 Good afternoon. Thank you all so much for joining us today for this event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. It's my sincere pleasure to welcome our panelists, as well as all of our viewers on YouTube and Facebook live for this critical conversation. My name is Carolina Reed and I'm an associate professor in city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, and I have the pleasure of moderating today's event. Before we begin, I would like to thank the sponsors of this event. First and foremost, I would like to thank Jevon Lewis for organizing this in his role as the co-lead of the Economic Disparities Cluster at the Othering and Belonging Institute. I would also like to thank Othering and Belonging and all of its staff and faculty for creating space to have these important conversations, not only today, but also throughout the year, and for producing and disseminating research that uplifts community voice and racial justice on our campus. In addition, we would like to thank the eight co-sponsors for today's event, the Department of African American Studies, the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Center for the Study of Law and Society, the School of Public Health, the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Goldman School of Public Policy, the Human Rights Center, and the Felton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice. I would now like to invite you all to join me in a land acknowledgement. We recognize that UC Berkeley sits on the ancestral and unceded land of the Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona Band tribe of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Moekma Ohlone tribe and other familial descendants of the Verona Band. We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land, since the institution's founding in 1868. As members of the Berkeley community, it is vitally important that we recognize the history of the land on which we stand. We recognize that the Moekma Ohlone people are alive and flourishing members of the Berkeley and broader Bay Area communities today, and we stand as allies in their struggles for recognition and justice. The conversation that we're going to have today centers on the Tulsa massacre of 1921, during which over the course of 24 hours, a white mob attacked black residents, homes and businesses in Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood. On Black Wall Street, Greenwood was a segregated but thriving black community, filled with black owned businesses and homes, a black owned newspaper and theater, and a rich cultural scene shaped by black artists, musicians and craftspeople. Although accurate data to bear witness aren't available, an estimated 300 people were murdered. In just two days, estimates suggest that white rioters destroyed more than 1200 homes across 35 city blocks, decimating more than $200 million of black owned property. The massacre has been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, yet no one was held accountable. The state erased the massacre from the public record, failing not only to repair the harm done to black lives and livelihoods, but precluding any healing through remembrance or recognition. 100 years later, we have outlawed overt racial discrimination, but the anti black racism that motivated the Tulsa massacre is enduring. There are protests in the police killing of black and brown men, women and children, and in the extraction of wealth from black neighborhoods through predatory lending and speculative investment. The silencing of Tulsa's history echoes in the missing body cam footage, the shifting of blame to black bodies and actions, and all the ways we fail to name the ways in which racism operates in and through systems. The massacre also provides an opportunity to lift up the halting but hopeful conversations about what reparations in this country could look like. It is a conversation about these issues that we hope to bring you today. I'm joined by an extraordinary panel of experts who will help to shed light on the Tulsa massacre and its residents for our current moment. First, and again the organizer of today's event, I'd like to introduce Jevon Scott Lewis. Jevon is an associate professor of geography at UC Berkeley and co leader of the Economic Disparities cluster at the Othering and Belonging Institute. Jevon has just finished a book on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, which is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Thank you for joining us. Second, please join me in welcoming Eric Stover. Eric is an adjunct professor of law at UC Berkeley, the director of the Human Rights Center, and a producer for the forthcoming PBS documentary, Tulsa, the Fire and the Forgotten, which will be premiering Monday, May 31 at 6pm Pacific time and 9pm Eastern time on your local PBS channel. Third, it is my great pleasure to welcome Carla Slocum, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the director of the Institute for African American Research. She is a scholar on the history of black towns in the US, and as a co creator of the hashtag Tulsa syllabus, which seeks to educate all of us about this important chapter in history, and shed light into the ways that race and racism manifest in Tulsa through past and present. Last, but certainly not least, we're joined by Charles P. Henry, Professor Emeritus of American of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Charles is the author of a 2007 book titled Long Overdue, The Politics of Racial Reparations, and will help us to think about what it means to repair from this country's racist history. Thank you all for being here. A couple of housekeeping items before we jump into the discussion. We're going to start with a moderated Q&A, and we get to see a trailer for Eric's new film, which will go until about 215. Then I'll open it up to audience questions. If you are joining us on Facebook or YouTube, please type your questions in the chat, and they will magically make their way across technological platforms to me. Terrific. Let's get started. We're going to start with you and show the trailer for your new documentary, The Fire and the Forgotten. This was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. An unruly white mob destroyed part of this city, which was the black community. They had just gained their freedom. They're just getting a foothold and building something for themselves and for their futures. And within two days, in the most horrific way, everything that they hoped for was gone. You have people, a generation out of slavery, who built something that no one else could have done. African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, should have those same banners above their hotels, above their barbershops, that say, since the 1910s. And yet they don't. We know that no white person was ever held accountable for any offense relative to that. There was government sanctioned torture and terrorism. That's the history of Tulsa, going back to the 1921 massacre. And Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma have never made amends for that. If you don't know your history, it will repeat itself. Well, it's repeating itself. It is terrifying because you realize that it could happen today. The militia represented Saturday before last is the exact same mob that was represented in 1921 when the massacre took place. I guess the great hope is that this will never happen again if you tell the story. But until they obtain justice for this massacre, there can't be healing. Wow, even the trailer is really powerful. I can't wait to see the full documentary. Eric, could you just tell us a little bit about what inspired you and your co-producers to make this, and particularly to make this now? Well, thank you, Carolina. And thank you to Denise Heard and everyone for organizing this meeting that we're having together virtually. Yes, the way this came together really goes back to 2018, and there are three of us who are co-producers. The first is Jonathan Silvers. He's the executive director. Jonathan has spent his career making documentaries on social justice issues here in the United States and around the world. And he called me and we worked on a film together a few years back and asked if I would get involved. I agreed. And the second is Deneen Brown. Deneen Brown is really the thread through our documentary. Deneen is an African-American journalist at the Washington Post, and she grew up around Tulsa as a teenager. She lived there for many years. And her father is a pastor who built his own church in Tulsa. Now Deneen went in 2018 in the spring to the lynching memorial in Alabama to write a story. And then from there she went to Tulsa to visit her father. And she went into what used to be called Black Wall Street with her father to have lunch. And she was taken back. She wanted to know more about what had happened here, this history that had been erased. And she went back to the post and they told her to go back and write a story about it. And she spent quite a few months there and published an article or in the Washington Post in October, September of 2018, asking, well, what's going to happen with the centennial coming? And a few days later the mayor announced that there would be an investigation into the mass graves. And so we contacted Deneen. And I joined because knowing that this forensic investigation was taking place because I spent most of my career investigating genocide, war crimes, mass graves around the world, and investigations here in the United States. So I wanted to become part of the process. So we were inspired to come together and really focus on the community in Tulsa and how they were working together to make sure that this centennial took place and that history wasn't forgotten. And that's really what we wanted to do was show the story of the Black community, the activist in Tulsa and what they're doing to commemorate those who died and lost all their property in that time. Thank you. And I'm going to come back to that in a minute. But, Javon, you just finished a book on the Tulsa Massacre. I'd love to hear your perspective too on, you know, why did you tackle this topic now and what were some of the key themes that were emerging from your scholarship? Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody who's here today. So I began working in Tulsa in 2014 as part of a post-doctoral research project at the London School of Economics where I had then just finished my PhD. So we were, you know, a team of three who went to Tulsa to effectively study the relationship between inequality and cooperation. And so the community that I, you know, was able to kind of join and kind of learn from was a community of North Tulsa. And so this in 2014, you know, was, you know, a kind of, you know, prior to 2019 when the HBO show The Watchman began to establish some more recent interest in the history of the Tulsa-Rice Massacre. I began my research really studying North Tulsa as one would, you know, any kind of community as an anthropologist. And as a part of that process, I began to learn more about the history of these, of this community and different ethics that they brought from their history into how they understood their, you know, ongoing circumstances, many of which were, you know, made, you know, possible due to a series of inequalities and of, you know, kind of a landscape of poverty. So for me, I began my research in Tulsa really thinking about, well, how do I understand the relationship between rationalization and impoverishment, which was part of my PhD research in the Caribbean. And then what I noted, you know, amongst this community of North Tulsa was that there was something quite unique about the way that they thought about their community. And that it had actually drawn upon a much older kind of sense of community formation that involved Greenwood, but it also involved the all-Black towns that, you know, had begun to populate Indian territory post-reconstruction. So for me, I wanted to understand what contemporary Tulsans, Black Tulsans in North Tulsa, how they kind of navigated their contemporary circumstances, right? And that many of which, again, were being attended to by, you know, non-profit organizations, you know, the kinds of things that you see, at least that I saw in the Caribbean, really, right? Where, you know, poverty, you know, is not being necessarily, you know, attended to by the state, but instead, you know, really is being looked after by a bunch of non-state actors and agencies like nonprofits and churches and so forth. So for me, what was interesting was to kind of understand North Tulsa, you know, in a broader kind of Black diasporic context in which a kind of history of freedom, also a history of sovereignty. You know, in Eric's trailer, there's a notion where one of the interviewees says, you know, they built something for themselves. You know, that was something that was quite unique in Tulsa, because although the current circumstances in North Tulsa didn't really indicate that history, the ethic of that history was still very much alive. And so for me, I found that to be very compelling. And that's what has kind of given my research there. And these are really the kind of major themes of the book that I've just finished. Thank you. I think this connects really well, Carla, with your research on Black towns. Could you tell us a little bit more about what Black towns were, what they are, what were the processes that created these Black towns and maybe a little bit of the themes from your last book? Sure. Also, I want to thank everyone for inviting me to be here. I'm really glad to be part of this conversation, timely conversation. As Jovan mentioned, yes, Black Oklahoma had Black towns, and I'm glad he's making this connection between Black towns and Greenwood or North Tulsa, because in fact there is a deep connection between them. And I think that's something that's often not understood. So Black towns really were these places that were started at the end of, in the Oklahoma context. So the United States is replete with Black towns actually, I would estimate over a thousand. So you can find them in California and all kinds of places across the United States. But Oklahoma has a unique aspect to its Black town landscape. Black towns were these places where Black people lived typically as a space to be freer, freer from racial hostility, freer for the chance to have economic and social mobility, freer to build a Black community, and freer to be safe. And so they were really understood as these kinds of places where people could come and kind of create these kinds of possibilities for a kind of freedom for themselves. Not absolute freedom, of course, but freer. I really want to stress that point about freer. And so the majority were formed after reconstruction really sort of coming out of this process of the failure of all the hopes and promises of the reconstruction era, and Black people really looking for spaces where they could achieve that kind of freedom. Oklahoma had a really high concentration of Black towns. So it really stands out in the United States for the number of Black towns that there are. And the Oklahoma Historical Society now estimates over 50 Black towns that were there. And I think there are always increasing that number and due to research that reveals some others that were incorporated or unincorporated, but still recognized as places where people that were named places and that were place identified. So yeah, as I mentioned, more than 50 were in Oklahoma. And they really came out of this process. I mean, you really have to situate the process of Black towns. I don't think I mentioned that they are thought of as being rurally situated and I have some thoughts on that as well. But they really came out of the process of land possession and dispossession in the, in what we now know as Oklahoma. So before it was Oklahoma, it was Indian Territory. Indian Territory was, as the title suggests, the place where Native Americans existed. Native Americans who were there, some who had been forcibly removed from their homelands in the Southeast, others who had already settled in the West before those five tribes came from the Southeast. And the process of sort of then again, reassigning those lands that that were known as Indian Territory, reassigning those lands to open them up for settlement of the West, which we all know, we all know about the movement West of Americans writ large. Black towns were part of that process of land claiming and land possession that was taking place, and it is tied to also land dispossession of Native Americans, which is often not not discussed as much. And so through that process was really the creation of these relatively small rural Black towns that were numerous across across what we now know as Oklahoma. The story, you know, you asked me about the significance of them. So, you know, there's a couple of ways to address that question. There is the issue of what they represented to people so their significance was about that representation of a chance of freedom. They also have a contemporary significance, which is what I really focus on, a really sort of 20th, late 20th century, 21st century sort of significance. And that is that story, that narrative about that chance of freedom and that Black people actually achieved having these kinds of stories, these kinds of phases of relative economic and social success. And that's a narrative that I argue really holds strongly today and is why people are attracted to the story of Black towns for tourism and for other sorts of reasons. And so I think we can't deny and sort of, you know, just can't forget the fact that the Black town story is one that continues to have a lot of sway and importance for us, even today. Thank you so much. And I'm going to come back to this sort of rural urban and the significance of these places in a minute, but I want to make sure we get Charles in the conversation as well. Charles, your, your focus is really on reparations. I feel like this word is being used more and more, but not always in the same way. And so wondering if you could just give us a little bit of context for this, this concept of reparations and what it entails. It's about restorative justice rather than any kind of punitive justice, but as it relates to Tulsa and what I looked for in my work was a successful case of reparations. And so when I was doing my book in the early 2000s, not much was happening at the national level in terms of the HR 40. So I began to look at the state and local level and what was happening. And I would do, would you mind actually just giving us a sense for our viewers who may not know what HR 40 is. Yes, HR 40 was the bill introduced by Congressman Conyers in 1989 after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which gave reparations to Japanese Americans for their internment. This passed during the Reagan administration and so it gave hope to people like Conyers who supported the Civil Liberties Act and in fact said to the Japanese American proponents of this. You know, I think we need to do something about African American reparations and he modeled his bill named HR 40 after 40 acres in