Washington, DC – Today, Congressman John Sullivan offered the following statement as the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held a legislative hearing on the John Hope Franklin National Parks bill.  Sullivan introduced this bill to take the first step in making the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa a unit of the national park system.

Sullivan says, “Today’s hearing is an important step forward toward securing a national park designation for the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa.  My bill has over 30 bipartisan cosponsors, and support from the community including the City of Tulsa and the governor’s office.  I was proud to speak on behalf of this legislation today, which will help bring national significance to the park that has done so much to bring the community together.”

“We were also honored to have Dr. John Hope Franklin’s son, John. W. Franklin, in attendance for this morning’s hearing.  I thank him for being here as we honor his father, a man whose contributions to Oklahoma and communities across the country are still resonating today,” says Sullivan.

John W. Franklin offered the following comment, “It is important for the National Park Service to recognize what happened in Tulsa, though 90 years ago it is of national significance, and it is important in the 21st century for us to recall this very significant event of 1921.  It’s a part of our legacy that must not be forgotten.”

WASHINGTON — The National Park Service expressed support Tuesday for Rep. John Sullivan’s bill to conduct a study on making the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park a unit of the park service.

Peter May, associate regional director of the park service, said, however, priority should be given to previously authorized studies.

May told a House subcommittee a report by his agency concluded the 1921 Tulsa race riot is nationally significant because of its potential ability to illustrate a tragic and important chapter in the nation’s history.

”The John Hope Franklin Reconciliation park is an important element in a memorial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot,’’ May stated in his written testimony.

Sullivan, R-Okla., who introduced his bill for the third time last year, also testified before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

He described the hearing as an important step toward securing a national park designation for the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park.

”My bill has over 30 bipartisan cosponsors, and support from the community including the City of Tulsa and the governor’s office,’’ Sullivan said.

”I was proud to speak on behalf of this legislation today, which will help bring national significance to the park that has done so much to bring the community together.’’

At the hearing, the congressman introduced John W. Franklin, the son of the noted historian who died in 2009.

”It is important for the National Park Service to recognize what happened in Tulsa, though 90 years ago it is of national significance, and it is important in the 21st century for us to recall this very significant event of 1921,’’ Franklin stated in a comment included in Sullivan’s press release.

”It’s a part of our legacy that must not be forgotten.’’

During the hearing, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., expressed concern that the historian’s ”greatness’’ could be lost by the ”larger struggle’’ that would be commemorated.

May provided assurances that the various elements could work together.

”There will be a center there that kind of ties it all together, and with his name on the park and on the center we believe the message there would not be lost,’’ he said.

May conceded it is not clear exactly how the site would be managed.

“It may wind up with an affiliated organization running some portion of this,’’ he said.

Copyright © 2012, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved

The 600 people attending Thursday night’s John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Dinner may be eligible for college credit.

The after-dinner speaker, John A. Powell, did not engage in the usual corny jokes, peppy anecdotes and hyperbole. He is a college professor of some renown, and he sounds like one.

He also uses visuals.

Ohio State University professor John A. Powell addresses guests at the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Dinner at the Doubletree Hotel Downtown on Thursday evening. Powell's speech touched on the dynamics that affect race relations in today's society. MATT BARNARD/Tulsa World

“Exploring the Unconscious: The Dynamics of Race and Reconciliation” was the name of Powell’s presentation, and although it might not have been exactly entertaining, it was engrossing.

The upshot of it was that we all have our biases. The trick is recognizing, controlling and ultimately changing them.

“Because we have biases – racial biases, other biases – it doesn’t make us racist,” said Powell. “It makes us human.”

Currently on the faculty at Ohio State University but moving soon to Stanford, Powell explained that conscious thought involves only about 2 percent of the human brain’s activities, making the unconscious by far the more powerful.

He said research has shown that although the brain is processing about 11 million bits of information at any given time, only about 40 of those register in the conscious mind.

Biases are imbedded in the unconscious, usually by cultural and social influences.

Consciously, he said, most Americans do not want to be racist – and that, ironically, has led to greater unconscious racial anxiety.

