The Big Easy: Literary New Orleans and Intangible Heritage

Introduction and Rationale

As 16-year old Veneice Sims and her friends walked home from Booker T. Washington High School on Tuesday, May 31, 1921, they never imagined how their lives would change within hours. A student at Tulsa's only Black high school, Veneice busily planned her wardrobe, hairstyle, and date for the prom, scheduled for Wednesday night at the Stratford Hotel—the finest Black-owned hotel in the entire country. ¹ But Veneice never got to go to prom, never wore the "peacock blue" ² dress she had chosen, and never saw her prom date again after the horrific events of the Tulsa Race Riot that began that evening. ³ The violence that followed tore an already segregated Tulsa apart, leaving hundreds dead or injured. Violence soon turned to blame as Black Tulsans tried to put their lives back together without the help of government or insurance resources. Through an amazing story of resilience, Tulsa's Black Community of Greenwood was resurrected, but a "culture of silence" ⁴ threatened to erase these historic events from the minds and memories of Tulsans for generations to come.

Fast-forward ninety years to May 31, 2011. Students from diverse backgrounds walk the halls of my Tulsa high school, just five miles south of where the events of the race riot took place, yet they are oblivious to deep, scarred, dark past of their city. Each school year I talk to my high school students about the Tulsa Race Riot in my social studies classes, and I am always saddened when half have never heard of the event. Their eyes grow wide, mouths gape, and they inevitably say, "Not here!" I am always shocked and I wonder why they have never questioned the blatant segregation that still exists in Tulsa or the obvious inequities that plague the different parts of town, its schools, job opportunities, etc. How can they live in a city, or any place, and be ignorant of its past? Even more frightened I wonder how they can live in this city and not want to better it.

In the seminar we talked about the two maps of a city—the flat map that shows streets, waterways, and named places versus the pop-up mental map of desire and memory. As students read and research the history and the stories of Tulsa's people, analyze photographs and maps, and visit the Greenwood district with its monuments to the past, they will create these maps of desire for Tulsa. I hope the experiences gained will spur them to civic action as they develop plans for the future economic and cultural growth of the city.

Teaching this new, in-depth unit is important to my students because we have ignored the horrific events for so long. I believe the silence further divided the Black and White communities in Tulsa. Suitable for secondary US History, Oklahoma History, Geography, and Current Events courses, this unit illustrates the power of place, the idea of intangible heritage, and cultural history/geography for students all over the country. Like New Orleans, I believe the lessons from Tulsa's past, present, and future extend beyond its borders, and serve as example of America's struggle to rise above our ethnic and cultural divisions in order to create a more united United States.