This Land Press

Kim Doner is a professional illustrator who rehabilitates wildlife out of her house in her spare time.…

Our newsletter subscribers are the first to know about new This Land projects and deals. Now, they are also eligible to win a pair of club seats for the May 30 Paul McCartney show at BOK Center.
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Editor’s note: The following news analysis article represents a deeper level of commitment to community news coverage. Look for more in-depth reporting in the future.
Inside the square glass castle of Tulsa’s City Hall last week, the grandson of a Tulsa Race Riot survivor, James L. Johnson, implored the Tulsa City Council to change the name of dow…

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Originally published on the blog The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 on March 18, 2013.

It is normal that we look upon an event as tragic as the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 with a need for answers. We want to single out someone culpable. We look for some trigger to the destruction. Who could have caused the outbreak? Who tried to cover up its very existence? It’s part of human n…

Native Americans within the uprooted “Five Civilized Tribes” found a new home in “Indian Territory”— Oklahoma. Decades later, these Indians would seek, unsuccessfully, to create an Indian state—“Sequoyah”—in order to hold on to sovereignty and self-governance. Instead, the federal government combined Indian Territory, which…

Shaun Perkins forged the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry out of her father’s old machine shop as a tiny monument to the power of poetry in the daily lives of Oklahomans. The barn-red metal building is wedged between a centenarian oak, a fledgling Locust Grove vineyard, and Perkin’s own home, where she writes her poetry on the walls.…

On an oppressively hot evening last May, David Cornsilk addressed a room of so-called “black Indians” at Gilcrease Hills Baptist Church in northwest Tulsa. He wore a leather-braided bolo tie clasped by an emerald quartz. Though Cornsilk never formally studied law, his voice bellowed with the rhetorical ire of a white-shoed seasoned litigator.
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Questions have arisen regarding the May 15, 2013 cover image of This Land magazine which warrant an explanation. The cover is an illustration of a silhouetted figure of a Native American wearing a headdress, with the text “One Fire: The Cherokee Nation’s Identity Crisis” displayed over the figure’s face.
The cover image is…

May 21, 2008. Radisson Hotel, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship. Two International Chess Masters sit at an ugly green table in a cramped room, taking a deep breath. Two deep breaths.
Both women were born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Both women scored an impressive 7.5 (of 9 possible) in the round-robin st…

When I reached the register to pay for my lunch, I explained to Barry Rogers that I was writing a piece about Nelson’s. He smiled and said, “Oh, really? Well, let me tell you all about it.” It’s his place, after all.
He came around the counter and started parading me past the restaurant walls, pointing to the photos and articles proudly mounted. “Have…

A man contemplates heart-ache and loss in this meditation on the Blue Whale of Catoosa. Based on a short story by Craig Morgan Teicher for “Imaginary Oklahoma.”…

In 1921, a young black man rode in an elevator with a young white woman. When the elevator doors opened, she screamed and the young man was arrested. In Oklahoma at that time, young black men were sometimes lynched, often soon after their arrests. So, a group of black men congregated at the Tulsa County Jail to protect the young man, whose name was reported as …

Diamond Dick Roland disappeared.
Secreted out the alley door of the Tulsa County Jail into an awaiting car provided by Sheriff McCollough, Diamond Dick Roland took in the smoldering midday air, while 30 square blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood District burned to the ground. It was June 1, 1921, and Roland was bound for a suspect destination in Kansas City inten…

Since April is National Poetry Month, we’re pleased to run poems by a pair of younger writers who participated in the Louder Than A Bomb-Tulsa competition back in February.
Both Nick Weaver and Bryonia Liggins were on the winning team for LTAB-Tulsa 2013. Both were also, therefore, awarded a trip to Chicago last month, during which they attended workshop…