“With an African-American president, we find that for the most part, conscious racial attitudes have improved,” said Powell, “but unconscious racial anxiety has actually gone up.

“We can measure it. We know Americans are much more anxious racially now than they were before (Barack) Obama was elected president.”

Powell said Americans “are not engaging” that anxiety, largely because of fear of what it might reveal about ourselves.

“None of us want to be racist,” he said. “We want to tear down racial barriers. And yet there is strong, robust, empirical proof that we have these racial biases and racial anxiety. And the fact that we have these anxieties is increasing the anxiety itself.”

Reducing that anxiety, Powell said, requires finding ways to consciously acknowledge it.

“We have to find a way to talk about it,” he said. “We have to find a space where it’s OK to have these anxieties. It doesn’t mean we’ll be past prejudice and bias, but it means we’ll be in a place where we can talk about it and do things … to move beyond it.”

Powell demonstrated the power of unconscious bias with a drawing of people in an ambiguous space.

Westerners, Powell said, usually interpret the picture as people in a room. Those from other cultures tend to see people sitting under a tree.

“Seeing, itself, is a cultural phenomenon,” he said. “How we interpret the world is a cultural phenomenon.

“There is no way of seeing the world just as it is. We all have biases, and these biases are given to us largely by culture.”

Randy Krehbiel 918-581-8365
randy.krehbiel@tulsaworld.com

The World placed first in the Best Use of Multimedia category in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper contest for papers with more than 50,000 circulation.

The World site, called “The Questions That Remain,” includes an interactive map, a timeline, videos, slideshows and an extensive archive of stories going back to June 1, 1921.

It also includes a discussion panel of Tulsa residents answering a series of questions concerning racism today.

Judges said: “This was far and away the best multimedia journalism that we saw. The staff did an excellent job of using appropriate media for different aspects of the project. They included all of the necessary storytelling and social media elements, created informative infographics and a valuable archive. They provided balanced and complete coverage in a user-friendly design. This is an excellent piece of multimedia journalism. We loved all of the elements that you included in your coverage – video, interactive map, photo gallery, timeline, archives and stories – but most of all we loved the questions that you posed in an attempt to prompt a discussion of racism in your area today. What a great idea.”

World staff members who created the project include reporter Randy Krehbiel, photographer Adam Wisneski, copy editor Russell LaCour, news researcher Hilary Pittman, web content coordinator Lauren Cavagnolo and Sunday Editor Debbie Jackson.

The Southern Newspaper Publishers Association is made up of 400 newspapers in 24 states.

This is the second time the World has won Best Use of Multimedia.

In 2008, The World won for “Lost Lives: A Decade of Tulsa Homicides.”
Associated Images:
Bystanders mill about as smoke from burning buildings rises in the aftermath of the Tulsa race riot. Courtesy of the Beryl Ford Collection
View the Tulsa World’s multimedia Tulsa Race Riot archive.
Copyright © 2011, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved

The symphony, subtitled “Oklahoma Peoples in Trial and Triumph,” will be accompanied by narration and visual media and feature the Signature Chorale and Cherokee National Youth Choir. Included in the stories are the Tulsa Race Riot, the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the Dust Bowl, and the coming of the European American pioneers and oil men, culminating with E.W. Marland, oil man and one-time Oklahoma governor, and Lydie Marland, whose story and memory are preserved for posterity by the Marland Mansion of Ponca City. The symphony also celebrates through music and visual images many of the accomplishments that are occurring today in our state that signal hope for the future.

The performance will be take place on November 5, 2011 in the Van Trease Auditorium on the Tulsa Community College Southeast Campus, beginning at 8pm. Also on the program will be Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Randall Thompson’s Frostiana. For ticket and further information, visit the Signature Symphony website by clicking here. Or call 918/595-7777.

Events include remarks by Former Mayor Susan Savage, a First Responder Street Expo and Concert.

