Group Honors Tulsa Race Massacre Victim With Soil Collection

Oklahomans fighting against racial injustice gathered in Greenwood Saturday for a ceremony honoring a victim of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

The group said Saturday’s soil collection was historic and said the community will keep putting in the hard work. 

"Ancestors of Greenwood are not at rest,” Soil Collection Committee Chair Kristi Williams said. “And those ancestors will not be at peace until justice takes her seat." 

Packed inside a jar sits American soil. Soil where blood was shed during what Dr. Tiffany Crutcher described as one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in U.S. history. 

"We believe that they're crying out through the soil simply saying, ‘Remember me,’” said Dr. Crutcher from the Terence Crutcher Foundation. 

Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commissioners said the soil collection exhibit called "In Remembrance: Lynching In America" will be displayed at Greenwood Rising, the museum currently under construction to honor victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 

"We pray now in shadows of a new development that seeks to tell the story of how we made it over," said Rev. Robert Turner, Vernon AME Church. “[…] As we hear the drums beat and the rhythms flow that matches even the rhythm of our heartbeat, we pause, and we see you.” 

Commissioners honored 42-year-old Reuben Everett, who was shot outside his home in Greenwood. 

"He's actually one of the ones that we know of that's documented that has a tombstone […] in Oaklawn Cemetery right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” Dr. Crutcher said. 

Everett left behind his wife, kids and $700—money the family would spend on legal fees and funeral arrangements. 

"It's our duty and obligation to right the wrongs. A lot of our ancestors were killed, hung, beat, dumped in mass graves. Left to be forgotten and never received the proper memorial,” said Dr. Crutcher. "Truth and reconciliation are sequential and we believe that the only way you can heal the infected wound is to clean it from the inside out and do right by it and repair it." 

Dr. Crutcher said Tulsa’s living survivors endure pain and trauma daily

“They are old and due justice, restitution, repair and respect,” Dr. Crutcher said. 

According to Dr. Crutcher, the community needs to do a better job of educating people on the terrors that happened in Tulsa. 

"I grew up here. I went to school right here in this district and no one ever taught me about this," Dr. Crutcher said. 

Dr. Crutcher said it's personal, not just because of the color of her skin, but the blood that runs through her veins. Her great-grandmother was a survivor of the massacre. 

"I often wonder what she was thinking, how she was feeling, and how she made it through," Dr. Crutcher said. 

Collection organizers said only truth and reconciliation will heal these wounds. 

"The time is now to do what's right. Justice is in order. Reparations are in order,” said Williams. “[…] Believe me when I tell you that there is a fire that still burns in little Africa."