TULSA, Okla. _ Jim Goodwin ran his thumb over the screen of his iPhone, reading a rough draft of a newspaper editorial.
In 300 words, the author recounted one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history and offered a stark suggestion to Tulsa officials as the 100th anniversary of the massacre approaches: Don't get so caught up in meeting the centenary deadline that you botch plans for a museum that at long last will properly address the atrocity.
Goodwin _ the publisher of the Oklahoma Eagle, the city's black-owned weekly newspaper _ nodded as he read the draft.
"I wish we had used 'Shame on Tulsa' somewhere in the piece," said Goodwin, 80. "But this is good."
Every Thursday for decades _ through editorials, news stories and photos _ the Eagle has forced the city to confront its violent past.
Here in Tulsa, the echoes of Jim Crow continue to haunt, and in some ways shape, the city. For Goodwin and many other African Americans who grew up here, the reminders are everywhere. Walk through the Greenwood neighborhood, Goodwin says, and you can't miss the metal plaques on sidewalks commemorating the hundreds of black-owned businesses set ablaze during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
For 18 hours beginning the night of May 31, white mobs raced through Greenwood _ known as "Black Wall Street" for its thriving African American-owned businesses _ tossing Molotov cocktails, torching churches and hospitals, leaving nearly 300 black people dead and forcing thousands to flee.
As so often back then, the violence was sparked by a rumor that a black man had tried to sexually assault a white woman. It was false. And as so often, there were few white casualties and no prosecutions, let alone arrests.
Some black families whose kin were killed never learned where the bodies were buried. And for nearly a century, public schools in Oklahoma glossed over the massacre.
Only in February did the state Department of Education craft an elementary through high school curriculum to address the violence.
The excavation of a possible mass grave, one of several tied to the massacre, was to begin in April, before the 99th anniversary May 31, but has been delayed because of the pandemic.
Next year for the centennial, Tulsa officials are planning a series of speeches, theatrical performances and a ribbon-cutting for the museum that Goodwin's paper had expressed concern about.
"Tulsa is my home and I love it, but it's a place that has a lot of history it's never truly addressed," Goodwin said. "We have strived to have the paper be the conscience of Tulsa."
The headline from a yellowing June 1971 edition of the Eagle, tucked in Goodwin's office drawer, screams in red ink: "IT HAPPENED."
It wasn't until that year, the 50th anniversary of the slaughter, that one of the city's now-defunct white-owned newspapers finally acknowledged the tragedy in print, historians say. Inside Oklahoma and beyond, many people were or are still unaware of the bloodshed, Goodwin said.
Then he paused.
"Perhaps they knew, but just didn't want to talk about it," he said. "It's an ugly history."
