Listen Up with Host Al Neely
Hi, I'm Al Neely. I've spent most of my life asking, " Why do people behave a certain way? Why don't people understand that most everyone wants basically the same thing? Most everyone wants their fundamental need for peace of mind, nourishment, shelter and safety."
What I have learned is that because of an unwillingness to open one's mind to see that some of the people you come in contact with may have those same desires as you do. We prejudge, isolate ourselves, and can be hesitant to interact, and sometimes we can be belligerent towards one another. This is caused by learned behavior that may have repeated itself for generations in our families.
What I hope to do with this podcast is to introduce as many people with as many various cultures, backgrounds, and practices as possible. The thought is that I can help to bring different perspectives by discussing various views from my guests that are willing to talk about their personal experiences.
Hopefully we all will learn something new. We may even learn that most of us share the same desire for our fundamental needs. We may just simply try to obtain it differently.
Sit back, learn, and enjoy!
Listen Up with Host Al Neely
Resilience and Innovation in Greenwood: Carlos Moreno on Tulsa's Untold Stories Part 2
Uncover the untold stories of resilience and innovation in our latest episode with Carlos Moreno, a dedicated activist from Tulsa. We journey through the historical layers of the Greenwood neighborhood, shedding light on the often-overlooked impact of the Tulsa Race Massacre and its reverberating effects on post-World War I America. How did a community, once flourishing, confront the challenges of a nation grappling with a Spanish flu pandemic and an economic identity crisis? Greenwood's rich history offers profound insights into who gets to thrive in a changing world.
Witness the incredible spirit of rebirth in Greenwood through the inspiring tales of individuals like Lula Williams. Her entrepreneurial drive helped rebuild a community that many tried to erase. Contrary to popular belief, Greenwood was a vibrant tapestry of diverse cultures including Italian, Russian Jewish, Latino, and LGBTQ communities. Despite the Great Depression's shadow, Greenwood's economic zenith in the 1940s is a testament to its tenacity and rich multicultural legacy, standing as a beacon of resilience against systemic marginalization.
We then bridge history with the future, exploring the technological strides influenced by Greenwood's own Emmett J. McHenry, the pioneer behind the domain name registration system. Discover how his roots shaped his vision for a more accessible technological landscape. Our partnership with the Greenwood Cultural Center aims to digitize the past, preserving it for the public and challenging the narrow narratives of innovation. From Tulsa's unexpected role in media history to the evolving conversations around reparations, this episode champions the diverse voices that have shaped our world.
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Hello everyone, Welcome to Listen Up, and I'm Al Neely. Today we have Carlos Pereno, Greenwood and activists in the Tulsa area. Greenwood is a subdivision of Tulsa, Is that correct, Carlos?
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. It's a neighborhood close to downtown on the north side of Tulsa. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, last year when we had an opportunity to talk about Greenwood, it got kind of emotional. We had Sean and we had Cheyenne. I think Sean was crying For you to do some teaching. Basically, teach us about Tulsa, the Tulsa massacre and the more. One of the things I know is I know I've known about the massacre, I've known what people consider Black Wall Street and about the time that it happened, and I really did not know all the whole process, starting from the actual massacre, because it was something that took place because of what the locals would like to say was because of an encounter with a young Black male and a white woman, but it actually was something that was planned and because of the prosperity in that particular area, the white landowners wanted that area. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah, white landowners wanted that area, is that correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, um so, like unpacking even the reasons behind the massacre itself, it is a very long story so I'll try to, I'll try to give kind of the reader's digest version, uh, of it, um, and then you know, understanding, ok, understanding Oklahoma and understanding Tulsa is also itself a very long story, but I think it, you know, I think it gets back to this idea where it's very important to understand the history of a place and where you are, because, not, you know, we can talk about black wealth, we can talk about the wealth for people of color, we can talk about how to, how to break those cycles Right and and be able to create a better society, but if you don't understand where this place is coming from, then it's going to be really difficult for you to do that Right. So, yeah, so I think it's, it's, it's a big reason why I placed so much time and energy into history. Uh is because I, you know, I it's the one of those things where you can't, you can't move forward if you don't know where you've been. You know, uh, and so I really try to understand, uh, the past in order to get to the future. But so so when we, when we think about the 1921 race massacre, there's a few things we have to understand. We have to understand that this is right after world war one. So we're so that as a country, we're just coming off of this global warfare? Right, we also have to understand that in 1917, 1918, there has been a global pandemic in the spanish flu, which started, by the way, in arkansas, not spain, uh. So for it to be so close to oklahoma is very significant. Um, so you think you've got global sort of politics, global warfare, global pandemic. Is any of this starting to sound familiar to what we dealt with in 2020 and 2021?