Click here for details.

by: JOHN STANCAVAGE World Business Editor
Sunday, June 26, 2011
6/26/2011 3:45:04 AM

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of an eight-part series by Tulsa World Business Editor John Stancavage, who has been writing about his experiences as a member of the North Tulsa Development Council. The annual program operates under the umbrella of Leadership Tulsa. Class 3 will begin at the end of the summer.

Any plan to improve north Tulsa needs to have clear goals and be economically based, according to local executive Sam Combs.

Combs, the former president of Oklahoma Natural Gas Co. and now a member of Giant Partners, was the keynote speaker recently at the graduation of Class 2 of the North Tulsa Development Council.

About 25 people participated in the eight-month NTDC. I was one of them.

One day a month, we toured north Tulsa, talked to business people and residents, and studied the history of the area.

It was a diverse group. We had blacks, whites, professionals, nonprofit workers, government employees, small business owners, northside residents and nonresidents.

By the time of our final meeting, we’d laughed, cried, agreed, disagreed, scratched our heads, asked a lot of questions, worked on projects together, shared meals and generally bonded with one another.

We didn’t specifically ask Combs to try to tie together everything we’d experienced during the year, but that’s what he wound up doing.

“The problems of north Tulsa are substantial,” Combs said. “Everyone should understand that we all want a vibrant, robust city. But to do that, any economic development effort must be regional in scope.

“It sounds simplistic, but the payoff would be tremendous.”

As we saw firsthand, it’s doubtful anyone could drive through north Tulsa and believe it is receiving anything close to a balanced share of interest from developers and investors. There are many reasons for that, we learned

Fighting stereotypes

One of the most common stereotypes is that north Tulsa is unsafe. But we met with a half-dozen merchants and business owners whose own experience said otherwise.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” said Julie Yeabower, who runs Bulldog Film and Video with her husband in the Lansing Industrial Park, 717 E. Marshall St. In fact, she enjoys the area so much that she lives in Reservoir Hill, a nearby housing development.

Even small businesses with heavy foot traffic said the north side worked for them.

To further break down the myths, the Tulsa Police Department offered details that showed south Tulsa, the boom area, has crime problems that are in some ways worse than the north side.

Food an issue

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of some very passionate and proud northsiders, the unflattering image of the area lives on.

One costly result is that the area is a “food desert,” or lacking in a variety of grocery stores where nearby residents can get healthy food. Instead, too many meals come from convenience stores or fast-food joints. Add to that a lack of access to health care, and you have a part of town where residents die 14 years younger than the rest of the city’s population.

There are hopeful signs, though.

Antonio Perez, a local entrepreneur, opened a large grocery store, Gateway Market, that is developing a steady customer base.

A major medical center, the Wayman Tisdale Specialty Health Clinic, is under construction at 36th Street North and Hartford Avenue. The 44,000-square-foot building, which is expected to open next spring, will offer specialty care, diagnostic testing, outpatient surgery, urgent care and chemotherapy.

The clinic will join other state-of-the-art facilities including Catholic Charities, Tulsa Educare, the W.L. Hutcherson YMCA and the expanded and upgraded Saint Simeon’s retirement community.

On the edge of the northern region also is the ONEOK Field baseball park and the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park.

These facilities are bringing a fresh, modern look to the north side, something observers say the area needs.

Along with new bricks and mortar, north Tulsa also needs more educational and skills training opportunities, more jobs that pay higher wages, and in general just more attention from those in any kind of leadership position across the city.

The Race Riot

When I started the NTDC class, the organizers warned us that we “definitely would be taken out of our comfort zone.”

Indeed, two of the first speakers on our initial class day were historians A.E. Dunn and Robert Littlejohn. The two men described the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and included original research that sometimes was at odds with what has become the “official account” of the event.

Their stories and a later viewing of a documentary, “Before They Die,” which included interviews with aging riot survivors, made up some of the most emotional moments of the class. Some survivors told harrowing tales of watching family members shot to death or hiding under beds while men set their homes on fire.

Littlejohn, who died a few months after speaking to us, and Dunn prefer to call the riot a “disaster” because of the one-sided result.

