Wednesday, May 31, marked 102 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre began.
Community activists, descendants, and even survivors gathered at Standpipe Hill to commemorate the most destructive act of racial violence in American history.
Standpipe Hill is proof that the violence of the past leaves scars seen today. Once one of Greenwood’s 35 thriving city blocks, it is now nothing more than an empty field.
But some soil from the hill is scooped into jars, memorializing the unknown victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and will no longer be stepped on.
“We dig our hands in this soil,” said community activist Greg Robinson. “We understand that so many did not get the burial, and may never get the burial, that they truly deserve.”
Robinson is one of many, including two survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, who came to commemorate its 102nd anniversary.
“But we also have eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds, and every generation in between,” he said.
This included community activist and historian Kristi Williams, who said the remembrance was held at Standpipe Hill for a reason.
“You see no mention when you read the marker,” she said, gesturing to a historical marker installed at the site, “of Horace ‘Peg Leg’ Taylor. He was a World War I veteran who stood at the top of this hill with a Gatling gun and held white mobs off for hours so the residents of Greenwood were able to escape. See, they don’t tell us that story.”
Dr. Alicia Odewale, an archeology professor at the University of Tulsa and co-creator of the “Mapping Historical Trauma in Greenwood” project, is trying to tell those stories.
“The only thing we knew about Standpipe Hill was that this was a site of violence,” she explained. “But now we’re able to know that there were at least 30 residences here. The most affluent members of the community were living here. There was a church up here. There was a school right over there – the Tulsa Ward School.”
102 years later, conspicuous in its absence, Black Wall Street has never been fully rebuilt. Standpipe Hill serves as an empty monument to lost time.
“And so we thank you today for righting a wrong in the way that we can,” Robinson told the crowd, “by digging our hands in this soil and by giving those whose names we’ve lost over the years the respect they so rightly deserve.”
While the names of many victims have been lost to time, Black Wall Street lives on in the soil.
“The trees are growing around the foundation of a structure,” Odewale said. “You can see the concrete busting up through the surface. All of these would’ve been intentionally planted around someone’s home. These trees are all serving a purpose.”
“We ensure that it will never happen again,” Robinson added, “and we make a pledge to return this space to the greatness it absolutely deserves.”
In the meantime, the trees, once burned in acts of unspeakable violence, serve as a poignant metaphor.
“When they grow back, their bark, like our skin, is holding scars and holding memories,” Odewale said. “It’s also speaking to what that tree has been through and what that tree has survived. But it’s helping protect itself for the future.”