the mule. After the Civil Liberties Act, which calls essentially for a study and then rep or then recommendations. Conyers was not successful in getting hearings on that and we didn't get them into until 2019 and maybe we can talk a little bit later about what's happening now at the federal one and and in San Francisco in this past week as a matter of fact. But in looking for successful cases, I came across Rosewood, Florida, and I knew about Tulsa as well and I was struck by the fact that I think there's a stronger case for reparations in Tulsa than Rosewood. There was more state involvement in the oppression and elimination of Greenwood in Tulsa and many more lives were lost, but they were they were successful in getting a medal. But nothing beyond that in Tulsa at the time I was writing and in Rosewood there was substantial reparations but they weren't called reparations upon eyes the survivors in Rosewood to form their own group and Association, which sort of stumbled along until the Civil Liberties passed and they said, you know, now's the time for us to mobilize. Just a couple of things about Rosewood and then, then, you know, I think it's useful to look at the similarities of the two and then the differences, which really intrigued me. Rosewood's much smaller it's it's an all black town, more or less there. The owner of the general store was white and his house was the only one spared the other 30 homes of blacks were burned down in Rosewood. It's interesting how the story comes about and it's resurrected a guy journalist is doing a travel log and goes through Cedar Key, which is a larger town near Rosewood. And he's struck by the fact that at the turn of the century one third of Cedar Key was was black. There were no black residents, even in the, even in the area called inward hill. There were no black residents and so he begins to ask questions about what happened all the black residents and people very reluctant to talk about finally, people mentioned a massacre, and then some people jokingly refer to Mason jars on the shelf of a bar that has the body parts of some of the blacks who were killed and dismembered in Rosewood. And he gets intrigued and does his story and, you know, maybe if people want the details. We'll talk about it later but there are the similarities are they both happen within a year and a half of each other. Tulsa in 1921 Rosewood in 1923. There's a whole environment of racial violence in Florida and in Oklahoma at the time with lynchings and other towns being burned etc. So, so that's the environment the place is the south. Both Rosewood and Tulsa were prosperous black communities which plays a role in all of this. And of course the loss and the inability to pass along intergenerational wealth, which we see manifest today and in the differences in wealth in our black and white communities. There was black resistance to the mobs that come on now this is something new if you look at quote unquote race riots, and as a fact, a factor of black serving in World War one and coming home as army veterans and having military skills and saying you I fought to make the world safer democracy and I'm not going to let my house burn down. And the fact that they shot back in some initial cases just enraged the mobs further and people come from literally hundreds of miles around then, as a result of that. The role of the press is shameful in both cases these were national news stories New York Times stories of white press funded as white womanhood being protected black press funded as black homes being defended. The Tulsa cases is the worst in which the major white paper the Tribune advertises in an op ed lynching a Negro tonight. They were advertising the lynching of a Negro that night in the process. Incidentally that issue disappeared from the state archives and it took some digging around to find it in a in a private collection. The failure of legal redress there were legal suits in both cases and you know I often talk about the sort of the differences between the legal process and the legislative process in terms of gaining reparations. And finally they're both a race from history. You know it's kind of ironic that two of our most prominent American historians Daniel borstein who was the Library of Congress at one point and has written a series of books on American history. And john hope Franklin an old professor of mine are both from Tulsa and didn't write about it for many many many years. I know Franklin finally wrote about when I was sitting in his class it was never mentioned. So that shows you how deeply buried it was in the feelings that that were there. Well the difference in outcomes and, you know, the Rosewood survivors got $150,000 each. There was a fund set up for property and regaining property and the scholarships offered to descendants of Rosewood folks. So that happens in Tulsa and I think there are four or five reasons and I'll just bullet point them and we can talk about them if you'd like. There's no dispute mechanism for things like moral harm, which in Florida there's an ombuds person. And you know one of the problems with legal suits are sovereign immunity. This is a big issue in police brutality cases as well. It's very difficult to see the state in Florida they had an ombuds person who dealt with cases like the state causing harm and statute of limitations is passed and all that so there was a mechanism to deal with this that didn't exist in Oklahoma. There was more black political clout in Florida, there was a black caucus that was very active and there was a Democratic governor at the time that helped the survivors were more organized and united in in Florida. There were two riot commissions created. The one in Rosewood was pretty much people by academics, the one in Oklahoma by politicians on sort of both sides of the issues that became a political football. And finally, and I think this is very important, it's true in the case of Japanese American reparations as well. They weren't framed as racial reparations because when you talk about racial redress, flags go up. In the case of Florida, it was presented as land being unjustly taken from people, and the Cuban American caucus, which composed of Republicans supported reparations for the Rosewood folks, not on the basis of race but on the basis of land being really taken away. And so in Tulsa this was framed as a racial redress and immediately the hackles came up and the opposition, and it was not successful in Tulsa. So those are some lessons in looking at those two cases. Thank you so much. Rich information there that I definitely want to come back to one of the things that strikes me in all of your sort of opening remarks is the extent to which it wasn't just about the destruction of human life, but really also of economic inequality, entrepreneurship, self determination, black industry, right? There was all of you have sort of talked about the freedom and the prosperity that was associated with these places, and that that was also really very much under attack. And so, Jevon, I'm wondering if we can turn back to you and talk a little bit about what's the significance of Greenwood being Black Wall Street. I really understand that moniker as a symbol for a deeper meaning of sort of place based self determination and success. Yeah, thank you. And I think, you know, both, both Carla and Charles kind of give I think a little bit of context to your question. I'm just kind of saying that, you know, there were several all Black towns. I mean, there are several dozens of all Black towns right across the United States. And many of these all Black towns, you know, really did resemble, you know, what the Greenwood district looked like in a significant way. And so when we think of Black Wall Street today, you know, notions of Wall Street or the way that Black Wall Street make us think of a kind of abundance of prosperity, when in fact what we're thinking about in terms of the historic Greenwood district is a really well, you know, well sustained and active, you know, commercial area, you know, that had all of the kind of trappings of what we would think of as an established developed community at the time. Some of the things that you mentioned actually Carolina in your introduction, you know, the theaters, etc, the schools, the churches, right, the banks and so forth. You know, the moniker of Negro Wall Street is given to the area by Booker T Washington the date they say is around 1905. And so it begins to kind of develop a sensibility of what they have accomplished. And as I've said before, you know, that accomplishment is rooted not just in in Greenwood itself right because Greenwood Greenwood, you know, is founded in 1910, 1905 1906 somewhere around that around that around that time so sorry Booker T Washington comes through later and gives the name of of Black Wall Street, Negro Wall Street. But in 1906, O.W. Gurley, J.B. Stratford, Stratford, you know, established Greenwood, you know, they do so having purchased Creek, you know, black native land, as as Carla mentioned, and they already come with some material wherewithal right but many of these are exodusters that, you know, the work of Nell Painter and other historians who have, you know, perhaps already migrated to Kansas, we're looking for secondary opportunities in in Tulsa around the same time. You know, the Glenpool All Strike in 1905, you know, Tulsa was developing as a side of economic activity. And so Greenwood Greenwood was a part of that landscape in a meaningful way, albeit segregated separated because Oklahoma Statehood in 1907 brought formally Jim Crow, you know, to the