And what a result it was. Up until the event, Tulsa had developed a prosperous “Black Wall Street,” where there were many successful black-owned businesses of all types. Photos from the time show well-attired men gathered at banks and supply stores, not far from the substantial homes they built for their families.

Blacks were not the only beneficiaries of the financial district. According to Dunn and Littlejohn, some of the early white oil drillers borrowed money on Black Wall Street to begin exploration.

The disaster came, though, and Black Wall Street was burned to the ground. Anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred people – primarily blacks – perished, depending on the account. Most of the pioneering black families lost not only loved ones, but also their homes and all of their accumulated wealth, which in many cases was substantial.

And Tulsa lost part of its uniqueness. The northern part of the city never recovered.

Need for reconciliation

During our class days, the riot/disaster came up over and over again, as it was mentioned by speakers or discussed casually.

Some wondered, what would have happened if there had not been a riot? Would there be dozens more black families among Tulsa’s most affluent today? Would an intact Black Wall Street draw history buffs and other tourists? Would the north side have any stigma?

Combs, in his remarks to our class, compared the riot to America’s atomic bombing of Japan.

“Dropping those bombs broke the will of the Japanese people,” Combs said. “Their leaders were left with the monumental job of trying to rebuild the country, its spirit and the economy. Does this sound familiar?”

What we can learn from the outcome of that event, he said, is that U.S. leaders met on equal terms with Japanese officials and worked out plans for an economic recovery. Those plans became very successful, and Japan soon became the envy of the global economy.

In the case of the Tulsa Race Riot, there has been little economic opportunity offered. Efforts a few years ago to bring financial reparations to survivors and their families failed.

Combs and others noted how the riot generally was not discussed for decades.

“People in north Tulsa were afraid to speak of it – afraid the other shoe might drop – while people in the other parts of town were ashamed to talk about it,” the executive said.

“The question for our city is: Why haven’t we reconciled? When are we going to reconcile?”

One city

Combs, Dunn, Littlejohn and others seemed to agree on one message: Tulsa is not about black, white, Hispanic and Asian. It’s about being one united city – a city that is stronger together than separated.

“All of this is not about who’s right and who’s wrong,” Combs said. “It’s like when you have a fight in a family – when is it over? When someone steps forward and says he’s sorry.”

Tulsa still has an opportunity to get all sides together and go forward. The result could be powerful, Combs says.

“Diversity is cool right now. People want to be involved in it. We need to build partnerships here across boundaries.”

What would reconciliation look like? Combs was asked by an NTDC member.

“It would look like this class,” he said.
Original Print Headline: Partnerships needed to ensure north Tulsa’s recovery

North Tulsa Development Council

Created: 2009

Classes completed: 2

Parent organization: Leadership Tulsa

Committee chair: Thamara Barthelus

Information: 918-477-7079

Copyright © 2011, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved

Return to Story

Greenwood Avenue, a wide residential street in Tulsa, Okla., has a bucolic calm to it these days. But stroll it slowly, past the handsome, ranch-style homes, toward downtown, and black history hangs heavy over the place.

And no wonder. It’s along this street in late May 1921 that a ragtag mob, bearing shotguns, pistols and other firearms, pushed its way, gunning down bystanders randomly, setting homes and stores aflame. Two days later, when the National Guard finally quelled the rampage, the street was in cinders, and by most accounts, more than 300 lay dead, most of them African American.

The Tulsa race riot — after nearly nine decades, still the bloodiest racial massacre to occur on American soil — makes this city and the surrounding state of Oklahoma a place that every black traveler should visit. Just by itself, the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, a poignant, open-air monument recently established to memorialize the tragedy of the massacre, is easily worth the trip.

For the adventurous black explorer, however, there’s far more to Oklahoma. A tour of the historic black towns dotted across the state brings visitors to one of the few places this side of the Caribbean where African Americans once owned and ran everything from the bank to the mortuary. A late-spring or summer trip could include a day at the annual Boley Black Rodeo, where visitors flock to watch black cowboys show their skills at calf roping, steer wrestling, bronco riding and other events. I have been a frequent spectator over the years; it never disappoints.

