OSU Students, Staff Tour Greenwood District

More than 100 OSU students toured the Greenwood District in Tulsa Saturday morning.

University leaders said the tour is designed to show students the past, the present and what could be the future.

Dr. Alexis Smith Washington, a professor at OSU says they wanted to bring students to Tulsa not just to educate, but to connect.

"We were hoping that this would be an opportunity to really become a part of the community," Washington said.

Students were able to see all of Black Wall Street from the Ellis Walker Woods Memorial, to Greenwood Rising.

OSU student Cameron Shropshire wasn't raised in Oklahoma but learned about the Tulsa race massacre when he was in the sixth grade.

He says seeing Black Wall Street in person gave him a perspective that a textbook just couldn't show.

"It makes it so much realer being here and seeing that they lived just like we did," Shropshire said. "They had their businesses, they had their churches, and they grew up in a close-knit community."

Shropshire says he's going to use everything he took from today and make sure that he is a part of the positive change going forward.

"It's an amazing experience just getting to learn about what happened," Shropshire said. "I think that's how we move forward, is we come to places like this, and we learn what happened in the past so that we can move forward and see what we can do about it in the future."

Washington hopes this trip will inspire students to invest in the community.