area, it had operated in informal ways and in slightly formal ways but for sure that the, you know, the beginning of statehood in 1907. It was formally segregated. So, you know, what we think of as Black Wall Street is, you know, thinking with the kind of ethics of Bukiti Washington disability of, you know, facilitating and accomplishing black uplift, you know, social economics of determination, which again I think have deeper, deeper antecedents in the period of Indian Territory, right, that are modeled really, modeled after the all black towns that existed in Indian Territory, like the all black towns that Carla discusses and analyzes in her book like Boli. So, you know, what it means still is that here is an example. It is a naming. It is a naming of that success. It is an identification of that success. But it does actually complicate, it is rather complicated narrative actually because because of that success, you know, places like Greenwood attract a lot of, you know, effectively impoverished, you know, black Southerners who come looking for opportunities. So beyond the Greenwood district itself, but you have our neighborhoods of significant poverty. But nevertheless, what Black Wall Street represents is this capacity for self determination is this capacity for, you know, for economic and social autonomy. And I think today this is what has made, you know, Black Wall Street and Greenwood such an important and such a kind of exciting, you know, question, right, as we approach a centenary because it does speak to what black people, you know, have been able to accomplish historically in this country when given the opportunity to do that. Pearl, I would you like to jump in on this question too. Yeah, I want to pick up on some things that Jovan said actually, I would really underscore the issue of representation, what these communities represent is so powerful has been so powerful historically is so powerful even today. And I think we can't under underestimate that. So everybody didn't become wealthy. Everybody wasn't a billionaire. Everybody wasn't a millionaire. Everybody did not own a hotel. There was class diversity in these communities, black towns as well as as Greenwood, at the same time. There was what they represented. There was the imagination of what they could be and again since I focus on the 21st century significance of these communities. In my view, and based on my research, there still is that imagination that has something to do with thinking about futures black town futures black community futures in Oklahoma. One thing I'll mention is that at the time of these communities formation. So when Jovan just gave the dates of when Greenwood was formed and so that's the same time that rural black towns are forming as well they started a little bit earlier than Greenwood, but nonetheless they're And the formation of these towns are still going on at the same time as Greenwood. So that gives you a broader landscape of Oklahoma as you know like sort of black Oklahoma at this time and the significance of black Oklahoma at this time. And there was and you know thought at this moment also about the potential of this becoming the only in the first black state in the United States and there were efforts to try to recruit people to come to Oklahoma to be part of a process where we can have a black state. And there really was something pretty powerful about Oklahoma as a black place. And I just want to mention that so often I don't know about the rest of you but so often I am people kind of are surprised to hear that I'm studying something black related to Oklahoma and the contemporary American imagination and first of all, we've already established that the history of Tulsa is more or less varying there are lots of people that don't even know about this history, increasingly because of popular culture and even just news in the past year I would argue that it's become more, more part of our consciousness, however, for the longest time people didn't even know about what happened in Tulsa. And if they knew about Oklahoma they certainly weren't thinking about black people in Oklahoma. And there really is work to be done to help the American public understand more broadly about not just the black history but you know the black identification associated with Oklahoma I think that's that's really really important. And something else that Jovan said that I was going to pick up on now escape escape my my other rural urban part and you said you were going to pick up on that as well. I think one thing to think about is that we conventionally the definition of a black town has been a rural community. Everything that is described about Greenwood and I would argue other urban black historically black communities fits the thing the same processes that we're describing that go on in rural black towns. First of all, in Oklahoma, when you start talking about the banks and the churches and the different sorts of institutions and establishment that were created this sort of more or less kind of bounded community that was at least certain boundaries of the community were understood as this black community that had a certain kind of economic energy and social energy to it. You can find that an urban and rural spaces now in Oklahoma the Oklahoma Historical Society and actually all the tourism activities as well definitely think about black towns separate from Greenwood. For the most part if you're going to you can you can learn about black towns you can learn about Tulsa you can learn about deep dues in Oklahoma City, but there's considered as separate kinds of spaces in Oklahoma, but there's a lot of similarity to what they represented and actually what they had materially and socially and socially so I think that's also something worth with our consideration. And really interesting when we think about also the sort of blended urban rural spaces that still exists today right I think about like the southern border like we think about some of those places as being rural but they also have a lot of urban characteristics and they have that same marginalization sort of connections to production that you would associate with an urban area. One thing to think about in Oklahoma is Greenwood is probably only about 2025 minutes from a black town so even just spatially they're not that separated but then also socially and economically. There was a lot of interface and there was historical out of interface. John Hope Franklin's father of course was already mentioned that he was a lawyer who left a black town renties bill and migrated first by himself to Tulsa to do legal work in Tulsa. And then the massacre happened, and later his family came and migrated there well there's their scores of families that have done the exact same thing with this migration and there's even not necessarily return migration to black towns but there's a lot of sort of episodic kind of migration people come and go for all different sorts of reasons. So there's a lot of interface between them. Eric, I'm curious to hear in terms of people that you interviewed or pieces that you sort of collected around your documentary around these questions of the significance of Greenwood and Black Wall Street and it's what it was representing to people and what imagination it was able to create did you sort of find that in making the documentary as well. Let's say many of the things Carla and Jovan are spoken about we capture we try to capture in the documentary. But I guess I go to just the go back a little bit to the history to and we try and do in the documentary is really look at the past the president the future. And when we're looking at the past. What we were looking at is in the documentary is the way in which the white mob. Gathered arms and the police chief himself and others gave weapons and even deputize some of those members of the mob. Now that's at that point is giving it state sanction. As the 3839 blocks are destroyed. One of the things we try to capture in the documentary is to understand and humanize it. And I and I raised this from my own experience working on mass graves investigations in Guatemala and Bosnia Rwanda, Argentina is when you're doing this work you're working with the community. And you're coming to understand how this violence this mass violence has been passed on to not only the family members there, but also to future generations. So what we saw in Greenwood was after the destruction in the ashes, you've got 10,000 people who are affected more or less. Many of them are fleeing, and they're being caught, and they're being brought back and put in concentration camps. Others are being killed. We don't know how many that remains. The total number could be between 39 and 300. And then those who are held in the concentration camps were allowed to leave if their white employer came and they were given a green label they could put on their shirt and be able to leave. And why I emphasize that is what happens next there were two investigations but nothing happened. No one was held accountable. No whites were held accountable. And the blame went on to that desire in Greenwood for social equality. And what you what you find is that Tulsa goes into Oklahoma goes into this hush silence. And so the whites the privileged whites there it was we need to keep this quiet because this is, we are a prosperous oil capital here. And for the black community in many ways and this comes out in the documentary was the feeling was we'll just don't talk about it. And this hushed history takes place until eventually in the in 1997, there is a commission established by the state of Oklahoma, and