Professor Quraysh Lansana spent years studying the history of Greenwood, Black Wall Street, and the 1921 Race Massacre. Now he’s teaching a college course on it.
Nothing has actually changed in policing, TPD’s policies and Tulsa’s city government from 2017 — when I first began closely examining Tulsa’s community policing efforts — till now. All of the efforts that the public sees were planned behind the scenes by activists and citizens who would not and will not be silent because their community is over-policed, scrutinized, and portrayed as being a “high crime” area on television shows like Live PD.
“Live PD exploits Tulsa’s citizens,” a Tulsa citizen loudly declared at Mayor G.T. Bynum’s Town Hall listening input session to select a new Chief of Police for Tulsa.
With Mayor Bynum holding interviews for the new Chief of Police, the public safety and service of Tulsa’s most vulnerable communities affected by regressive policing must be put at the forefront.
Several speakers from the community tried to explain to Mayor Bynum why the show was problematic and divisive for a city seeking to heal old racial wounds.
Tulsa’s Greenwood District is home to America’s original Black Wall Street.
On the first day of Kwanzaa, Umoja, the sound of beating drums fills an auditorium appropriately named Ancestral Hall inside the Rudisill Regional Library.
