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This month the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park opens and the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation hosts its first national symposium.
Dr. John Hope Franklin
Tulsa is poised to become a leader in the national reconciliation movement, which links the hidden past of race riots in America to current events. The hub of this work is the city’s John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, says Jeff Kos, John Hope Franklin Center board member.
The center is hosting the first-ever national symposium on reconciliation this month at Philbrook Museum of Art and the Doubletree Hotel Tulsa Downtown, as well as opening the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park located south of Interstate-244 between North Elgin and Detroit avenues.
“The riot was kept quiet for 80-plus years and was the most devastating act of civil disobedience in America,” says Reuben Gant, a member of the center’s board of directors and president of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. “The center is needed here because if anyone would believe that there’s not a racial issue in Tulsa, (they are) fooling themselves. What better place to have it than in Tulsa?”
The park evolved from recommendations of the 2001 Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and work of a 19-person committee. State legislation led to the formation of the original committee, which was tasked with building a memorial park, says Julius Pegues, John Hope Franklin Center chairman. Over time, the committee dissolved from lack of participation and funding, and a 501(c)(3) organization, the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation Inc., was formed to raise the additional funds necessary to build the park.
The commission called the riot the worst civil disturbance in America since the Civil War, resulting in the destruction of the Greenwood District homes and businesses. The park fulfills the commission’s recommendation to establish a memorial of the incident.
The centerpiece of the 3-acre park is the “Tower of Reconciliation,” a 25-foot-tall sculpture that traces migration of Native Americans and African Americans to Oklahoma from 1540 to the present day. Ed Dwight, the first African-American astronaut and now a nationally known sculptor, designed the tower.
“The committee was impressed by Mr. Dwight’s work and the fact he is a well-respected artist with works of art throughout the U.S. and Europe,” Gant says.
The committee members provided Dwight with their vision and the background of the riot to guide his design of the park, which birthed the concept of the tower and Hope Plaza — a 16-foot-tall, wide and long granite structure with bronze storyboards depicting the story of the race riot and reconciliation. The structure represents actual pictures from the race riot, including depictions of hostility, a white man fully armed for assault; humiliation, a black man with his hands raised in surrender; and hope, the white director of the Red Cross holding a black baby.
“This park is intended to articulate the shared history” of the race riot, center board member Rand Suffolk says. “It’s not about one race or another. The monument commemorates the incident; it’s not celebrated. It succeeds in telling the dimensions of the story historically.
“It’s not healthy to forget about something that defined you. It’s a part of our history. How do we learn from this and move forward to create a better community?”
The park’s next phase includes construction of an education building, which will house a library, auditorium, classrooms and study.
“The impact we hope to achieve is to create a place for meaningful dialogue on cultural differences,” Gant says. “A place to have civil conversations on our differences and how to reconcile those differences so there’s not conflict.”
For more information, visit www.jhfcenter.org.
John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation’s national symposium
“Reconciliation in America: Moving Beyond Racial Violence” June 2-4, 2010
Jeff Kos, John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation board member and historian, says the symposium is the first of its kind to address race riot history in a national context.
“We have to come out with a better understanding of where Tulsa is nationally on reconciliation,” he says.
Who will be involved:
- Dr. John Loewen, Catholic University: “Race Riots and Sundown Towns: A Hidden History of Racism”
- Dr. William Tuttle, University of Kansas: “Red Summer 1919, Chicago and Beyond”
- Dr. Scott Ellsworth, University of Michigan: Expert on oral histories who collected the stories of survivors of the Tulsa race riot
- Dr. David Thelen, University of Indiana: “Reconciliation in History and Practice”
The symposium will address:
- The history of race riots in Tulsa and around the world
- Consequences of the riots then and now
- The work of current practitioners on race relations and reconciliation
- Panel discussions on various topics in reconciliation
- Current academic research and community projects that address American history of racial violence.
