M4F in Tulsa - Study Trip Blog

The perspective of multidirectional histories took two very different approaches in the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art and the Cherokee National History Museum. When entering the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art’s Holocaust center, I was surprised to first see the trio of uniforms of the KKK, the SS officer, and the Charlottesville rioters in 2017. I wondered, what did it mean to frame the museum in the context of this multidirectional history? What does it mean to the visitors to see an aspect of local Tuslan history of the riots in this exhibit? What type of reckoning does the exhibit invoke for viewers? As outsiders to Tulsa, these comparisons speak to a history we as historians hoped to see. By comparing systemic violence, historians can invoke various populations to speak about and claim responsibility for the violence. There was a noticeable difference in the set up of the museum and the engagement with race. The wall that explained Nazi racial antisemitism was not a part of the tour conducted by the docent. As a historian of anti-Judaism, I took particular interest in the image of Simon of Trent, the Nazi propaganda, and the overlap in history of anti-Judaism, antisemitism, and racism. I could see the discrepancies between the tour guide who may have been unfamiliar with this history and the curator who explicitly engaged with the history on Nazi pseudo-science and racialization. Specifically, a missed opportunity for this docent was to explain the invention of the “Jewish race,” and where this history overlapped with a racialization of the Roma, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, and people of color. As the docent explained, his group usually consists of 8th graders, which may have factored into how he framed the history. What does it mean to us as historians that the history of the Holocaust often becomes too simplified in schools and museum tours? Is there a balance that can be attained in a museum setting that can accurately teach the dimensions of race and prejudice at a level 8th graders can understand? We lose critical information on how the Nazis mobilized antisemitism and racism to murder the Jewish people and other populations who did not qualify as human beings to the Nazis. The approach of this museum to confront local histories of Tusla and white supremacy should be condoned. The first exhibit of the trio of uniforms has its flaws but it is an outreach to a history that needs to be publicized. In viewing this exhibit of multidirectional history, we also need to ask deeper questions, such as how do we frame the exhibit? Where do we place it? How much space in the museum should the exhibit take? how often should docents repeat the implications of local histories such as the Tulsa riots when their training specializes in the Holocaust?

The conditions of multidirectional history of the Cherokee National History Museum took a very different approach to honoring the memory of the freedmen in their tribe. The exhibit on the freedmen expanded to the whole first floor with a timeline of oppression for the freedmen. This timeline included the tribe’s involvement in enslaving Africans and denying freedmen’s rights of citizenship. The other parts of the exhibit included personal histories of freedmen. Descendants’ testimonies emphasized how they wished they could access the rich history of their families, but that archive was largely undocumented because of racism. The narrative of the history was present in the museum, but even as someone who had learned about this history, I felt disoriented in following the narrative of oppression in the exhibit. I was not sure if this was the intent of the curators. One plaque on the second floor helped to shape my perspective of the museum. This plaque introduced the Spanish colonists to the viewer as the brutal conquerors of the Cherokees, and one sentence stood out to me “Europeans introduced Cherokees to ideas about race that had profound effects on Cherokees and their descendants.” This sentence concludes a history of oppression told in this section of the museum, which explains that the Cherokees participated in enslaving Africans even after the Yamassee War. Studying the history of the Mexica, I am familiar with this narrative of how the Europeans introduced the casta system to native populations. While there is acknowledgement that the Cherokees morphed these laws into a system of slavery and disparagement of Africans, I wondered about the wording of this sentence. Was this an attempt to distance the tribe from their responsibility as enthusiastic proponents of racism? I started to rethink this initial impression as I explored the rest of the museum. I realized this floor functioned as a memorial to the Cherokee nation in the history of the Trail of Tears. While the exhibit was very heartbreaking, I also considered the size of the memorial. The narrow walls did add to the experience of the exhibit. Nonetheless, I am curious as to whether space plays a determining factor in how these museums function. Does the history of the forced removal lose a sense of importance when its size is smaller compared to other exhibits in the museum?

Both experiences make me wonder about the museum as a space for memorial and the implications for these spaces to distance themselves from history of a group as a whole. What types of competition are present in these shared spaces when memorials are combined with museum spaces? How can the historian minimize this competition? As a whole, both exhibits took important steps to acknowledging a local history in the grand narrative but still require improvements to fully engage with local histories of violence in Tulsa.

The Booker T. Washington High class of 1924 graduated within the shadow of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921–buildings still razed, families displaced, a community intentionally decimated. This shadow does not, initially, at least, seem to be cast over the pages of the 1924 Booker T. Washington Highschool’s yearbook.

Instead, one finds the yearbook full of humor and jabs at students and the faculty alike. Accompanying each portrait of a graduating senior is a short description of them – “Eva Mae Kimball / If silence were books she would be a well equipped library; and as a debater she can hold her audience spellbound. Ambition–To be talkative. Hobby–Reading novels.” Written by the Orbit, a student-run club overseen by a faculty member, each entry displays the sort of care the students had for one another. Because, it takes a great deal of care, of knowing, to be able to successfully carry out the humor embedded in most of the descriptions present in the yearbook. To, after waxing on poetically about the voice of Vanessa Blanche Foster, succinctly follow it with “Hobby–Arguing.”

It is clear, even just through looking at the pages of the yearbook, that the teenagers who attended Booker T. Washington had formed an incredibly tight knit community. In the group photos which mark the transitions between grades, phrases like “the crew” crop up repeatedly to beneath photos of students huddled together. While, of course, this type of closeness is not unique to the confines of Booker T. Washington High, I think it is indicative of where the resilience which exists within the Greenwood community is centered. For, throughout our visit to Tulsa, this word, “resilience,” was used repeatedly to describe the Greenwood community, and its ability to consistently build itself anew. I think that the pages of the Booker T. Washington High yearbook display both why and how the Greenwood community was able to persevere–through love, care, and, of course, humor.