Speaker 1:Right, so history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, yeah, and you have these incidences of very severe, violent racism in places like elaine, arkansas, in places like rosewood, florida, in places like chicago in 1919 and then tulsa in 1921, and it comes out of this kind of an identity crisis. Who gets to be American? Who gets to prosper in this world that we want to create post-World War? I, okay, because the country and the world is in a kind of identity crisis. Right, so we've just had a world war.
Speaker 1:What does that mean? Who gets to be a part of this global economy? Who gets to be a part of this national economy? So white america starts taking a look at black america and going we've done things a certain way, these black communities who have come out of reconstruction and there were, there were 50, more than 50, all black communities in indian territory before statehood in 1907. So these are communities just like greenwood, that are their own kind of black wall street, or at least black main street, right when you say indian territory, um, you're talking about what is now what the midwest would, or oh?
Speaker 1:so indian yeah, indian territory was what this half of the state was called before it was a state oh okay, so it's actually in in oklahoma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh okay, I had In Oklahoma.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, okay, I had no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. So that's even a whole other layer on top of this. Right is this is tribal lands, like a lot of the US, like all of the US, right.
Speaker 2:All of the US is tribal land.
Speaker 1:Right, all of the US is tribal land before you know. Europeans come over and divide it all up and take it over for themselves, right? So? So you're still dealing with even into you know not from 1907, which is when Oklahoma becomes a state to 1921 is just 14 years, so it's not a very long time of this transition between being tribal land and then being the state of Oklahoma, right? Yeah, so you have all these factors at play and it's sort of it's a lot to keep in your head at the same time. But that's the sort of this, the conditions, okay.
Speaker 2:I don't want to, I don't mean to interrupt you. So when was the oil boom in that area? When did that take place? It was that at the beginning.
Speaker 1:That's even a whole other thing right. So, yeah, now you've got this tribal land. Yeah, it wasn't worth very much until oil is discovered in the night in 1901 okay, yeah, right so now you're 20 years on from from and and at the time.
Speaker 1:So world war one. There's a lot of demand, new demand for resources, new demand for energy, oil. You've got cars that are coming online that didn't exist, right? The car is a brand new invention at this point. Planes are brand new invention at this point. You know, all of these weapons of war need oil and the new economy of the us needs oil. Oklahoma was the highest producing state in the entire country. Get out of here. Okay, up until the mid-1920s, and then okay. And oklahoma provides half of the supply of oil that is used up by World War I. World War I is powered by Oklahoma.
Speaker 2:Right, I remember you talking about in the first podcast that we did you were talking about. There's actually one of the people that precipitated the riot has land in their oil baron in that area, right there in Greenwood, right Right, and they're still there. Their family is still there. Is that family still there? The building is still there.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, gotcha All right they can still drive by the building and see their name on it.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, okay, right, all right, so I didn't mean to interrupt you, but bring, I know and you know, and last time we talked about the massacre, right, and we talked about this idea that that, yes, there was an encounter between a young black man and a young white woman in this elevator. Uh, first of all, they knew each other. Second of all, all they were friends possibly more than friends, we don't know that, but we know they knew each other and, third of all, she never pressed charges against him. So this would have been a non-story because nothing happened. This would have been a non-story except it was on Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker 1:A non-story, except it was on memorial day weekend. It was at a time when the downtown area was going to be other, you know, other than, like, parades and parties and celebrations and stuff like that. It's a holiday weekend, so everybody's off, work, right? No one's going to be in this, no one's going to be in these office buildings and stores because everything's closed, right? Yeah, um, and it would have been the perfect time and place to set the stage for this kind of attack on greenwood and blame it on this encounter in the element it's been.
