{"id":19599,"date":"2021-06-22T15:39:51","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T15:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoklahomaeagle.net\/?p=19599"},"modified":"2021-06-22T15:39:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T15:39:51","slug":"tulsa-race-massacre-prayer-room-highlights-churches-1921-sins-seeks-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/2021\/06\/22\/tulsa-race-massacre-prayer-room-highlights-churches-1921-sins-seeks-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulsa Race Massacre Prayer Room Highlights Churches\u2019 1921 Sins, Seeks Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.oklahomawatch.org<\/a>
\nBy Bobby Ross, Sr.
\n 
\nThe words on the wall are jarring.
\nThey are filled with racist language and victim blaming.
\nWorst of all, they are taken from the mouths of professed men of God \u2014 from sermons preached on the Sunday after the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
\n\u201cI got emotional about some of the things that I did not know,\u201d said state Sen. Kevin Matthews, founder and chairman of the\u00a01921 Centennial Commission,<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0which is commemorating the unlikely rise and devastating fall of Tulsa\u2019s \u201cBlack Wall Street.\u201d
\nVisitors such as Matthews, a Black Democrat who grew up in Tulsa but did not learn about the massacre until adulthood, experience the painful quotes through\u00a0a special prayer room at the First Baptist Church.\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Southern Baptist congregation aims to tell the truth about past sins while asking God to bring racial unity at the 100-year anniversary of an atrocity that this Oklahoma city \u2014 and the nation \u2014\u00a0tried for decades to ignore.<\/strong><\/a>
\n\u201cAs a person of faith, as a follower of Jesus, I believe that talking to God can heal a lot of things, so we got our creative people behind this,\u201d said the Rev. Deron Spoo, whose church, founded in 1897, occupies a sprawling downtown campus.
\nUp a short stairway by the congregation\u2019s main worship area, the museum-like exhibit features historical notes, photos and newspaper clippings, along with suggested prayers.
\nGuests take seats on maroon-cushioned benches as they pause and bow their heads.
\n\u201cI think we need to confront sin where we can, where we recognize it, and also pray against our own blind spots,\u201d said Eric Fox, a First Baptist member who came with his wife, Jamey, and their 19-year-old daughter, Kennedy.
\n\u201cSo, for me, this was a way to take a prayerful approach, to do some self-examination, some self-reflection, but also to pray for myself, my family, my church, my community,\u201d added Fox, a former history teacher who serves as an associate principal at Jenks High School, one of Oklahoma\u2019s largest high schools.
\n\u2018The Most Disturbing Thing\u2019<\/strong>
\nThe exhibit recounts how armed white rioters burned and looted 35 square blocks of this city\u2019s Greenwood District on May 31-June 1, 1921.
\nThe mob violence\u00a0resulted<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in as many as 300 deaths, mostly Black people, and left the thriving African American business community and surrounding residential area in ruins,\u00a0according to<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a state-appointed investigative commission\u2019s report issued in 2001.
\nThis exhibit in the Tulsa Race Massacre Prayer Room at First Baptist Church in Tulsa highlights an editorial that appeared in the Tulsa Tribune three days after a white mob\u2019s deadly siege of the Greenwood community on May 31-June 1, 1921. The display goes on to say \u201cthe words of this editorial reveal the spirit of racism that, unfortunately, still exists in our culture today.\u201d (Bobby Ross Jr.\/For Oklahoma Watch)
\n\u201cIt is emotional and shocking,\u201d said Jamey Fox, details of the brutality fresh in her mind as her family left the prayer room.
\nSpoo said he had heard about the massacre since arriving in Tulsa in 2000. But the pastor had not delved into the specifics.
\n\u201cAs I saw the centennial approaching, I felt a personal and pastoral obligation to be better informed,\u201d Spoo said, \u201cand hopefully form a meaningful response on the part of my church.\u201d
\nAbout a year ago, he read\u00a0\u201cTulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a 2019 book by\u00a0Tulsa World<\/em>journalist Randy Krehbiel.
\n\u201cKrehbiel goes into great detail about things that, even though I\u2019ve lived in Tulsa for 21 years, I never knew,\u201d Spoo said. \u201cBy the way, I kind of count that to my shame.\u201d
\nSpoo\u2019s awakening led to the creation of the prayer room, which opened in February and will close next week.
\nI’m Not Interested
\nAmong the newspaper clippings displayed at the church: a\u00a0Tulsa Tribune<\/em>editorial \u2014\u00a0published three days after the massacre \u2014\u00a0that repeatedly uses a racial slur in reference to the decimated Greenwood District and its people.
\n\u201cIt uses some words that we shouldn\u2019t use in our culture anymore, and that\u2019s right there in the center of our prayer room,\u201d Spoo said, explaining that the church wanted to reflect the past accurately \u201cbecause that shows us what we\u2019re trying to change.\u201d
\nEven more shocking to many visitors, though, are the words attributed to pastors of some of Tulsa\u2019s oldest churches.
\n\u201cThe most disturbing thing to me was \u2026 what the heads of these large churches of Christian faith said about Black people,\u201d said Matthews, who toured the prayer room with fellow state Sen. Dave Rader, a white Republican who is a First Baptist member.