In this multicultural era, when so many African Americans are connecting with their Indian heritage, a side trip to Talequah, the seat of the Cherokee Nation, is a must. A visit to see bison wandering in the Tallgrass Prairie Reserve near the city of Pawhuska, or a canoe trip down the Illinois or another of the state’s rivers, would give a reminder that not too long ago, this was one vast sweep of flat plains where wild creatures roamed free.

Today Oklahoma is a flat, agricultural state sprawling across the south-central plains of the U.S. The population of 3.75 million is mostly concentrated in two major cities: Oklahoma City and Tulsa. According to the 2010 census, African Americans, with 8.3 percent of the population, are the third-largest ethnic group, after Latinos and Native Americans.

I am a fourth-generation Oklahoman who traces his roots in the state to the Trail of Tears migration of Creek Indians and blacks in the 1830s. My adolescence was divided between my parents’ home in Tulsa and summers at my grandparents’ sprawling cotton, peanut and soybean farm near Okmulgee.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

In the 1960s, I went to schools in then-segregated north Tulsa named after poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, opera singer Marian Anderson and other iconic black figures. And on Sundays I strutted out in a freshly pressed suit and polished shoes to church, sometimes followed by a pork chop-and-biscuit lunch at Betty’s Chat ‘n’ Chew, and finally, horror movies at the black-owned Rex Theater, a Greenwood Avenue landmark.

With its heavy accent on education and achievement, black Oklahoma has produced far more than its share of prominent black Americans, including renowned historian John Hope Franklin, writer Ralph Ellison and my aunt, Anita Hill, my mother’s youngest sister.

I have close family still living in the northeastern corner of the state, and so I am a frequent visitor. A recent trip to Tulsa gives me a chance to visit the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, inaugurated late last year just off Greenwood Avenue.

As I approach by car, the centerpiece of the park, the 25-foot-high Tower of Reconciliation, stands out. Up close, I can see the depiction of key episodes in the history of black Oklahomans: their migration with Native Americans on the Trail of Tears in the 19th century, their slave experiences in the new Territories, the engagement of black soldiers in the Civil War battle of Honey Creek, near Muskogee.

Nearby stand three 16-foot statutes depicting figures representing different players in the 1921 riots: A white man fully armed for assault captures Hostility; a black man surrendering with his hands held high represents Humiliation; and a white director of the Red Cross holding a baby symbolizes Hope. The tower and the statutes are both the handiwork of Ed Dwight, a nationally known African-American astronaut-turned-sculptor.

Surrounding the enclosed circular park are plaques telling the saga of this historic district of black Tulsa. Starting with the wide-scale migration of blacks to this area in the early 1900s, Greenwood Avenue would become the “Black Wall Street,” an avenue lined with churches, black-owned shops, cafés and other businesses. Burned down during the riots, the neighborhood would rise again and thrive in the 1950s and 1960s, only to be flattened finally by urban renewal in the early 1980s.

A small enclave of shops on Greenwood, a short walk from the park, near the corner of Archer, offers a taste of this hood’s old flavor. Here is Tee’s Barber Shop, still a place for blacks of all generations to get a haircut and to shoot the breeze.

As I stroll through the park and Greenwood on a sunny afternoon, embracing this effort by the city to come to grips with its darkest chapter, it is hard not to be emotional.

For those curious about further exploring Oklahoma’s black history, a drive to one of Oklahoma’s historic black towns is a good next stop. These settlements emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when civic leaders openly recruited blacks in the antebellum South and other parts of the country to settle in Oklahoma Territory. (Statehood came in 1907.) Centered by black-run governments and stores, most often trading points for the surrounding black farms, many of the towns thrived. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison modeled the setting for her 1997 novel Paradise after a black Oklahoma town.

Most of the towns served as trading centers for the nearby farms, but the town of Boley was once an urban hub of about 50,000 residents. It had its own bank, five hotels and several restaurants.

Anxious to see what had become of the Boley of my father’s day, one of 13 surviving black towns in the state, I took an hour-long drive past fields of soybean and other crops. As I wander through the town on foot, it’s clear that with only 2,000 residents, the place has faded from its heyday. Many of the low-rise brick buildings are now boarded up.