Speaker 2:You think it was planned for a while I know it was planned for a while.
Speaker 1:We we have records of planes that were dispatched from Curtis Southwest Airfield, north of the downtown area, and we know that these planes are dispatched, eight of them, from the airfield, and we know how long it takes for these planes to get ready. So it's eight hours per plane, times eight planes. Times eight planes is 64 hours. Even if you have two mechanics, that's 32 hours. That's more than a day's worth of time, even if they're working 24, seven around the clock, more than a day's worth of time. Except they were. These planes were dispatched from the afternoon where Dick Rowland gets put in jail to the next morning, so less than 24 hours.
Speaker 1:These planes are dispatched and they're dropping turpentine balls on the neighborhood and we have two branches of the National Guard that were dispatched by train guard, that were dispatched by train, and so all of this coordination, the police so 250 police officers were 250 people were deputized to be police officers. You've got people, you've got trains, you've got the national guard, you've got planes. All this stuff takes a lot of time to coordinate and plan. You don't just do this from one day to the next. You can't, it's not possible.
Speaker 2:so um, you said his name is dick roland right. Yes, that the young man was dick roland right. Yep, okay, and you were saying he was in jail. Nothing had taken place, he was just locked up. They hadn't processed anything and before they started any of the legal proceedings, they started um, dispatching planes out to the area. Now, what were the planes sent for?
Speaker 1:the, the planes actually, um, we actually know the name of the guy who supplied the fuel and these turpentine um balls. They were like, basically, like you can think of, like, uh, like you know, have you ever seen dryer balls? Like it's like cotton? Yeah, it's like kind of dense and they're about tennis ball size, yeah, so think of that now. Now dip it like, soak it in turpentine and put it in a bucket. But well, you know, 40, 50 of them in a bucket. That's what these things were okay uh, and when?
Speaker 1:so when people are going through the neighborhood setting fires, when you have planes overhead that are dropping these buckets full of turpentine balls Like they're going to anything they touch, that's on fire, they're also going to be on fire, right? So it's a way to accelerate the burning of this neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that had to be premeditated, because how are you just going to come up with all this? You know these items to start.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, right, exactly. So we know that, we know, and you know I've spoken to at one point I spoke to the grandson of Tate Brady is one of the KKK members who perpetuated this Massacre. Uh, I spoke to the grandson of his maid, oh really, and she basically told the family, her family, uh, of this plan that she heard because she was, you know, in his house, um, you know, serving coffee or tea or whatever you serve to the kkk, right, uh, she was, she was his maid, basically in his mansion, which, by the way, is, uh, three doors down from where I'm sitting right now.
Speaker 2:Is it still there?
Speaker 1:It's still there. The mansion is still there, Okay, but it was bought by Felix Jones NFL player Felix Jones.
Speaker 2:Was he running back for the Cowboys? I don't know. Yeah for the Cowboys, Okay.
Speaker 1:There's a little bit of justice there, yeah, okay, so that's what I thought.
Speaker 2:Okay interesting, there's a little bit of justice there, yeah, okay. So all right, the massacre takes place. Um, uh, we got into just the different people involved. Uh, the last time we spoke so they came back right was it 2024, 25, 26? I mean not 2000, but 19. When did they come back and start rebuilding? Because I don't think people realize that, carlos, that they came back and they rebuilt. That's the whole idea. That's what your book is kind of based on and what you've been doing up to this point, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely right. So in my book I I try to tell the whole history of the neighborhood from right, very beginnings, uh, in indian territory and being tribal land, and how this neighborhood began into the decades where um, it's prospering, into the massacre itself and then happened afterwards, right.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so it's actually very quick. So in the chapter that I wrote about Lula Williams, she was. She owned a movie theater called Williams Dreamland Theater Right, she actually is the first person to have a chain of movie theaters not the first woman, or the first black woman like the first person right period to have a chain of movie theaters she had. So she had a theater in tulsa, but she also had a theater in okmogi and one in muskogee, and so what she does is she takes the profits from those other two theaters and she uses that money to rebuild her theater in Tulsa. So she was actually one of the first business owners to basically say I'm not giving up, I'm going to rebuild and they're not going to displace us from this place. That's the other thing. So when we talk about, you know, oh, prove that the massacre was planned. The Black community knew this as well. They knew that the white business owners and they knew that the city wanted this Black community moved further north and they were doing everything they can in order to move this community further north, um to be away from the downtown area, because the downtown area, which is which is where all the business was right, where all the economy was, um, and they wanted this black community that was sitting in the middle of down or not in the middle of downtown, but sitting on the eastern part of downtown. They wanted to displace it because they wanted this, all of this land and all this, uh, economic development. They wanted it all for themselves.
