In partnership with the Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center, the National Humanities Center is working to help educate people around the country about Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District, the phenomenon of “Black Wall Street,” and America’s hard racial history.
With funding from the Zarrow Foundation Commemoration Fund, the NHC and Greenwood Rising have established the “Museum Rising” minority internship program to introduce scholars from underrepresented groups to work in the public history realm.
The program’s inaugural intern, A’Ja Lyons, has been working with staff from the museum and the NHC to create digital materials and museum exhibits drawn from sources in Tulsa-area archives. The final classroom resources and exhibits will help Oklahoma teachers and students, museum visitors, and educators across the US, to better understand the events surrounding the Tulsa Race Massacre. They will also help contextualize events in Tulsa in 1921 within a wave of racialized violence in the early twentieth century with legacies that continue to shape life in Tulsa and in communities across the US.