Reconciliation Park - Hostility, Humiliation, Hope
A stop on Greenwood: Tulsa's Black Wall Street, a free self-guided tour.
John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park was dedicated in 2010, the first Tulsa landmark built to remember the people lost in 1921. It grew out of the 2001 state commission's report and is named for John Hope Franklin, the historian who grew up in Tulsa. His father, B.C. Franklin, was a Greenwood lawyer who worked out of a tent after the massacre and went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to overturn a city fire ordinance meant to keep residents from rebuilding.
At the center stands the Tower of Reconciliation, telling the story of Black Oklahomans from Africa through the Trail of Tears to 1921. Nearby, three bronze figures by sculptor Ed Dwight, called Hostility, Humiliation and Hope, are each based on photographs from the massacre. Hope shows a white Red Cross director holding a Black baby.
Walk slowly around the tower and read its panels in order.
Getting here: Walk south on Elgin under Interstate 244, then west to the park on North Detroit Avenue.
Did you know?: Sculptor Ed Dwight was an Air Force pilot who in the early 1960s became the first Black candidate trained for the U.S. astronaut program.
Photo op: Frame the three Hope Plaza figures together with the tower rising behind them.
More on Wikipedia: John Hope Franklin · Buck Colbert Franklin · Ed Dwight · Greenwood District, Tulsa
Stops on this tour
- Greenwood Rising - Where Black Wall Street Began
- Deep Greenwood - Plaques Underfoot
- I-244 Overpass - The Second Destruction
- Vernon AME Church - The Basement That Survived
- Greenwood Cultural Center - Keeping the Memory
- Black Wall Street Memorial - Names That Remain
- Mount Zion Baptist Church - A Debt Paid in Full
- Reconciliation Park - Hostility, Humiliation, Hope
- Pathway to Hope - Stitching Greenwood Back Together
- Oaklawn Cemetery - The Search for the Missing