Speaker 1:But she is defiant and she says I'm not going to let this happen, I'm going to rebuild in the exact same place that I was in before. And so she opened. She reopened williams dreamland theater in sept of 1922. So really just a year and a couple of months. Right After, after everything, you know, after she loses everything. But she rebuilt. And so she also rebuilt. So she owned the theater and she owned a building right on the corner of Archer and Greenwood that her theater is not standing anymore because it was torn down for the highway. But the building that she owned at the corner of Greenwood and Archer is still there and it's still. You can still see on the top of it says 1922 and I like to think it's kind of a middle finger to the rest of the city. Yes, so was the community all Black at that time? It was an all Black community. It was. I'm sorry, we had a buffer there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Let me repeat that you had a buffer there.
Speaker 1:We think of Greenwood as an all Black community, but it is actually very diverse During the 1920s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, okay, it was very diverse. So in the directories, I found Italian families and businesses, I found Russian Jewish families and businesses. There were Latino families, there were LGBTQ individuals that you know. No, really, yes, there was, yes, okay. So, when we think about Greenwood, I think that one of the ways we can think about it is a place where everyone was welcome, because you do see families from these communities who might have been not welcomed in in any other part of tulsa, but yet they are. But they are welcomed in green, and not just welcomed in greenwood, but they, they opened up businesses, uh, they and they are part of the community. So so we, so, you know, I like to think of Greenwood as here's a place that is, um, open and welcoming, and I think that was really one of the reasons why, um, you could think about, you know, white Tulsa or the rest of Tulsa not accepting that this place should exist. Gotcha, yeah, we don't want to have. You know, they didn't want to have a refuge for people who were being marginalized.
Speaker 2:Right yeah. So they came back, they rebuilt. And after they rebuilt, well, talk about um. Talk about how long did it take for them to rebuild the area and what does it look like directly after um they rebuilt it.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. So think about. You know the timeline of Greenwood. So you're looking at. 1905 is when it started, mm-hmm, 14 years to 1921 is when it was burned, and Greenwood has a life that extends 45 years after 1921. So it's really not so. So you know it does have its ups and downs, like any other place you got to think about too. You know. So after 1921, stock market crash in 1929, the great depression, so what you know. So after 1921, stock market crash in 1929, the Great Depression, so what you know. That obviously had a negative impact, but the economic height of Greenwood is in the 1940s. So you have this rise, you have a dip, for you know, the depression and the stock market crash. You have a rise again after the depression, into the 1940s.
Speaker 2:It's the war and the oil is needed probably, yeah, so that was a boom, yeah.
Speaker 1:So so really, you know the, the, the most businesses and the most wealth and the most people, uh, and the most resources that you're going to see in Greenwood is in this 1940s to 1950s period, and then you see a decline again. So Tulsa decides that they want to build a series of highways through the downtown area and they have a choice Are we going to build these highways in the wealthier white parts of town?
