OSU-Tulsa Launches Center For Truth, Racial Healing And Transformation

OSU-Tulsa is launching a center that will promote and educate on racial healing in Tulsa. This is part of a larger initiative happening across the country. 

The Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation at OSU-Tulsa is one of 66 centers across the country as part of a nationwide effort by the W.K Kellogg Foundation.

"Our work is to engage with the university community to change the way we teach, change the way we think, acknowledge how systemic racism informs the way you and I have been taught," said director Quraysh Ali Lansana. 

Lansana said the center will work within the university as well as engaging with the community. He said they have a unique opportunity in Tulsa with the OSU-Tulsa campus sitting on Greenwood Avenue. 

"We are literally in Black Wall Street and on land that was decimated in the 1921 race massacre," Lansana said. 

Lansana said the center is committed to working with organizations in North Tulsa. He said they are planning a Saturday school to help kids who have struggled with remote learning and the effects of the pandemic.  

He said they have also been hosting racial healing circles, where they work with business leaders about racial biases.

"From that, they unpack their own biases and how to grow and learn from them and be more equitable in their policies and their business interests and whatnot," he said. 

Lansana said a big focus of the center is education and working to give history more than one voice. 

"One viewpoint can’t represent truth. It's about an inclusive approach to knowledge, and inclusive approach to understanding, how we got to this place in this country," he said. 

The center will have an official launch on OSU-Tulsa's Facebook page on May 6 at 11:30 a.m. They will also have a panel discussion on Facebook Live for National Poetry Month on April 21 at noon.