Still, an old-school charm hangs over the place. At McCormick’s restaurant, they serve up a wholesome spread of pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy and sweet potato pie. And the spirited crowd at Faith Covenant Church rattles the room with gospel songs during Sunday worship services.

Visitors who want to explore the state’s rich Native American scene have various options. The “Five Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Seminole, Choctaw, Creek), which were forced to migrate to Indian Territory from the eastern part of the U.S. in the early 1800s, all have capitals in different parts of Oklahoma. Each of them has a history of tribesmen with black roots, too. The community of Freedmen — blacks who are affiliated with Indian tribes — is active throughout the state.

The Cherokee Nation, centered in the town of Tahlequah, about an hour by car from Tulsa, is the most accessible of the state’s Indian strongholds. During an afternoon visit to this bucolic college town, dominated by Northeastern State University, I start with a walk around Cherokee Capitol Square, a collection of well-kept brick buildings. The stately Cherokee Supreme Court and many of the other buildings carry signs in the Cherokee language, as well as in English. Cherokee tribesmen arrived in these parts on the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.

For a refresher on the Trail of Tears history, including the hardships suffered and details about the new life the Indians built, often alongside blacks, the Cherokee Heritage Center, located four miles away, is an excellent stop. Owned and managed by the Cherokee Nation, it includes exhibitions about how the early Indians lived, farmed and staked their place in Oklahoma. In the summer, an open-air production of the Trail of Tears, a drama depicting the removal of the tribe from homelands in the southeastern U.S., is staged in an amphitheater.

With the rugged nature of this rural state all around me, I feel the call of the wild. In sparsely populated Oklahoma, opportunities to hike, canoe, kayak or horseback ride on untrammeled turf are never far away. In these parts the allure is the Illinois River, which meanders through the plains, and is the most beloved option.

And so, within an hour I am already in a canoe, paddling gently downsteam. Ashore, for as far as I can see, grass and trees and fields of alfalfa stretch across the distance. Somewhere beyond all that is Greenwood Avenue, with its haunting racial legacy. But for a fleeting minute, all that seems far away.

Gary Lee is a travel writer and former foreign correspondent in Russia and Germany. He lives in Washington, D.C., but also spends a good chunk of his time in Paris and Peru.

Greater Tulsa Reporter

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE: Student singers from the Deborah Brown Community School join hands to form a symbolic circle of life around the Tower of Reconciliation. The tower is the centerpiece of the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park. The students took part in the park dedication in October of 2010.

Courtesy Kavin Ross/John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation

“We need to do everything possible to emphasize the positive qualities that all of us have, qualities which we have never utilized to the fullest, but which we must utilize if we are to solve the problem of the color line in the twenty-first century.” – John Hope Franklin, The Color Line

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. It is also the second year that The John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation has held a national symposium focused on ways to transform years of racial division into a hopeful future of reconciliation and cooperation for Tulsa and the nation. The Symposium was aptly titled, “Tragedy to Triumph” reflecting the ongoing mission of the center to foster understanding among all factions of our diverse cultural landscape. Although the horrific violence that occurred in the Tulsa of 1921 served as contextual backdrop to the symposium, the intent of the gathering was as always how best to learn from the event and move forward as a community and a nation to summon our better angels in dealing with social, racial and cultural differences.

To help achieve this, the center is developing a consortium of academic institutions, historical societies and organizations devoted to equality, racial justice and social harmony. This is in part to facilitate the annual symposium’s convening of scholars and practitioners to explore current research in race relations and to acknowledge the progress made in social reconciliation.

The keynote speaker for this year’s symposium was Joseph V. Montville, senior associate, Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, Merrimack College. He is also Distinguished Diplomat in Residence, American University and chair for the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University. His academic credentials alone more than qualified him to address the gathering, but providing additional gravitas to his message titled “Hope & Healing: Black, White, and Native American,” was his body of work covering diplomatic assignments in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Morocco between 1965 and 1973 wherein he witnessed first hand the violent consequences of racial, cultural and societal conflict.