Speaker 2:Is that the South Tulsa? Right, that's south tulsa. Is the wealthy white? Okay, go ahead yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So so you know they're not going to, they're not going to build these highways through, you know, wealthy white folks homes. They're going to tear down the neighborhood of greenwood in order to build these highways, right, yeah, so you have, in the 1960s and early 1970s, this period of, you know, urban removal right Not renewal but removal and it hits Tulsa really, really hard. So there's a highway Highway 244, that's built really just right through the middle of this Greenwood neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see a picture of you. Is that you under the underpass?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, standing right where that Williams Dreamland Theater used to be. Okay, I picked that spot on purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you did so you could see right Like here was this amazing movie theater and all the businesses and activity and life that was around it in this neighborhood. That was around it, yeah, and now it's a highway, right? So you know, again we can talk about, like, oh you know, desegregation changed the economy of North Tulsa and people decided to move to a different place. They didn't decide. Their house was torn down for a highway. Like, where are you going to go? What are you going to do? You can't stay there, right? Yeah, you know, we talk about the values are lower, your taxes are not.
Speaker 2:You're not getting taxes. You're not going to be able to sustain your neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:How are the schools Of?
Speaker 1:course, desegregation changes the makeup of the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:The neighborhood didn't have a choice in the matter.
Speaker 1:Right, there was a high school right there and it's no longer a high school, it's a parking lot, you know. And so these kinds of things, when a city says we are going to, you know, erase this neighborhood, this community, you can't help but disrupt. So, mindy, I'm trying to remember her name, mindy Thompson Fullilove has a book called Root Shock and that really, when I read that book I was just kind of it kind of blew me away, because she's talking about the type of disruption that happens in these. And so, of course, tulsa is not the only one, right, it's not the only city where this happens. It happens in Detroit and DC and San Jose, where I grew up, they tore down a highway where there was a Hispanic community, latino community. My dad lived in that neighborhood and it's no longer a Mexican neighborhood, it's highway to eight, you know. Yes, so this happens all over the place.
Speaker 1:So Mindy Fuller Love talks about in her book root shock. The point of the book is that you're, you're taking these neighborhoods and you're destroying them to the point where people don't even know what they want anymore, because they can't even recognize their own neighborhood, because it doesn't look anything like it used to look. You've, you've, you've changed, you've erased this place. You know, and I've talked to people my friend, deborah Hunter she's a poet in this area and she left Greenwood to, you know, go to school in the sixties and when she came back in the 80s she didn't even recognize the place where she grew up, because it no longer exists.
Speaker 2:I saw her interview on YouTube and she talked about what it was like going to the bakery and smelling the fresh bread. Just like going to the bakery and smelling the fresh bread, just growing up and certain familiarity and comfort level. And then she came back and she, you know, is completely different. If you get a chance, it's on YouTube right. What is the title of it? Youtube right.
Speaker 1:What is the title of it? It's Deborah Hunter, and then the series is called Greenwood Stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if everybody gets a chance, you might want to check that out. Okay For sure, interesting, oh boy, I think that happened a lot. You can see that I grew up in Philadelphia and I was actually surprised. Part of my I have a family member who did a lot of his thesis on redlining and you could see in Pennsylvania it was probably, uh, philadelphia is one of the most redline cities in Pennsylvania, but you could just see over the history of the city how it's changed. Um, you did something that, uh, I'm not exactly sure of the term. What is it called Code? What was it called that you did?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I volunteered for a number of years for an organization called Code for America.
Speaker 1:What is code? What is that? So Code for America used to be a series of volunteer groups that took volunteer people in the tech industry to improve the delivery of government services Things like whether it's food stamps or other benefits or improve the way that you're getting information if you're justice involved, or improve the way that you understand things like housing policies in a city. A couple of years ago, code for America got rid of all of their volunteer programs, so that kind of ended that. But I have always been interested in this idea and you know I grew up in Silicon Valley and um have had this long, you know, tech career and today I work for a data analytics company, um, but I was interested in this idea of like, how can you take these technologies, um and uh for, you know, for, for the public, for the, for public good? You know? Um, yeah, I interviewed um.
Speaker 1:I interviewed emmett j mchenry. Uh, a couple nights ago we were, we had an event at the greenwood cultural center and, yeah, emmett mchenry is in my book. I wrote a, a chapter about his life. He grew up in Greenwood, he graduated Booker T Washington High School. He went on from Booker T to work for IBM and he went on from that to be the founder of Network Solutions, so he is the creator of the domain name registration system. If you bought a web domain name in the 1990s, you were buying it from Emmett J McHenry.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Network Solutions had the exclusive contract for domain name registration for the internet, for the entire internet, for almost a decade.