that commission begins a full investigation. Now, they, one of the members of that commission was a forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow, who I worked with for nearly 35 years, he died several years ago. And he lived in Norman, Oklahoma. And he led the forensic investigation of looking for the graves which may be individual or mass graves of the victims of the massacre. He wanted in the end he did ground penetrating radar he found anomalies and he wanted to have a full investigation to be able to begin excavations of those potential sites. And he was he was very upset about it. The reason I raise that is this is what the main theme that we're trying to bring out in our documentary is to say look, you have to live with history, face it, and understand that this violence this past is being passed on to generation generation. And through the commission that's now been established that was established in 2018, which is investigating the mass graves and I'll say more about that later is that the community there and this is the richness that you see in the black activist community. You've got pastors you've got archivist you've got activist you've got all working together to document what took place and to make sure that it's never forgot. And that I think is one of the key themes we want to show. And in terms of the future. It's really interesting and maybe others, the panel can talk about it as well, is the extent to which you're now seeing young black experts working to develop programs, because a lot of young blacks in Tulsa have been leaving the city to keep them there, and to build hope that they can that again rebuild this sense of community within Tulsa. Thank you. And I think maybe you said that you wanted to say a little bit more about this excavation and what you learned in doing the documentary around this. Maybe we could just stay there for a second and you can talk a little bit more about that now because I think I'm going to turn in a little bit to audience questions so don't forget if you're watching us online to submit your questions. I want to sort of shift all of you to sort of talking about, what does this mean for today, what are the lessons we can draw from this but want to stay on this excavation project and what that means. Well, too. There's actually a Polish poet who was love is the Borska who wrote once wrote reflecting on the Holocaust that history likes to count its skeletons around numbers 1001 is 1000 as if the one never existed. And if you extend that and that's what you today to what happened to those people who were killed during the massacre. An investigation that's taking place today is made up of a team of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists. And African Americans there's two very, very prominent African American anthropologists who are working on it Leslie rank and hill and Phoebe stubblefield and Phoebe stubblefield grew up in Tulsa. And where they're at now is they have found one site, which they believe may have up to 18 or 20 bodies, they found 12 caskets. This happened last October and they stopped the investigation because of the weather conditions but in June they will begin the, the excavation again. Now, the danger is some of those remains could be friable which means they could be disintegrate very easily when they're taken out of the ground. Hopefully not if one can at least determine manner and cause of death that trauma to the to the range that'll be important. The other if DNA can be extracted either from teeth usually molars or fibia, then it could be possible that further with a lot of work, it'll be difficult. There could be some identification and in my experience, and I know the others anthropologists were working on these investigations. If you could identify someone and you can tell that story and find their descendants, it has a very powerful message, not only within the Tulsa community itself, because you're remembering that person and their history and it hasn't just been erased. So, there is that potential but what'll be important to if these turn out to be the sites where the massacre victim will also be having memorial there. So, people can visit and understand and learn the history particularly young people. So that history is never forgot. Charles, I know that when we look at the International or declaration of human rights, this this idea of reparations really does incorporate some aspects of remembrance and recognition. Where do you think this reparations conversation or reparations advocacy needs to go, given this history in Tulsa and given what you told us earlier about the lessons and the differences between Tulsa and the Rosewood case. Well, since we've been talking about the south and violence I'd like to shift the focus west to California and and talk about the legal taking over of land which is far more common. And I was struck by a case reported in the LA Times a couple of weeks ago about Bruce's Beach, which is in Manhattan Beach, California. And it's a very interesting case of losing land and being prosperous as well. In 1912, a black couple and they weren't a wealthy couple he was a chef on a railroad car and she ran a black lodge the Bruce's and bought some land a couple of parcels of land in Manhattan Beach, which included beach property. And the idea was to turn this into a resort for blacks, because if you've seen the green book. And we're talking about spaces in which, you know, blacks are not to be seen and beaches were one of those and there were just a handful of places that blacks had access to beaches in the United States. So their idea was to make this one for the West Coast where there was no such place where blacks could go and enjoy being on the beach they simply weren't welcome in other places. So they bought this land for $1200 and a few of their friends black friends bought some parcels around it. And almost immediately whites began to try to get them out of the beach their their white neighbors, including the Ku Klux Klan who burned, burned down a boardwalk around them. The success of the beat of the bruises hung on for 12 years and then in 1924, the city through eminent domain took the land saying we needed, we need a city park. And so, by eminent domain they took the bruises land they never built a park there. And about 20 some years later the state took over the land and eventually the state put up a little, a little beach access place there. And it took young activists and a movement in Manhattan Beach for this to be brought to the attention of the California State Legislature. This piece in the paper reported on a state bill that is returning the land to the bruises with the idea of maybe then the bruises the Bruce family and their descendants, which includes Native Americans, by the way. With the hope that maybe they will then lease back the land to the state but the land will be returned to them. Now, you know, I bring this up because this is a much more common way of black, especially prosperous, obviously this land in Manhattan Beach is very, is very desirable now and worth millions of dollars, and the descendants of the bruises had been denied that wealth. And so this is a much more common way of blacks losing their land, you know, we could talk about black farmers and the pigford case in the 1990s. And the millions and millions of acres that disappeared that black farmers had at the turn of the 20th century that by 1997 we're down to a few two or three million acres. So, you know, I don't want us in California to think this this just happens in the south, and I don't want us to think that it's always a violent mob that's taking this land, but quite often it's done through the courts and through the city governments, which turns up a much larger question about what role reparations can and should play right because if we start to think about the, all the violent ways that black land and black lives have been claimed by the state or taken by the state. We really do open up a pretty big can of worms right and I think also even in my research which looks at the foreclosure crisis in black and Hispanic communities. The state was really derelict in its efforts to stop that type of speculation and land grab as well. I would love to think, think with you where does this go. When we think about all the Manhattan beaches in the world. We're seeing across the country now I mean Evanston, Illinois is the most recent case, but in Asheville, North Carolina in Iowa City, Iowa in Amherst, Massachusetts. In San Francisco just this past week, the supervisors okayed a task force to look at to come up with a comprehensive plan within two years and quite often this involves real estate and housing discrimination and the inability to purchase a home or get and you know when people go to buy a house it's their major formal wealth but you're also looking at the schools and the opportunity for your kids to go to a good school etc etc. All those are denied when you take away the right to, to move and to sort of move into better neighborhoods. You know we saw a piece just very recently once again in the press about people who, you know, people preparing their homes for real estate and people who evaluate that coming in and if the black, if the owner is black. The estimate of the worth of the property is hundreds of thousand dollars less than if the homeowner is white. So these, you know, I think federal bill is fine to talk about the current political climate in Congress is not conducive to that to something happening in terms of restorative justice. I think we need to keep pushing there, but I think the much