Articles

Photo of Dr. Olivia J. Hooker courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard. In September 2018, the nonprofit organization StoryCorps recorded Dr. Olivia Hooker’s recollections about being the first Black woman admitted to the U.S. Coast Guard in 1945. She spoke…

by Carlos Moreno and David GoodwinPhoto of E.L. Goodwin courtesy of the Oklahoma Eagle. Eleven-year-old Edwin Lawrence Goodwin arrived in Greenwood in 1914 with his sisters Anna and Lucille, brother James Jr., and parents James Henri and Carlie Greer Goodwin….

Most of what we know today about the 1921 Race Massacre comes from white newspapers (the Tulsa Tribune and the Tulsa World) and white journalists and historians such as Scott Ellsworth, Tim Madigan, James S. Hirsch, and others. While these…

Photo of B.C. Franklin courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives. B.C. Franklin’s autobiography, “My Life and an Era,” takes its readers back in time to a period of Oklahoma’s history when Black families enjoyed an abundance of prosperity,…

Photo of Vernon AME Church, in 1919, courtesy of pastor Robert Turner. In 1777, Richard Allen converted to Methodism. In 1780, Stokely Sturgis agreed to let Allen hire himself out in order to earn money to purchase his freedom for…

Photo of Simon Berry courtesy of the Greenwood Cultural Center. Greenwood produced many great entrepreneurs but perhaps none has left such a lasting legacy on Tulsa as Simon Berry. Social entrepreneurship is a current buzz word in the business community…

Photo of J.B. Stradford courtesy of Laurel Stradford, Stradford family historian. On the morning of Tuesday, December 1st, 1908, J.B. Stradford and his wife Augusta boarded a train from Kansas on the Katy line to Tulsa, Oklahoma. They refused to…

Photo courtesy of Langston University, from Fire on Mount Zion: My Life and History as a Black Woman in America by Mabel Little. On a warm summer Tuesday evening on June 1st, 1971, dozens of parishioners and community members gathered…

Photo of A.C. Jackson courtesy of the Department of Special Collections & University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa Every Tulsa historian would agree that among the most tragic of the deaths which occurred during the Race Massacre of…

Photograph of John & Loula Williams courtesy of the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum. Tulsa historian Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land opens with the story of a young Bill Williams asking his father why they relocated from Mississippi…