We look forward to seeing you, at the 12th Annual Dinner of Reconciliation scheduled for Thursday, November 16, 2023, at Greenwood Cultural Center, 322 North Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa! The Dinner of Reconciliation brings together more than 500 guests of all ages, races, ethnicities, religions and languages across Tulsa to get to know each other better. The Dinner encourages positive relationship building and fosters interaction between individuals of diverse cultures and backgrounds. 

 

The theme of this year’s dinner is, “History of Hope: Tell the Story.” Special guest is the Emmett Till Interpretive Center represented by Mr. Benjamin Saulsberry, Community Engagement and Museum Director, and Ms. Jessie Jaynes-Diming, civil rights tour guide and Emmett Till Memorial Commission member. History is an active battleground. What we choose to remember, memorialize, and preserve as a society determines how we understand our present and imagine our future. When Black history is suppressed or delegitimized, we lose the ability to reckon with systemic racism, from one generation to the next. As Historic Greenwood District pursues a designation as a National Monument, Mr. Saulsberry and Ms. Jaynes-Diming will give us the experience of working with their community and other civic leaders locally and nationally for the purposes of a National Monument designation. 

 

In one of his last public appearances during the groundbreaking of Reconciliation Park in 2008, Dr. John Hope Franklin, reflecting on his life, noted that he “would like [his] students to take up where [he] left off and to carry on the fight to establish history as a powerful force for good – a constructive force to rectify the ills of our society – to change the world, as it were.” While we may not all have been students of Dr. Franklin’s, we can be his intentional stewards of change. Join us!