racial Healing Circles
The Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation offers trained facilitators for racial healing circles. For more information, contact the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation at OSU-Tulsa.
Our Goals
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Become a resource, through practices and programming, to galvanize faculty, students, staff, and administrators to commit to learning and act to eliminate hierarchies of human value.
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Build a coalition to facilitate healing from the wounds of systemic racism at our institution and in Tulsa.
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Inform and enter into dialogue with the public on issues related to ending racial hierarchies via media and technology
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Introduce RX Racial Healing Circles into our current activities and mentor/collaborate with others on campus about effective ways to create new circles.
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Create a land acknowledgement that is rooted in anti-racist actions and honors the stories and experiences of those who are lost, those still living and the Tulsans of the future.
Changing the Narrative
“Changing the Narrative” is a virtual conversation series about race, equity and beyond. The monthly series, which started in the summer of 2020 as the “Dismantling Racism” project from the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation at OSU-Tulsa (TRHT), is now a collaborative venture of five OSU-Tulsa entities. The Center for Poets and Writers at OSU-Tulsa, the Center for Africana Studies, the Center for Family Resilience and the Center for Public Life currently serve as partners in the conversation series, in addition to TRHT.
Each episode of the series airs live on Facebook and Zoom at noon on the third Tuesday of each month. Audience members can ask questions in the chat, which contribute to the moderated conversation. Visit our events page to register for upcoming Changing the Narrative conversations.