Race and the Past

William Faulkner once observed that the past isn't dead - it isn't even past.

Not that there aren't people who try to bury it.

Today's New York Times has an article about the race riot 90 years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When I was growing up in Tulsa, I never heard about the riot. It was typical of riots by whites against blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this case, spurred by untrue rumors of a black on white sexual assault, armed white citizens attacked the prosperous black area of town known as Greenwood, killed perhaps 300 residents and burned the area to the ground.

My grandparents, who lived in Tulsa at the time, never told me about it. After they died, I found an old photograph of a distant Tulsa neighborhood engulfed in flames.

No wonder my grandparents never told me. My maternal grandfather was a member of the Klan. Both he and my paternal grandfather were among the armed rioters on that day.

It wasn't a glorious day in my family's history.

Or that of my home town.