more meaningful discussions and the discussions that involve community and face to face kind of kind of I mean we can sort of identify with testimony in Congress but we're not there and we're not talking to people who are opposing that. If we can do this at the community level, and at the city level and even at the state level and there's a California Commission now looking at reparations. Then I think we can begin to establish some facts, which we know facts are people have alternative facts these days, and I think it's important for us to establish what the facts are. And once we can agree to those facts, then maybe we can begin to talk about some healing and some restoration and some redress, but until you know this the silence is lifted, and until we recognize what the real historical record is, the notions of somehow collecting a paycheck, or a reparations check are you know our sort of pie in the sky we really need to talk about. We need to talk about this at the community level. Thank you. I'm going to now sort of just sort of kick to the panelists this sort of broader question and I'd love to start with you Carla about what is the significance of this for today. What is the meaning of black towns today what can we take from from from that for for the current moment. What is the meaning of black towns for today, well, in my book I talk a lot about black town futures, and it goes back to some things I think that we already have discussed today which is about the imagination the power of imagining what those towns are going to see. And so I think in the case of black towns but first of all let me just sort of update I don't think there's come up that rural black towns today in Oklahoma are very precarious are very economically culturally materially vulnerable there's no question about that. They are quite small, they are john hope franklin's town of rentiesville. The sign says population 66 when you have towns that are under 100 people, in some cases, at most they are, you know, sort of going closer, you know several hundred hundred hundred people. And so there's a lot of out migration so people migrate out looking for work elsewhere there's sort of a general sense that you can't survive in a black town. During your working years during your, you know, during your working age and so you will go elsewhere you might go to Tulsa, but you might go to Oklahoma city or you might leave the state, and there are lots of there's there's a long pattern of decades pattern of people doing just that. So, if you look at the black towns if you look at black town sort of on the surface, you would probably think like much of her own America we should add. If you look at black towns on the surface you might look at them and wonder, you know, think there's nothing here, and there's nothing here to draw from the build on that sort of thing of course you know, my work is really trying to argue for the appeal of black towns, even in the 21st century. And I do believe that that appeal has to do with the future possibilities of black towns as well as the power of the narrative of their history that still really means something to people today. And that's what where I would think about the significance of black towns is what they call up in people. In terms of imagining new possibilities for these black spaces. And that is not just for the residents that's actually for non residents so one thing that's really interesting about black towns. Also, again, think about the very small size. You have a lot of people that are drawn to them for various sorts of reasons. One, there are activities, events that happen to them that draw people from Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Boli, Oklahoma has one of the biggest rodeos in the state black rodeos in the state and 20,000 people to send on Boli, Oklahoma that before that event there under 1000 people. The same thing for rentiesville actually rentiesville actually had in addition to john hope Franklin their claim to fame is that the other person who is from there is somebody named DC Minner, a famous blues artists who's no longer living, but had organized a major blues festival and so people come from across the country including from California because he spent a long time in the Bay Area. And so there are a lot of people who come to rentiesville for the blues festival annually, and then there are smaller sorts of events but still that draw people to them. And the tourism also has attracted a lot of people actually Joe on and I were talking recently about the fact that the tourism apparatus around black towns is much larger than it is around Tulsa's history. And that speaks to also the silences around Tulsa's history. So there is quite an apparatus around black towns around getting people connected to the black town story. And I think that is also part of their significance. Fascinating. I also, as you were talking, it just reminds me in all the ways that we often hide the cultural significance of place and the meaning of place beyond any of the sort of statistics that we can use to describe it. It's a very poor way of understanding that the role that plays plays in people's hearts. Javan, what lessons do you take from this for African Americans today, for black communities today? So in my book there's a theme that is quite important to me and I think important to what's happening in Tulsa today. Which is this way of treating the condition and experience of black people through or as a form of exception. And so what we have typically is in the narrative of blackness, which we can see as being the experience and condition of anti-blackness, is the exception by which black people, blackness is always failing the kind of normative expectations of society. Whether it's aberrant or anomalous, deficient, deviant. What we have with Greenwood or at least the particular resuscitation of the history of Greenwood and Tulsa now is the opposite. It is, well look at this exceptional case of what blackness can be, what it can do. And I think it is certainly wonderful to celebrate. The history is complicated. I think you can read Charles's book, you understand the actual complexity and the diversity. Carla mentioned earlier the class diversity in Tulsa, but that seems to be being also silenced in this ongoing narrative that's being created around Greenwood right now. And so my biggest worry, because I entered into the kind of history of Greenwood, not with a focus on Greenwood, not with a focus on the riot, but on the everyday lived experience of black North Tulsa, I see that community largely being left out of the contemporary discourse or the contemporary kind of imagination. So we saw during the Mike Bloomberg's campaign for president, he started the Greenwood initiative for economic mobility. What has happened to the Greenwood initiative now? Nothing in Greenwood that's for sure. There was an arts donation that was given, but now the Greenwood initiative is now a project for largely supporting HPCU medical schools, which is important. But we see how the notion of Greenwood is now being used as a form of currency. We see the rap artist killer Mike and a few other black entrepreneurs started Greenwood Bank. I analyzed that bank very briefly in my book, and you can go through the entire website. And there's no commitment to North Tulsa. There's no commitment stated to the historic area of Greenwood. No one on the board, at least as presented on the website has any attachment to that community. But again, what we see is Greenwood as a form of currency. And so for me, that is the kind of lesson, is the way that we, even while celebrating black accomplishment, don't find your way out of these kind of trappings and the traps actually of valuation. How can the black community prove its worth, prove its value to a broader system? The history of black communities in Oklahoma, in Indian Territory, at Greenwood, was one in which there was very little concern for that. The period of time of Indian Territory and the kind of spirit that I think begins with those exodusters who are leaving the cell, was about autonomy, was about determining their self-worth, their self-value on their terms. It's important to remember that Indian Territory was technically not the United States. And so geographically and from the position of a kind of a political imaginary, black people post-reconstruction were looking to kind of find an American alternative. So today I think what we have is a really complicated continuation of that narrative, of the way that African Americans are wrestling with what it means to be free, right? But what are the qualifications of freedom? It's important to note that Greenwood Rising is a new center that is starting, that has been built in Greenwood on a significant location for the Greenwood District historically. But that land had to be donated from a real estate developer. It was supposed to be a set of condos up until a couple of years ago. When we think about historic Greenwood is largely occupied by the Oklahoma State University Tulsa campus. When we're thinking about the ways that Greenwood operates historically, yet we are failing to recognize the contemporary forms of complicity and silencing that are continuously ongoing. To my mind, it just really does push further and further away the horizon of a real sense of liberty that for some reason, and I would love if someone is out there listening, where are the voices of North Tulsans in this narrative? Where are the voices of the everyday person struggling to open a grocery store in their community who want adequate education for their children, who