Transcript
John Wittington Franklin: I have memories from my grandfather, memories from my father and my own memories of Tulsa. And every time I come here I see how the city has evolved.
I’m John Whittington Franklin, the son of John Hope Franklin, the grandson of Buck Colbert Franklin. I’d been coming here since I was two or three-years old. We visited relatives. We visited friends. And they lived on Greenwood. And I have memories of the house situated with vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Have no recollections as a child meeting any white people in Tulsa at all. I lived in that very closed all-black world.
When I was here for the last time with my father, we did an interview together about his experiences in Tulsa. And he concluded with the story that I had heard many times of when he became a boy scout. He’s very enthusiastic about doing a good deed a day. And he’s looking for the opportunity to find when he can do a good deed. And he was walking downtown and he saw an elderly white woman with a white cane waiting for the light to change. And so he said, “Here’s my opportunity to do a good deed today.” So he went over and he asked the lady if he could help her across the street. And she held his arm and halfway across the street she asked him, “Are you white or colored?” He says, “I’m colored, ma’am.” And she said, “Take your filthy hand off of me.”
My grandfather, the late Buck Colbert Franklin was here during the Race Riot in 1921. My grandfather had moved here to practice law on Greenwood at two separate offices. And later in June of 1921 my grandmother and my father who was six and his sister who was seven were poised to move to Tulsa. They were packed. They were ready to move. When the black community was destroyed and burned to the ground there was no place for them to move to. And for years I’ve kept a photograph on my desk of my grandfather practicing law in a tent. My grandmother, my father and his younger sister had to remain in Rentiesville for another five years until they were able to rebuild Greenwood sufficiently for them to move and resettle here. For many years, black families were afraid to talk about the riot because they knew that people in power could wreak havoc on them. White families were sworn to secrecy, to not discuss these – what happened in 1921. And so there are generations of people who grew up in Tulsa black and white not knowing about the riot. And it was really – as I continued to learn, it was at the 75th anniversary of the riot that a group of white children asked the questions that no one else had dared to ask. “What happened here? Why? Why don’t we know about it?”
And so it’s in recent years that people have come to acknowledge what happened. That people have opened the archives of the Red Cross, of the Historical Society, of the paper. So it shows you that over time, issues that were taboo have at least been broached. And now I know white Tulsans and black Tulsans. So my horizons are expanding. And my knowledge of Tulsa, both in the past and the present is deepening.
Related posts:
Paula Poundstone
listen
Just Passing Through
Paula Poundstone
Abby Wendle
Paula Poundstone has been criss-crossing the country performing as a stand-up comic since she was…
Our Town
read
Editorial
Our Town
James O. Goodwin
Our town typically names streets, schools, sometimes-entire neighborhoods and commercial districts after people…
- Tulsa’s Segregation Zoning
read
Okiecentric
Tulsa’s Segregation Zoning
This Land
Many factors have influenced settlement patterns in Tulsa, but a difficult question persists: Why is…
- Tulsa Race Riot Survey
read
Notices
Tulsa Race Riot Survey
This Land
Did you attend grade school in Oklahoma? If so, we could use your help. We’re…
-
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OZMEBQ4Y4QWAOMS3ZNLSOH3EQM Ray
-
Sally
