#1425 Remembering and Learning from History (Tulsa Massacre and Juneteenth)
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2021
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 6/23/2021
Today we take a look at the purposeful effort to erase the history of anti-Black terrorism in America and the renewed efforts expose our true history in order to learn from it and create the opportunity for healing.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: The massacre of Tulsa's "Black Wall Street" - Vox - Air Date 2-27-19
100 years ago, a white mob destroyed an American neighborhood called “Black Wall Street,” murdering an estimated 300 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Ch. 2: Joseph Torres on Media & Tulsa Massacre - CounterSpin - Air Date 6-4-21
Janine Jackson interviewed Free Press’s Joseph Torres about media and the Tulsa Massacre for the June 4, 2021, episode of CounterSpin.
Ch. 3: Blood on Black Wall Street - Excavating the Past - Into America - Air Date 6-3-21
100 years ago this week, a white mob burned down Tulsa's Greenwood District, a bustling business district. For decades, the government refused to acknowledge the Tulsa Race Massacre ever happened.
Ch. 4: The Tulsa massacre, 100 years later - Today, Explained - Air Date 6-1-21
It was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history, but for a long time very few Americans learned what happened to the Black residents of the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As President Biden signs legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday to mark the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation we speak to the writer Clint Smith
MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)
Al talks to Michael Harriot, Senior writer at The Root online newspaper
Sam and Emma host author Clint Smith, staff writer at the Atlantic, to discuss his new book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America on how the legacy of slavery has been passed down and obscured through generations
VOICEMAILS
Ch. 8: University athletics - Alyson from Boulder, CO
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 9: Final comments on Deadline for Democracy marches and Harriet Tubman's lifespan
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions):
- Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr
- Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent
- Activism Music: This Fickle World by Theo Bard (https://theobard.bandcamp.com/track/this-fickle-world)
- Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent
SHOW IMAGE:
Description: Historic, black and white photograph of the aftermath of the Greenwood Massacre (Tulsa, OK). A man in overalls and a hat walks through rubble, his face in silhouette. All around him is destruction, downed power lines, and the remnants of building facades.
Credit: "Greenwood Massacre", Flickr | License | Changes: cropped
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast in which we shall take |
| 0:07.6 | a look at the purposeful effort to erase the history of anti-black terrorism in America |
| 0:13.6 | and the renewed efforts to expose our true history in order to learn from it and create |
| 0:19.4 | the opportunity for healing. |
| 0:21.2 | Clips today are from Vox, Counter-Spin, Into America, Today Explained, Democracy Now, The |
| 0:28.6 | Al Franken Podcast and the Majority Report. |
| 0:31.4 | We're driving in what's known as Black Wall Street. |
| 0:40.2 | It's where one of the nation's worst episodes of racial violence took place. |
| 0:46.9 | In 1921, a neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma called the Greenwood District was a bustling |
| 0:53.2 | community of black owned businesses. |
| 0:56.1 | The locals know that period of Greenwood's history as a kind of golden age. |
| 1:01.4 | If you can imagine just a old time downtown, things like movie theaters, pharmacies, hair |
| 1:09.5 | salons, and so forth. |
| 1:11.9 | They called it Black Wall Street. |
| 1:14.1 | It was a mecca, it was a huge success. |
| 1:16.9 | But Black Wall Street was also an anomaly. |
| 1:20.6 | It thrived at a time when the KKK was incredibly active in Oklahoma and the nation had just |
| 1:27.0 | been through the red summer of 1919, when white mobs murdered black people in dozens of |
| 1:33.5 | incidents across the US. |
| 1:36.2 | There needed to be a sort of match or an igniter tossed on these embers and that event |
| 1:43.9 | was, that trigger event, was an incident that evolved two teenagers. |
| 1:47.6 | Dick Rowland, 19 year old, black boy, he signed shoes downtown, Sarah Page, 17 year old |
... |
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