want job security? That was what Greenwood promised, and that was what I think the promise of liberation was for African Americans, especially post reconstruction, who made their way to Indian territory in Oklahoma. Thank you. So we are going to start opening it up to audience questions, which I'm going to read out. And we've already got a lot of them to tackle. I think the first is just a set of questions about where Tulsa is today in terms of the city recognition of this massacre and what is happening to honor, understand, repair this event. And Eric, I was wondering if maybe you could speak to sort of what's the status of our understanding of this massacre today? Well, I think, first of all, I would say that to Tulsa's credit, and actually to the mayor's credit in setting up this new commission, is that that is facing, is lifting the silence, as Charles mentioned, and facing what happened in the past, but also connecting it to the present. And there are issues there in Tulsa still. There's racism in the police department that needs to be dealt with. And in the documentary, we actually talked to one of the former police chiefs, and he's very firmly says this is a problem. And part of the problem is that often when white officers go into a black area, they kind of weaponize, they see they're ready for conflict, and this needs to change. And as Joven was saying too, it's a recognition of North Tulsa, where I think nearly half the black population lives. There needs to be more opportunities, particularly for the children there, and that there's a lot left to do. But what's important here is facing the past, again, and learning from the past. And I also think it's potentially other cities and towns around this country, where there has been racial violence in the past, could learn by front Tulsa, and the extent to which the black community, these activists work really hard to ensure that something that there would eventually be change. And bringing about the commission that's now investigating the mass graves and so on is a really important step forward, and that needs to be recognized. Thank you. There's also quite a few questions from the audience around how they can educate themselves or how they can sort of bring these ideas into the classroom. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your hashtag Tulsa syllabus and maybe point people to that resource. Sure, be happy to. So it's TulsaCillibus.com. And it was created by Alicia Otowale, another anthropologist and myself. I think it was mentioned that I'm an anthropologist. I just want to use this moment to say so before Eric was mentioning that there are two forensic anthropologists who are involved in the research that's being done right now on the ground around the mass graves and there's a lot of archaeologists. So there's really a lot of anthropology presence in the work that's being done, cultural anthropologists a little bit less so, but definitely there is an anthropology presence and lots of thoughts on that. But so Alicia Otowale is an archaeologist and she is actually part of some of the research team that's been involved in what is going on in Tulsa currently related to the reconciliation efforts. And I really actually want to tell sort of the story of how that got started. Alicia, so a year ago, almost a year ago, Donald Trump was going to go to, if you all remember Donald Trump was going to go to Tulsa for a rally for a political rally and it was going to be the same weekend of Juneteenth and there was about that. And that's when people, and it was also around the anniversary date, the 99th anniversary date of the massacre. And this is I think what really sort of elevated or helped elevate American awareness of the history of the massacre. So at that time, Alicia was getting calls from people family and friends about they want to read more and learn more about this history that they're hearing suddenly in the news and so she was gathering some sources. And I just, you know, she contacted me to say could I give her some sources that I knew because she had some and she wanted to add to it and make it more robust. And I really, we had a conversation that we could even, you know, do this more publicly and make it more publicly available and more extensive. And so really what Tulsa syllabus is it will has a, it has content on the resources that are available the things especially that are available on the massacre itself and the history of it. But then also we try to give you a lot of context we have a section on Indian territory in and of itself. We have a section on reconciliation efforts we have a section on Black towns and other institutions so there's a variety of ways angles in which we're giving you information about Black towns. Sorry about about Tulsa. And the anniversary, there is also content there that is not just reading so we give you exposure to different different resources from popular culture, literature, music, so there's a variety of types of resources that's also that are also available in in the syllabus and lastly speaking to some things that came up in the prior question. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that this is also a good opportunity to get to know local organizations in Tulsa because to Giovanni's point. Right now Tulsa has a lot of currency and there's a way in which the currency that it has doesn't does not benefit the local community and so this is a time where knowing the local organizations that have been doing this work for a very long time. It's good to get to know them and to that extent some of those organizations are listed on the on the syllabus including a section on black bookstores in Tulsa. Thank you. I looked at the website before today's panel and it's amazing I highly recommend everybody go so much rich material there to learn about this event. There's a there's a set of questions that is trying to understand a little bit more the role of the state and the types of policies that help to create neighborhoods like Hollywood, but also the black towns, and that also allowed for this type of state violence and police violence and race violence to occur. And questions about sort of how it intersected with Jim Crow. I don't know, maybe Giovanni you could take a first step and then others can jump in but trying to understand that the forces that that made this possible, particularly for this moment in this, this massacre. Sure. I think I think Charles will have a lot to add to that question. Sorry to just conscript you into the question Charles but I'm also going to get Charles because the next big set of questions is it is around the reparations piece of it so trying to allocate. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know I think one of the things that that often goes on the disgust is the fact that after the massacre in 1921, Greenwood largely rebuilt itself. I mean there's a there's a there's such a such a reservoir of resilience and will in that community historically that in many ways several years, you know, after the massacre Greenwood was was seen to have found itself in a renaissance. You know what I what I what I write about in my book is just how, you know, how the real dispossession, the real violence that could not really have been accomplished or that was not effectively accomplished by those two days in 1921 were effectively, you know, completed, you know, through the very seemingly benign or at least very commonplace and less sensational, less spectacular process of urban renewal. Right. So once you once you had, you know, once you had the once you had redlining once you had the the development of the I-244 Gilcris Expressway, these these these processes are really that which ultimately undermined the capacity for for Greenwood to maintain itself as, you know, the extent to which we want to identify Greenwood as being prosperous that was largely undone, right, by urban renewal. It was also, you know, and here's here's where perhaps is a controversial statement. But you know segregation worked in a way to maintain or to rather contain the capital that Greenwood was was able to was able to develop for itself. Right. The understanding was that, you know, the dollar in Greenwood would circulate almost 30 times or so before it left the community after integration. Right. What you saw was what we've seen in other, you know, black communities throughout the United States right there where there is a leaking of capital. There's an active solicitation of capital. So what you have is you have this possession, you have, you know, the state, you know, undermining the ability for these neighborhoods, you know, to sustain themselves, right, to develop capital but then on the other hand you have commercial interest from outside the community who are then, you know, seeking whatever capital is available. And so largely, you know, there is there is, you know, there is that, you know, it's interesting to note that right after the riot, which was then called a riot which we're now calling a massacre larger since 2017. And that's an important thing to kind of discuss as well, perhaps, but you know, right after what was then called the riot, the city of Tulsa sought to turn Greenwood into an industrial zone. Right. So we have, we had then through the most immediate sense of direct violence. Right. What effectively urban renewal sought to do later on. And so, you know, we have to think about the underlying the underlying notion of violence behind both of these processes. The difference is that one was seemingly exceptional. Right. Although it's hard to call, you know, that kind of white