Speaker 2:Wow okay, so how does that apply, you know?
Speaker 1:and so, uh, so this you know, and, and what I talked to him the other night about was you know how did the the sort of the economics, the way that Greenwood did business, the way that he was raised in Greenwood with this community?
Speaker 1:He was born in Arkansas, he grew up in Tulsa with his family, with his grandparents, and so you know how does growing up in the environment that he grew up in influence the way that he built his technology. Because if you think about domain names, you know they could be, it could have been this thing where, if you were a business, you would have had to, you know, pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a domain name because they're worth so much, and that it would be this private thing. But instead he created a system that was open, that was available and accessible to everyone, right, right, and and that's sort of like keeping with the early um values of the internet. All all of what the internet, uh, technologies are built on top of is this idea that anyone and everyone can contribute to the technology. So, whether you're talking about telecommunications protocols or internet technology or web pages, anyone and everyone has access to all of that type of stuff because it's free and open.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you use that. How did that? Did you use that for research when you were doing the history of Greenwood? So how does that? How does it?
Speaker 1:apply. We started a project where we worked on digitizing the 1910 and 1920 census and we wanted to combine that with land records that are usually held by the county yeah, the city and county courts, census records, federal data, land records, city data and mapping these things together on a map so you can actually see where were, where was the Black community. You know, not talking about it in these abstract terms or these ivory tower terms, but like, where, like can I see this on a map? You know, can I do a search in the census for you know someone's grandmother or great aunt, or you know someone's grandfather or great grandfather? You know, can we do a search for individual people and families?
Speaker 2:Can we help?
Speaker 1:people do a genealogy search. You know those kinds of things you were able to find that?
Speaker 2:were you able to find property values and things like that? Was that information that you were in there, or is that just different?
Speaker 1:values. Not yet, although I would be really interested in finding out if, uh, there's any kinds of like in the land records. If there there's like, uh, yeah, if we can find anything about transactions and stuff like that, I think that would be incredibly interesting. So we've done all this research and actually just this last uh month we were so. So when we did that, it was kind of 19, it was uh, it was 2019, 2020. Yeah, and you know, covid shut everything down and we couldn't really do a ton of research, uh, anymore, and code for america got rid of their volunteer program, so we weren't doing anything anymore. So everything kind of stopped for a few years. Um, but just a month we were able to uh to close a deal where we partnered with the green wood cultural center, and now they are going to be that actually, you're hearing this for the first time, like you've heard it here first, uh, because I haven't told anybody yet you're the first person I'm telling you know, all right, here in tulsa, but you're really the first person I'm telling this to.
Speaker 1:So we've partnered with the greenwood Cultural Center and they are going to now be the home for all that research.
Speaker 2:So do you remember, did you?
Speaker 1:did you see the Watchmen?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, you remember when the lead character I can't remember her name, but the lead character she goes in and and she goes to the actual it's actually called the greenwood cultural center in the series yes, and she goes there and she goes up to that uh kiosk and henry lewis gates is like you know, we're going to tell you all about your family. Yeah, well, we're going to build that. Oh, that's going to be awesome. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be really great. We're super excited. So so now, when?
Speaker 1:So now, all that research and all that data is going to have a home, and so I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when do you think that's going to take place?
Speaker 1:It's going to be a process. I think that we are going to be able to build the foundation of it, yeah, over the next probably six months or so, okay, and you know, just continuing our work and our research, just kind of like dusting it all off and making sure it all works and being able to do a search and testing it all out and kind of working with the community and seeing what they want. So we have a goal that we would like to see something up and running by the time of the Legacy Festival, which happens at the end of May. So there will again be a lot of attention, attention and events and and um commemoration and things happening around uh, how long is that going to take place?
