What a month!
Celebrations of birthdays and graduations . . .
A world-wide pandemic continues with hope as more folks are vaccinated.
BUT . . .
There is also the solemnity of learning about the past.
Why does it matter?
Winston Churchill in 1948 said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
In the US
100 years after Tulsa Massacre
Meanwhile in Canada
Confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School were reported.
Who knew what and when?
True or False
The Tulsa Race Riot was so named in order that insurance companies would not have to pay claims.
The Canadian government knows that many more residential deaths were unreported.
TULSA
What is known is that 35 square blocks were burned down and destroyed and that many massacre survivors would flee the city in order to relocate elsewhere in the United States. Despite these catastrophic losses of life and property, no one was ever charged in relation to the murders or the destruction of homes and businesses based in Greenwood.
Source
Excavation begins June 1st of a possible mass gravesite. Two other sites have already been explored. How many died?
Mathematically, what reports should we believe? Two Whites killed? How many Blacks? Zero made the headlines in the Tulsa World as reported by the headlines above. Estimates range as high as 300. How was this story covered up for so long?
What about other massacres? Link
Another place to learn is on Twitter via Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul’s 20 tweet thread.
Meanwhile, in Canada . . .
… at least 4,100 students died while attending the schools, many from mistreatment or neglect, others from disease or accident. It found that in many cases, families never learned the fate of their offspring, who are now known as the missing children.
While there have long been rumors of unmarked graves at schools, if the findings in a preliminary report presented to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation this week are confirmed, it will be the first time a major burial site has been discovered.
New York Times link
What historical events are you studying? Where do you get your information? Why do you need to know more?
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Unfortunately, we have a way of sweeping certain facts and information under the rug. It is far beyond time to pick that rug up and expose what has been hidden for so long. It is the only way to begin healing.
Exactly what I have been thinking. Whether govt or church is at the core. Centuries of distrust for so many reasons. Healing begins with knowledge.
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Both events are critical to learn about. I remembered the Tulsa Massacre mentioned briefly in college. (I was a history minor.) I didn’t truly learn about it until last year when there was a rally planned in Tulsa that coincided with the Massacre. How was this truly tragic event glossed over in my history books? (Well, we know the answer to that.)
My cousin shared the Kamloops Indian Residential School story with me over the weekend. I stopped in Kamloops on a family driving trip as a kid. Clearly, I didn’t learn more about the area other than the fact it was the fly fishing destination. Now, I have learned more…
The way history is swept under the rug and/or remains hidden is horrible. As educators, we cannot allow this to continue.
Fran, thanks for your powerful post. Great probing questions. Great links to reliable sourses. I read aloud Carole Boston Weatherford’s book Unspeakable to all my classes today and we discussed this event that happened 100 years ago but an event I humbly told my students I never knew about. “Now we all know and can do better.”