vigilantism and mob violence exceptional during that period. Right. But nevertheless, what we would think of as being exceptional certainly spectacular compared to that which is slightly more, you know, more mundane, right, more seemingly benign, right, because of the kind of progressive promise of urban renewal. But that to my mind is actually what has caused, you know, something like, you know, North house is contemporary poverty. So it's interesting to think about how urban renewal was was the process by which, you know, the kind of exceptional history of Greenwood, the exceptional accomplishments of Greenwood were actually made to be, you know, relatively, you know, into the pedestrian circumstances of black dispossession, as we've seen all across the country. Thank you. So yeah, Charles, I'm kicking this to you. The set of questions that I think are perhaps unanswerable but if any of us can answer it as you. What are the chances of a reparations what are the chances of restitution what what needs to happen. What, what role do politicians play in that and then there are some questions about from the audience about what can they do to support reparations and restitution. Well, when we've been focused on the United States and reparations very much an international project, the third World Conference on racism which was held in Durban, South Africa in 2001 that was the central focus of that meeting. The United States refused to attend be largely because that was going to be the focus but it is not attended the two previous UN World Conferences on on race either. And unfortunately 911 happened the following week and sort of the attention of the world was taken off reparations and put on terrorism. You know, it certainly is progress that the conures bill finally got hearing in 2019 was introduced in 1989. And I assumed when Democratic administrations came into office. The conures would get hearings that didn't happen. And you found Democratic and liberal candidates running away from the issue saying they thought there were, it was valid historically etc but it wasn't going to happen and so people like Barack Obama wouldn't touch it Al Gore wouldn't touch it, etc. So it was, it was, it was with a great sense of progress that we saw in this past Democratic campaign, all the major Democratic candidates come up for either study of the reparations issue or in a couple of cases outright reparations. There's an immense shift over the last three presidential election so finally you get hearings in 2019. And just last month, the bill was reported out of committee, and now can go to the floor. I don't think the Democrats are going to touch it I don't think Biden wants to touch it because it's been a kind of third rail in terms of public opinion, where fairly consistently 20% of the white population has supported some sort of reparations. 80% of the black community decides to polarize a little bit and willing to discuss it now in the Democratic Party but obviously there's not majority support in the white community for it just as there has not been majority support in the white community for the Democratic presidential candidate. That being said, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, if you look at the formation of that and John Tadeishi, who was a leader of that has a new book out called Redress and he talks about this. And they asked him 1980 what he thought the chances of reparations for Japanese Americans was and he said about 1001, and some people thought that was optimistic. And it took eight years but they got it and they got it signed by by Ronald Reagan so I would never say it's impossible. There's been some progress in terms of this issue getting aired now and candidates coming on board with it. So, you know, I think by all means, and there are a number of important organizations pushing this, and one can get involved in and cobra or any number of those organizations. I would look if I were going to get involved at my local level or at the state level were very important things are going on. North Carolina and California, for example, led the nation and forced sterilization of blacks and poor people. There were 7000 in North Carolina in up to about 1950 or so. North Carolina has recognized that and has established some some funds. Chicago City Council offered reparations to people who had been tortured by the police in Chicago as a systematic practice in one precinct. So throughout the country, there are issues like this or in your state their issues like this, where you can make a difference, and you can certainly lobby your senator, or your Congress person, but I went to hold my breath on that and I would get involved at some or at my university where you can take the names off of buildings like the Conte Hall, the Conte Brothers were sitting setting up a university of the Confederacy. At the time that they, the Confederacy lost the Civil War so they came west to Berkeley and brought some of their ideas with them and and so you can look on your own campus in your own community and find, I think, very worthwhile projects that lead to interesting and in the most optimistic cases, healing discussions. Thank you for that. I think this also goes to one of the other questions about, you know, what other events similar to Tulsa massacre have been erased from us history and I think we need to do the work of uncovering all of those hidden histories because I think they can probably be found in every community. We are almost at time. I want to give each of the panelists just 30 seconds for wrap up comments things that they want to plug or say, and then I'm going to close this out. Eric, would you like to go first. Thanks everyone for joining and I just, I guess what I'd like to again just end on is, is it is a tribute to the activist community in Tulsa, and what they have done and how hard they work together to make sure that the something the Centennial and that this lifting of this past silence is done. And I think that's a great tribute because where I've worked around the world is, it's in the communities and those communities are need to be recognized and honored. Thank you. Charles. I stopped with the international with Durban but some very interesting things have been going on internationally, including the repatriation of African art by Dutch governments and the French governments, fellowships by the University of Glasgow and Oxford to Caribbean governments and the setting up of research centers there, CARACOM in the Caribbean probably has the most extensive 10 point program in terms of reparations for the area. And so I see the commemoration of Tulsa in a global context in which it's an important part for the United States and for this recognition that thanks to Black Lives Matter and some other things is going on globally. Thank you. Carla. I will echo what others have said my gratitude for being included in this conversation it's been, it's been good to have this chance to have a dialogue with everybody. I'll reiterate what I mentioned before that I think this I encourage everybody to I'm appreciative of the questions about getting more educated about the history and about the communities, and I would encourage people to do some looking into the local organizations that are doing the work and that could use the support I really would recommend that. And I'll also mention the Tulsa Centennial Commission, which is Tulsa 2021.org and there's lots of information, educational information and lots of information about the various organized activities that they have now up until the anniversary dates which are coming up, but also even I think they have some activities beyond that as well. Thank you. And Javon. Thank you. Thank you everybody for being here. You know, I just like to end on, you know, I think one of the greatest one of the greatest dispositions that African Americans in, you know, have faced is a dispossession of our imaginations as to what freedom can be. Over the over the generations it's become increasingly narrow. And I think what what thinking about Greenwood were thinking about Tulsa were thinking about Indian territory does for us is actually, you know, gives us an opportunity to widen that scope of what freedom looks like and where freedom can be and how it can be built and so I just want to kind of, you know, encourage people to take this moment as we, you know, arrive at the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre. As well as, you know, the anniversary of George Floyd's murder last year that we that we think about the kind of horizons of freedom and and to be bold when we begin to imagine them again. What a lovely sentiment to end us. So to close, I just want to thank all of our panelists and our audience for attending this event. A special thank you to Javan Denise and the othering and belonging Institute for organizing this panel and bringing us all together today. For our viewers, if you're interested in learning more, please make sure to check out Eric's documentary, Tulsa the fire and the forgotten which is going to be premiering May 31 on your local PBS station. Javan's forthcoming book will be available at Duke University Press and of course, take a look at Carlos book black towns black futures, the Tulsa syllabus and Charles's book long overdue the politics of racial reparations. You will be able to find a recording of today's discussion with links to all the panelists and their work on belonging.berkeley.edu. And in closing, I just want to say, may these critical stories never again be silenced. Thank you all for all the research that you're doing and thank you for joining us.