On Nov. 19, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee voted unanimously to advance S.3543, a bill that would establish Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, otherwise known as Black Wall Street, as a national monument under the National Park System.
According to Congress.gov, S.3543 was introduced in December 2023 by Oklahoma’s Republican Sen. James Langford and was co-sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ,) John Cornyn (R-TX), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).
According to Tiffany Crutcher, the executive director of the Terrence Crutcher Foundation and the great-grandaughter of a former survivor of the massacre, Rebecca Brown Crutcher, who barely escaped the 1921 massacre, the passage of the bill presents a chance for the nation to honor those who died in the Tulsa Race Massacre and its few survivors.
“The successful Senate markup presents a profound opportunity for our nation to honor the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre while the remaining survivors are still here,” Crutcher told Fox 23.
“For the sake of these living witnesses to history and future generations, Congress and the President must act swiftly to ensure Greenwood’s story is enshrined and its lessons never forgotten.”
Along with Reuben Grant, the executive director of the John Hope Franklin Center, Crutcher is the leader of the Historic Greenwood-Black Wall Street Coalition, a collection of multiple activist groups in Tulsa that have been pushing for the recognition of Black Wall Street as a national monument for years.
Like Crutcher, Grant expressed hope that the bill’s advancement would lead to a reckoning with a dark chapter of American history.
“Today’s committee vote proves that Greenwood’s story resonates far beyond Tulsa. This is a moment of national reckoning with our history. The families who built Black Wall Street through ingenuity, hard work, and perseverance represented the best of America. By understanding how racist hatred and violence destroyed their rousing success story, we can emerge as a stronger, more connected nation on the other side,” Grant told the outlet.
In June, coinciding with celebrations of Juneteenth, The Sierra Club called for Black Wall Street to become a national monument and retold the story of Crutcher’s brother, Terrence, who was killed by the Tulsa Police Department in 2016, the same police department that had helped to create the Tulsa Race Massacre by deputizing Tulsa’s white citizens.
According to The Washington Post, some activists have called for President Joe Biden to use executive authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to establish the monument. That act protects cultural and natural resources of historical or scientific interest.
Crutcher told News On 6 that the story of what happened in Greenwood has been erased from the history books, even in the Greenwood area itself.
“It’s about preserving the story of Greenwood, a story that was erased from our history books,” Crutcher said. “I went to school on Greenwood and didn’t learn about what happened here during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma history.”
She continued, “Not only did they (the residents of Black Wall Street) build a beautiful community, but when it was burned to the ground, they were able to rebuild. So, this is about resilience, this is about strength, this is about honor and making sure that everyone knows that you can always move forward when truth is told and when tradition is extended.”
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