By Justice B. Hill, NABJ Black News & Views

Greenwood Rising, a museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which will open in August 2021, serves as a physical reminder of the white mob that destroyed a bustling, prosperous cultural haven for Black people – a 35-block section known as “Black Wall Street.” A century before, in mid-June 1921, the Greenwood neighborhood of Black-owned businesses and homes was destroyed: Historians estimate that up to 300 Black people were massacred, and that scores of Black businesses and homes were set on fire.

“The massacre is a part of Greenwood history,” Hannibal Johnson, a Harvard-educated attorney and member of the Greenwood Rising museum board, said. “However, that is only half of what the museum is about. “I tell people that the facility’s overarching theme is the indomitable human spirit,” Johnson told NABJ Black News & Views.

To ensure that the “indomitable human spirit” was not lost, the museum board approached the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, in search of a permanent executive director. Raymond Doswell, the baseball museum’s vice president of curatorial services, will start at Greenwood Rising on January 17. Doswell had worked for the baseball museum for more than 25 years, so when a search firm approached him, he was hesitant to leave his job in Kansas City.

Doswell, who holds a doctorate in educational administration and leadership, left his imprint on the Negro Leagues website. He and his family had made their home in Kansas City. Nonetheless, he’d often considered how he might run a museum if he assumed leadership. “It started to dawn on me: ‘Oh, you know, my experience fits here,'” he explained. “What I said seemed to align well with what they were looking for in a new leader.”

Doswell’s appointment will be part of a recent surge in interest in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Despite the fact that the anniversary occurred during the pandemic, the city and news organisations were able to produce in-depth projects drawing attention to a tragedy with which only Black American households were previously acquainted. The Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa project has conducted archaeological digs to uncover remains from the race massacre. Doswell’s vision, extensive experience in Black history, and expertise in historical research should propel the Greenwood Rising museum to the forefront of America’s historical reflections on race and culture.

That mission, according to Johnson, is critical to Greenwood Rising’s potential success. He stated that board members want the Tulsa neighborhood to become a tourist destination, similar to the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which chronicle mass incarceration, lynching, and injustice in America.

While Greenwood Rising can’t help but look back, Doswell sees his hiring as a way to move the story forward, as does Johnson, author of “Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with Its Historical Racial Trauma.” “We want to capitalize on the fact that cultural and heritage tourism has become popular in the United States in the last 10 or 15 years,” Johnson explained.

Tourism brings dollars into a community like Greenwood, and those dollars create economic opportunities for Black entrepreneurs and small businesses, thereby feeding an ecosystem that includes cultural institutions.

Businesses thrive, Greenwood thrives, and hope thrives.

Doswell described the massacre story as “pretty static.” He won’t have as many tangible artefacts to show as he did at the baseball museum. The museum will try to impress visitors with oral history, technology, and interactive design, in the hopes of fostering open dialogue about race and class. It will display the few artefacts that it does have in four galleries. The museum, which will cost around $20 million to build, will attempt to place race and culture in both modern and historical contexts.

Racism left its mark on “Black baseball,” a subject on which Doswell is an expert. Tulsa was not immune to racism. Some historians and Greenwood residents have long contended that the destruction of a theatre, restaurants, banks, and medical offices in late May/early June 1921 was the result of pure racism gone wild. The rumour that Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshine boy, assaulted Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white girl, inside an elevator sparked the rampage. She declined to press charges.

The media gave the attack a yellow journalism spin, leading to whites destroying everything in Greenwood. According to historians, whites on the other side of Tulsa were angry and jealous of Black residents’ prosperity. “Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District is both inspirational and aspirational,” Johnson wrote in an Adventure.com article.

“The historical role models who established the Greenwood District and transformed it into a nationally recognised Black business and entrepreneurial hub did so against formidable odds, not the least of which was systemic racism in its most blatant manifestations.” Johnson, a leading expert on Black Wall Street, travels the country giving lectures about the massacre.

Doswell will do the same.
“I’m capable of that,” he admitted. “I need to raise funds. Obviously, I’m responsible for staff management. We have a sizable staff, most of whom work part-time. They guide visitors through the museum, so we’ll cultivate and grow them wherever possible.”

Doswell said he’ll miss the baseball environment around the Kansas City museum, but if he misses ballgames, he’ll have an easy fix: in the summer, he can walk out of his office and watch the Tulsa Drillers play at a baseball stadium across the street. They are the Double A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Major League team that broke the colour barrier in the 1940s by signing Jackie Robinson.