In his message, Montville sited three psychodynamic concepts that have emerged from the studies of ethnic and sectarian conflicts around the world. They are dehumanization, the intergenerational transmission of historical grievance and the psychology of victimhood. To understand these concepts provides insights into and understanding of the dynamics of profound societal conflicts.

Quoting from Montville’s address to the symposium, “We learned that one cause of the apparent intractability of ethnic, religious or, more simply, identity conflicts, is characteristic of almost all of them. Where one or more sides in a political conflict has suffered traumatic historic or current losses whose depth and tragedy have not been acknowledged or atoned for by the side that caused the losses, the wounds do not heal. They can be five, fifty or five hundred years old. We learned that time does not heal wounds. Only healing does.”

He went on to say, “We have come to understand that we must show respect for their (those wronged) humanity and their cultural identity, including religious identity, and to express our concern for their well-being and their children’s well-being and future. Or more simply, that we care about them.”

Montville stressed the need to “walk through history” and the “taking of an inventory of hurts carried out together by the winners and the losers or the aggressors and their victims, or their descendents, to rediscover what happened in the past which keeps alive so much anger and resentment in the present.”

In one of the many break out session of the symposium titled “A Documentary Study: The Power of Memory: Tulsa Greenwood 1921 Tulsa Race Riot,” a profound moment came when an elderly Tulsan shared a personal story from his past that illustrated what this particular session was about and in many ways what this symposium for racial reconciliation was about.

His story first spoke to what it was like to be a young black man in early Tulsa growing up living in two very different worlds and consequently adapting to those worlds by becoming essentially two different persons. North of First Street was of course Tulsa’s Greenwood area where the young man lived and grew up with family and friends enjoying the affirmation and comforts of the segregated black community. The other world was anywhere South of First Street including the Adams Hotel in downtown Tulsa where he worked. It was here that he talked and behaved differently in order to fit in and earn a living. It was a skill set he had been taught from childhood by all those who lived in the world to the north.

Each day he crossed that great divide of First Street and the railroad tracks on his way back and forth to work. The trek took him past a music store displaying the newest in record players. As a music lover he was fascinated by the wonderful new devises and it became his dream to own one. To his surprise, the white owner of the store agreed to hold a record player in lay-away for him. It was a somewhat unprecedented gesture coming from someone living in the world to the south and it caught the young man a little by surprise, but it also marked the beginning of a friendship.

The bond between the two grew with each encounter as they discussed music and discovered similar tastes in musical genres. Each payday brought the young man back to make a payment until one day the shop owner suggested since it was going to take a while to pay off the balance why not take the player home to enjoy and continue paying as he could. It was another unexpected gesture that took the young man by surprise. A new level of friendship and trust had been extended to him and to this day remains a profound moment in his life. The young man took the player home and after the balance was paid in full the friendship continued.

Everyday across the globe and in local communities violence in all its ugly forms erupts between ethnic, religious and cultural groups pitted against one another fueled by ignorance, fear and hatred. Because we are subjected to a constant diet of media attention to this form of human behavior, we can grow to believe we are defined by such ugliness. In the meantime countless small acts of kindness, understanding and reconciliation go unnoticed and unheralded. The mission of the John Hope Franklin Center for Racial Reconciliation and its annual symposium is to study, understand and shine a light on “the positive qualities that all of us have” in order to create a more harmonious world. This was John Hope Franklin’s life long quest and it is now the quest of the center that bears his name.

The story of the shop owner and the young man continues: many years after the two had gone separate ways there was a chance encounter at a local hospital. During a visit to the hospital the young man recognized the shop owner recovering in a nearby bed. He introduced himself. The shop owner remembered him and from there on the memories began to pour out of the two old friends. As the now aged young man tells it, nothing had changed. Many years ago, against all odds two people living in different worlds had set aside their fears and perceived differences to form a friendship that has endured and continues to represent a small, but powerful, strand bridging two worlds. This is what the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation and its annual symposium is really all about.