Oct 29, 2010
Forget It
Tulsa opened the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park yesterday, commemorating the mob attack that destroyed the city's black community in 1921. The name and theme of the park reflect a compromise with critics of the project, who feared that a memorial focused narrowly on the actual events being commemorated would just dwell on the past.
At the center of the park: a tower that depicts"the history of the African American struggle from Africa to America." At the entry to the park, a sculpture depicts a"white man fully armed for assault," a"black man with his hands raised in surrender" -- rather strangely, since the attack on Tulsa's black neighborhoods began when armed black men surrounded the local courthouse to prevent a lynching of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman on an elevator -- and"the white director of the Red Cross holding a black baby."
At the center of the park: a tower that depicts"the history of the African American struggle from Africa to America." At the entry to the park, a sculpture depicts a"white man fully armed for assault," a"black man with his hands raised in surrender" -- rather strangely, since the attack on Tulsa's black neighborhoods began when armed black men surrounded the local courthouse to prevent a lynching of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman on an elevator -- and"the white director of the Red Cross holding a black baby."
Not to be missed: the comments section following the story at the Wall Street Journal, where a commenter helpfully explains that none of this ever happened:
"Historians agree that it never happened and you won't find any reference to it in history books. Something happened, of course, and it got ugly, but a riot? There has never been a riot in Oklahoma. This notion is driven by a handful of black attorneys who want their share of any reparation settlement."
Visitors may reach the The Tower of Reconciliation by way of the Healing Walkway.