Speaker 2:that legacy, uh event? Is that it's usually a multi it's usually a multi-day event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's usually kind of like a few days and it's always around that sort of like May, end of May, early June timeline Okay that's a good time to come out, yeah, and so you've got Juneteenth also and a jazz festival. So Greenwood tries to have its sort of festivals and celebrations and stuff like that around that end of May June timeline. So we're really excited to see what we can launch at that point, and that's just being able to continue and keep adding layers and layers on top of that.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Okay, that sounds really interesting. I think I'm going to try to come out there. So I read some place where, well, a couple of things have been in the news. One, the earlier part of this year, is that there have been movement towards is it reparations or acknowledgement of property. That may be. With the two older ladies I can't think of their names both of them, like, were 90, almost 100, or both 100, something like that. So that's one of the things I saw. And then another one I was reading about was there's been like a $2 million fund or donation for the development in that area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um, mother Randall, mother Fletcher, yeah, um, uh, both 109 years old. I think mother Randall is 110. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was way off hanging in there. They are hanging in there, so they would have been young children Right During the massacre. Okay, and? And so the city. It really is a long and complicated conversation. You know, the city did acknowledge for the first time and apologize that the city was involved in this massacre, that the city played a part, the mayor played a part, the police department deputized 250 people to be, you know, police officers, and so when you do that, you're acting on behalf of the city. You know, if you're a deputized police officer, you are acting as a member of, as a, as a agent of the city of Tulsa, right, right, and so the city acknowledged this, they apologized for it, and then that what the and then what the city did is they created a study, called beyond apology. So what are we going to do that? So we have apologized. Now what right?
Speaker 1:yeah and so the city has set up this study and it was called beyond apology, I think. I think it's just, uh, I think, if you wanted to check it out, is it beyond apologyorg? Okay, um, and you can see the reportapologyorg. Okay, and you can see the report beyondapologyorg. You can see the report that they did. And so they took kind of really the pulse of the city, of what do we really think as a city about this idea of reparations. Do we want reparations? Do we not want reparations? What do we think? What are the kinds of things that, uh, that people want to see? And and what comes out of this report is kind of interesting, because people are very, um, divided on the subject of whether or not the city itself is responsible, and so you can almost talk about maybe taking like that part of the conversation and having it be a separate conversation. Now, when you talk about the issue of does the city have a responsibility to build up this area of town and make it equitable with the rest of the city, now many, many, many more people would say yes, we need to do that. We need to improve housing in North Tulsa, we need to improve education, that in these areas we are going to be equitable with the rest of the city, and it's just a really interesting report that shows, yes, the city is willing to have this conversation. Direct reparations, that's a different topic and we can talk about that and we can kind of educate people and kind of figure out how they feel about it. But there are other things that we can be doing that are not reparations. But can we start trying to help level the playing field as a city? And I think a lot of people are really kind of open to that. So you know, we'll get there.
Speaker 1:One of the things that surprises me a lot, in a good way, is that when the topic of reparations was being discussed in 2000, 2001, and there was a, a court case, they went all the way up to the supreme court and the supreme court ended up not hearing the case, so they kind of threw it out and in fact, um, like johnny cochran was one of the attorneys on that case okay, um, um and this was, you know, 23 years ago um the con, even the concept or the idea of reparations or making things equitable, um was just a non-starter, like nobody would even engage in that conversation and the report that the state came out with in 2001,.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, there may have been about a hundred or 150 of those, or copies of those reports printed out, and this is before you know. This is 2001, so you don't have a whole lot, you don't? There's this pre-social media, right, yeah? Um, so there's really no way to distribute this report, and hardly anybody ever even read it, um, and there wasn't any real popular support around the idea that, you know, we should probably help North Tulsa be a better place, um, and what's sort of been a pleasant surprise is not only is this conversation not going away, um, but it seems to be gaining even more and more traction as time goes on, um, which I think is way different than what you would have seen 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Interesting, very interesting. I think it's amazing People don't know, we don't know a lot about our history, our history. I think that's why we're in the situation we are right now with politics, because we don't know a lot about our history. Yeah, but that's amazing. I'm not sure I've actually had family members that have gone to college. Oral Roberts University is out there, right, it is. What part of Tulsa is that in? South South? Okay, gotcha Interesting. I don't even know. I've had people tell me they went to school there and they didn't realize all that stuff had taken place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm like wow, praying Hands, the big Praying hands, the big praying hands statue that's down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1:People come from all over the place just to see that.