\n\u201cIt was basically horrific and disappointing,\u201d added the Centennial Commission leader, who attends the North Peoria Church of Christ, a predominantly Black congregation. \u201cIt seemed to be a sign of the times, and I thank the bold leadership of Pastor Spoo and that church to tell that story in an honest way.\u201d
\nRacist Sermons<\/strong>
\nTulsa newspapers covered what prominent white pastors preached in the race massacre\u2019s aftermath. This presentation of a portion a sermon by Bishop E.D. Mouzon of Boston Avenue Methodist Church is displayed in the Tulsa Race Massacre Prayer Room at the First Baptist Church, 420 South Detroit Avenue in Tulsa. (Bobby Ross Jr.\/For Oklahoma Watch)
\nThe Tulsa Race Massacre occurred on the Tuesday and Wednesday after Memorial Day 1921 \u2014\u00a0fueled by racial clashes\u00a0over a purported incident<\/strong><\/a>involving a white teenage girl and a young Black man or teen.
\nNo written records remain, if any ever existed, of what was said in the surviving Black churches the following Sunday, according to Krehbiel\u2019s book.
\nBut the local papers covered what prominent white pastors preached in the massacre\u2019s aftermath, and Spoo deemed it important to reflect their sentiments in the prayer room.
\n\u201cThere has been a great deal of loose-mouthed and loose-minded talk about the white people of Tulsa being equally to blame with the Blacks,\u201d the Rev. Harold Cooke said at Centenary Methodist Church in 1921. \u201cAny person that makes that assertion makes an assertion that is false to the core. It should be a lesson learned, once and for all that the colored man is a colored man and a white man is a white man, and there can never be anything like social equality between the two races. Many negroes realize this and are the better element of the colored race.\u201d
\nAt First Presbyterian Church, the Rev. C.W. Kerr said: \u201cThe colored people must understand they started it. The fact of their arming and coming up through the city was an outrage to the citizenship of Tulsa.\u201d
\nAt Boston Avenue Methodist Church, Bishop E.D. Mouzon said:
\n\u201cIf it is true that our wives, our children and the people of Tulsa were threatened with being at the mercy of armed negroes, then the white man who got his gun and went out in defense with it did the only thing a decent white man could have done. \u2026 There is one thing upon which I would like to make myself perfectly clear. That is racial equality. There has never been and never will be such a thing. Steps toward racial equality are the worst possible thing for the Black man. There has been too much of this social equality, and the low-down white trash are responsible.\u201d<\/em>
\nAnd at First United Methodist Church, the Rev. J.W. Abel said:
\n\u201cWe must not make a martyr of the negro, even though many hundreds of them have suffered innocently. There are all too many of the so-called leaders of the negro race who habitually discredit the white race as to our willingness to give the negro a chance under all the rights to American citizenship. What other nation in all human history has done as much \u2026 as the white race has done for the race which but a brief half-century ago emerged from slavery? A race which even in slavery was a thousand times better off than the Black princes who ruled their race in Africa. We tax ourselves to educate him; we help him to build churches, we are careful to keep him supplied with work at a good wage, and trust him with a ballot, and all we ask of him is to behave himself and prove himself worthy of our trust.\u201d<\/em>
\nMissing from the prayer room is any mention of what was said at First Baptist itself that Sunday.
\nThe church\u2019s archives \u201care mysteriously silent\u201d on the Rev. William O. Anderson\u2019s sermon that day.
\n\u201cHowever, we have little reason to hope that his statements departed from that of the other pastors that history happened to record,\u201d suggests a note beside the other statements.
\nComing Full Circle\u00a0<\/strong>
\nBut the prayer room experience does not end with the 1921 sermons.
\nAfter envisioning the thick, black smoke rising from the Greenwood District and trying to reconcile the racist statements \u201ccoming from the hearts of people who claim to know and serve God,\u201d visitors encounter a joint message from those same churches\u2019 present-day pastors.
\nA redeeming moment, Spoo calls it.
\n\u201cRacism, in any form and at any level, is incompatible with being a follower of Jesus Christ,\u201d he and the other pastors declare.
\nThe Rev. Jessica F. Moffatt, First United Methodist Church\u2019s lead pastor, characterizes the prayer room as a \u201ctangible, visible expression of the commitment of Tulsa pastors and churches to fight against racism.\u201d
\n\u201cThe room leads a person full circle,\u201d said Moffatt, who has urged her congregation to visit it. \u201cIt begins with the 100-year-old truth that the ugly sin of racism brought inhumane acts against Black Tulsans, but then it leads participants to the new truth. The new truth is that the Tulsa faith community will not tolerate racism in our city, and we will take actions toward healing and unity.\u201d
\n 
\n 
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.oklahomawatch.org By Bobby Ross, Sr.   The words on the wall are jarring. They are filled with racist language and victim blaming. Worst of all, they are taken from the mouths of professed men of God \u2014 from sermons preached on the Sunday after the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. \u201cI got emotional about some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,126,108,124,116,103,120,104,106],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1921-tulsa-race-massacre","category-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-centennial","category-community","category-education","category-faith","category-featured","category-history","category-local","category-tulsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19599"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}