Without partnership schools like Greenwood Leadership Academy, some African American students could end up back in low performing schools that surround Greenwood Leadership Academy. These students, especially African American students, have a higher probability of landing on the infamous school-to-prison pipeline at a lower performing school. Oklahoma currently ranks at the top in the nation for incarceration.
There is so much work to be done, and I am always among the first to admit that we are far from the ideal situation in this city. But I completely believe that we have enough people in our city that care about our kids to make things better.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. symbolically ends at the Frisco Railroad tracks, where it was once nearly illegal for any black person to cross the tracks without permission or permits. Why didn’t the White city officials want to embrace Dr. King’s Dream by extending the street through to south Tulsa?
City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper supports good cops, not crooked ones. Why? Becuase her husband is a cop and she would never put his life in danger because she loves him.
Citizens are crying out for better policing practices across the city. On Thursday, December 28, 2017, the Terence Crutcher Foundation hosted a community town hall meeting at the 36th Street North Event Center. The evening was filled with speakers advocating for change in policies and police-officer relations with north Tulsa residents. Dr. Tiffany Crutcher was poised, eloquent, and calm whenever she spoke at the town hall. She recounted how she and her family have been treated since her brother, Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by Betty Shelby, and the subsequent trial, and she spoke of community relations with TPD and the goals of the Terence Crutcher Foundation. At the end of the town hall meeting, the audience viewed a video from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) addressing statements that District One’s city councilor, Vanessa Hall-Harper made against TPD and Betty Shelby. Hall-Harper claimed that the FOP participates in a culture of corruption, and she refused to back down whenever she was questioned about her comments. The FOP member in the video stated that he did not understand why Mrs. Hall-Harper holds those beliefs, and that is one of the biggest problems dividing the police and the FOP from the community.
The white-supremacy institutions of Tulsa, Oklahoma are well-oiled machines, working against the progress of District One its Councilwoman, Vanessa Hall-Harper.
What the Tulsa World Editorial Writers fail to understand is that the councilwoman’s constituents asked the councilor to push for the moratorium with the aim being an end to the proliferation of discount-dollar stores in north Tulsa.
It is important to remember the majority of the city’s African-American community and their allies considers the moratorium a victory.
“I had often observed, that when her mother washed her face it looked very rosy; but when she washed mine it did not look so; I therefore tried oftentimes myself if I could not by washing make my face of the same color as my little play-mate(Mary), but it was all in vain; and I now began to be mortified at the difference in our complexions. (Equiano, 1794, p.64)”