Speaker 2:That statue Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, fun fact, tulsa was the test market for MTV in 1980.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:And the reason that Tulsa was the test market for MTV, not New York right, because it started in New York Right, everything was conceived in New York and most of those videos were shot. The early ones were shot in New York Right, and all the vjs and everything and my whole mtv is a kind of a new york phenomenon, but they test marketed it in tulsa and not in new york. And the reason they test market in tulsa was because tulsa had, per capita, the most cable subscribers in the entire country. Get out of here, wow.
Speaker 1:Because of the televangelists. Oh, because it was the era of Oral Roberts, of Rayma, of Jimmy and Tammy Baker, of all of these televangelists that now were preaching on TV and in order to see them you had to be on cable. So you have an entire city where almost every home has cable. Because of these televangelists and because there were more per capita, right, as a percentage of the houses, you had more cable subscribers in tulsa than even in new york. There were neighborhoods of new york who didn't have cable yet, interesting. But here in tulsa almost every house had, uh had, cable, wow. And so mtv was the perfect place to to. So you know, the parents are watching the televangelist.
Speaker 2:their kids are watching MTV yeah, I'm sure that went over well, right? Yeah, exactly, I'm pretty sure that they're still very conservative out there for sure. Yeah, interesting. Well, I thank you for coming on and teaching us and enlightening us about what's going on. I think I'm going to try to get out there during that time period, end of May, first part of June. I'll keep in contact with you.
Speaker 1:That'd be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'd love to have you out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and test out the technology of what we've come up with.
Speaker 2:Yes, that'd be awesome. Okay, any any last words before we anything you want us to know?
Speaker 1:So I am going to. We did video the conversation with Emmett McHenry, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think, yeah, and I, what I'd like to do is put that on YouTube, yeah, so that folks can see it. I think more people really need to understand his story, yeah, and just understand. You know, again, the history. Like you know, we can talk about Bill Gates and we can talk about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and these guys, but you know people who look like you and me, al. We have been erased out of that Internet history and I think that it's just not a fair depiction of who was behind the scenes in developing all this technology.
Speaker 1:I think if you really told the truth, you would see a lot more of a diversity of people. You would see men and women, you would see people of color, you would see. You know what I mean, yeah, and so it's not just the rich Silicon Valley guys that built Silicon Valley. It was also people like Emmett J McHenry, who graduated Booker T Washington High School, grew up in Greenwood, you know, and was a central part of some of these research teams in IBM and a founder of Network Solutions. So he was right in the middle of everything, so much so that he's the one who introduced the internet to Bill Gates.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, and these are stories that need to Bill Gates, wow, yeah, and these are stories that need to be told, right, yeah, because you know that's one of my things. I get tired of you know, we just are we just gangsters and rappers? No, we're everything.
Speaker 1:We're everything, everybody else is In inventors of technology as well right, yeah you know the, the. The guy who invented the cartridge for the video game is a black man never knew that yeah, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but google, google, the inventor of video game cartridge. He's a black man, yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, you used to work out there, right? Silicon Valley, I'm from there. Yeah, I grew up there.
Speaker 1:When I was born, it was a peach orchard. Wow, you know. And then it becomes Silicon Valley. Interesting Okay you know, uh, and then you know, and then it becomes silicon valley.
Speaker 2:So interesting, interesting okay, but yeah, look for that emmett mchenry video and is he still alive?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, he's uh. Like I said, I interviewed him, uh two nights ago okay and he's still working, he's still inventing Um, and so, uh, his yeah, uh, very much. Uh, he's very active in the community, uh, in the technology community. So, yeah, uh, look for the video, um and uh. And you know, I'd love to continue to tell Emmett J McHenry's uh story and um, and then in May we're going to be coming out with the, with the kiosk at the Grin Cultural Center, so it'll be really great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that that sounds awesome. All right, well, thank you for coming on. That's going to end today's recording Listen up. We'll catch you next time on Listen Up. For anyone watching this channel, I ask that you please like and subscribe for upcoming videos.
