Latest news with #OklahomaHistoricalSociety
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tulsa mayor unveils plan for $100M trust to 'repair' effect of 1921 Race Massacre
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols is proposing a $100 million private trust as part of a reparations plan for descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Nichols, the city's first Black mayor, told the Associated Press that the proposal wouldn't require city council approval, but the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust. Dig deeper Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said the private trust would offer descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and housing help. This plan would not give direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. RELATED:Reparations lawsuit for 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre dismissed by judge Nichols told reporters he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his plan instead as a "road to repair." The Associated Press reported that the trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. The plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing Tulsa's north side. Nichols made the announcement about the plan at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the district of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a white mob during the massacre. There are only two living survivors of the Race Massacre in Tulsa, both of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. The women, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday for the event. The backstory TheTulsa Race Massacre occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921 in the Greenwood community, a Black-owned business district and residential neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sparked by allegations that a 19-year-old Black man had assaulted a 17-year-old white girl in an elevator, the Greenwood community, known as Black Wall Street because of the number of Black-owned businesses, was destroyed in a two-day attack by a white mob. RELATED:Tulsa Race Massacre survivor Hughes Van Ellis dies at 102 Tulsa's police department appointed white mobs and provided them with guns. Some reports describe white men with badges setting fires and shooting Black people as part of the Greenwood invasion. In the aftermath of the attack, roughly 300 Black people were killed. Over a thousand homes were burned and others looted, leaving 10,000 residents displaced and homeless and the Black business district destroyed. As residents worked to rebuild the Greenwood community, thousands of residents during the winter of 1921-22 were forced to live in tents, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Dig deeper Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana. According to the Associated Press, other places and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities including Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington. The Source Information for this story was provided by the Associated Press and the Oklahoma Historical Society, which provides background on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Okla. Historical Society hosts ‘Juneteenth' celebration June 18
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) is preparing to celebrate Juneteenth with a program free to the public on Tuesday, June 18. Juneteenth is the celebration of emancipation following the U.S. Civil War. OHS says the event, titled '2024 Juneteenth: Honor, Reflect, and Celebrate!,' is set to educate the public about the history of Juneteenth with attendees enjoying a book signing, live performances and discussions featuring the following: Author Archietta Burch James will sign copies of her book Francis Clinton: A Buffalo Soldier American Hero Francis Clinton is James' great-grandfather, one of the original Buffalo Soldiers Dr. Raushan Ashanti-Alexander, assistant principal at Douglass High School in Oklahoma City Shirley Nero, a member of the OHS Board of Directors and current president of the Friends of the OHS Multicultural Office Board of Directors Stitt signs bill limiting Oklahomans' access to support ballot initiative petitions DETAILS: Location: Oklahoma History Center Date: June 18 Time: 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. No registration is required. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Business Insider
20-05-2025
- General
- Business Insider
20 vintage photos show what life was like in America's small towns 100 years ago
Between the early 1900s and the 1940s, Oatman and nearby Gold Road were Arizona's biggest gold producers, and the town used to be a bustling center with over 10,000 the 2023 census, it had a population of just 102 the "lively ghost town" is defined by its streets of historic buildings, burros on the streets, and people wearing old-timey clothing and gunfighter costumes, as reported by Legends of America. The town was founded in 1881 and was named for O.H. Manning, a town of 1,500 is about 2 miles long and 2 miles wide, and its Main Street was paved in 1915, as reported by a community website. The town was established on land taken from the Cheyenne and Arapaho people. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, at the end of the 19th century, a general merchandise store with a post office was established nearby. The name of the town honors a postal employee, Wayne W. Cordell. In 1905, a prospector found gold, and within a year, its population had reached 4,000, Travel Nevada about 125 people reside in the town, and residents often refer to their community as a "living ghost town," per Nevada's state tourism agency. Though the town enjoyed decades of prosperity for the resources provided by Grasshopper Creek, by the 1930s, few residents the following decade, the local school had to close down due to a lack of students, effectively turning the once-prosperous town into a ghost town, per Legends of now-abandoned town where gold was first discovered in the state is now part of a state park where dilapidated buildings are preserved. In 1925, Dayton, Tennessee, became famous for the Scopes Trial. In 1925, a Dayton high school science teacher, John T. Scopes, was tried and found guilty for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in what became known as the Scopes Trial. Fleischmanns, New York, was a vacation town for those looking to escape the New York City heat. Farmers discovered they could make money from people leaving the city, and hotels and guest houses popped up throughout the the town houses around 205 people, according to 2023 census estimates. Provincetown, Massachusetts, began as a fishing and whaling community. In 1914, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum was founded by a group of prominent local artists. They worked with local businesses to create an art collection and educate the public in the arts. The town is known for being the 1620 landing site of the Mayflower. Lumber operations are pictured in Crossett, Arkansas, in the 1920s. The town was named after Edward S. Crossett, a lumber entrepreneur. Stillwater, Minnesota, was incorporated in 1854 and also began as a lumbering town. The town "had all the ingredients for a lumbering town," as reported by the Washington County Historical Society. The town features rivers connecting the small community to the pine forests of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and still waters that allowed for the raft assembly industry to flourish 2011, Forbes named it as one of America's prettiest towns. Holy City, California, was established by a cult leader and white supremacist, William E. Riker, in 1919. Holy City was created not as a religious oasis, as the name would indicate, but instead as "a commune and tourist trap created in the 1920s by a white-supremacist huckster," the San Francisco Chronicle Chronicle also reported that Holy City was reduced to "a few derelict buildings" after facing fire, neglect, and a new freeway that cut off the compound from major roads. Mercury News reported in 2016 that the town was purchased after a decade on the market by Robert and Trish Duggan, billionaire Scientologists. Historians estimate that the ancestors of Taos Pueblo people built their living structures, as well as pottery and ceremonial buildings, as far back as 1000 AD, according to Wrangell, Alaska, pictured below in the early to mid-1900s, was discovered by the Tlingit tribe. The Native Alaskan populations remained isolated until the early 1800s, per Wrangell's website. Lt. Dionysius Zarembo, a Russian-American ship commander, landed on present-day Wrangell in 1833. It is the only city in Alaska to be ruled by four nations and under three flags — Tlingit, Russia, England, and the United States — according to the town's website. South Pass City, Wyoming, was founded as a gold mining town. It was later abandoned.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Yahoo
From Nowata to Bugtussle: How 9 Oklahoma cities, towns and places got their unique names
Outsiders and locals alike can agree Oklahoma has an abundance of town names that are hard to pronounce. Besides the pronunciation, many of these towns leave one wondering how the name came about to begin with. Here are nine Oklahoma towns and how they got their unique names. In far northeast Oklahoma, there's a city of about 3,500 people called Nowata. Not to be confused with Lotawatah Road near Lake Eufaula, the city of Nowata was given its name by the Chief of the Delaware Tribe, according to the city's website. The story goes that Delaware Chief Charles Journeycake named the area "no-we-ata," Delaware for "welcome." According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, another version of the towns origin says that a traveler, finding a dried up spring, posted a sign saying "No Wata" as a warning for others. While Slapout is unincorporated, we couldn't leave it off of this list. The service station and restaurant still bears the name "Slapout" along State Highway 3 leading into the Oklahoma Panhandle. Legend has it a man named Tom Lemmons moved a chicken coop to where the newly constructed highway passed his land during the Great Depression. He started a store inside the coop, and decided to start a town called Nye, but locals started calling the town Slapout because Lemmons sister would always tell them the store was "slap out" of whatever they wanted. A northeast Oklahoma census-designated place of about 1,300, Bushyhead was named for the Dennis W. Bushyhead, who was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1879 to 1887. Another now-unincorporated community, Frogville is found in southeast Oklahoma just north of the Oklahoma/Texas border. The town was said to have got its name thanks to the "great plethora of frogs so large they reputedly ate young ducks." However, according to a 2001 visit by Gary Horcher, the duck-eating frogs no longer make their home in Frogville. Located just west of Okmulgee, Nuyaka is a populated place in Okmulgee County, reportedly named after the Creek pronunciation for New York. The story goes that a delegation of Creek chiefs and President George Washington met in New York, and the Creeks in present-day Alabama renamed the village Tukpafka to Nuyaka to honor the 1790 treaty they signed in the then-United-States-capital, according to the book "Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America." The town was destroyed in the Creek War in 1813 and was never rebuilt. When the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was removed to Indian Territory, the name was given to the new settlement near Okmulgee. Just south of Seminole on U.S. Highway 377 is Bowlegs, a bedroom community of less than 400. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, there are three theories about how the town got its name. It was either named to honor Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs, Lizzie Bowlegs on whose land oil was discovered, or David Bowlegs who was murdered in the mid-1910s. Northeast of Muskogee off of Oklahoma State Highway 16 is a town that's not "great," not "terrible," it's just "okay." No, literally — it's Okay, Oklahoma. The town got its name in 1919 when the postal office became known as Okay, "honoring the O.K. 3-Ton Truck and Trailer manufactured there by the Oklahoma Auto Manufacturing Company," according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Situated on the shores of Lake Eufaula, north of McAlester on Highway 69, is the unincorporated community of Bugtussle, Oklahoma. The town was reportedly named Bugtussle by Mr. Ran Woods who started the settlement in 1903 with a two-room schoolhouse. It is said he called it Bugtussle because there were so many bugs, it was a never ending "tussle" for him to deal with. Former Speaker of the House Carl Albert lived with his family on a farm near Bugtussle and attended the school. Some tried to rename the town Flowery Mound, but the original name persisted. An unincorporated community just northeast of Weatherford, Oklahoma, also known as Dead Women Crossing, the area is named for the unsolved murder of a woman more than a century ago. In July 1905, Katie DeWitt James was murdered and her body found near Big Deer Creek in August, her head severed from her body, Oklahoma Today reported. All that remained was her skeleton, some jewelry and a gun identified as belonging to a woman named Fannie Norton. James had reportedly been riding in a buggy with her 13-month-old daughter, Lulu Belle, and Norton, whom she had met the day before on the train from Clinton, Oklahoma. According to Oklahoma Today, witnesses saw the buggy disappear into a field near Big Deer Creek, and then returning with Norton and James' daughter at "breakneck speed." One wheel was stained with blood when Norton returned the buggy, as was Lulu's dress when Norton handed her off at the home of a nearby farmer. Norton was found and arrested in Shawnee, and while she denied killing James, she died of ingesting poison that same day, according to "Dead Woman's Crossing: The Legacy of a Territorial Murder." With Norton's death, the murder was never solved, and it is said James' ghost still haunts the area. Some even say you can hear the sound of wagon wheels going over the bridge. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Dead Woman's Crossing to Okay, Oklahoma; How 9 places got their names
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Two Okla. properties added to National Register of Historic Places
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The Oklahoma Historical Society and State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) a division of the the Oklahoma Historical Society announced on Monday two additional properties to the National Register of Historic Places. According to SHPO, the National Register of Historic Places is the official location for a list of properties that reflect the Oklahoma past. The designation for the following properties in Oklahoma are as follows: McIntosh CountyBaccus House 124331 S. 3981 Rd., Vernon Constructed in 1898 as a railroad office, the Baccus House would later become associated with W.M. Baccus and the politics/government of Vernon, one of the remaining 13 All-Black towns of Oklahoma. W.M. Baccus held several positions in McIntosh County throughout his life. W.M. and his family purchased the home in 1920 and remained there through his retirement in 1953. Mr. Baccus was instrumental in securing funding for a new school in Vernon and assisted in funding repairs and building schools in the All-Black towns of McIntosh County, says SHPO. Tulsa CountyRobert J. LaFortune Tower 1725 Southwest Blvd., Tulsa Quiet weather before more active storm pattern returns According to the SHPO, Robert J. LaFortune Tower, located in Tulsa, reflects a change in policy leading to the conventional method of construction. It was built to help alleviate the shortages in housing for low-income senior citizens and opened in 1975. The Robert J. LaFortune Tower was the third and last senior housing project development constructed by and for the Tulsa Housing Authority. It was the first and only housing project not developed under the traditional turnkey method. McIntosh CountyDozier Mercantile Building 124279 S. 3981 Rd., Vernon Listed in the National Register on June 22, 1984, as The Rock Front (NR #84003152), the National Park Service has accepted updated information that amends the original nomination, that changes the historic name of the property to the Dozier Mercantile Building. ; credits Sim Bow (S.B.) Dozier as the builder; revises the period of significance to 191571, which corresponds to when the building was constructed and the last significant alteration; clarifies the boundary of the nominated property; and updates the Statement of Significance to reflect the historicalaccuracy of the research. The Dozier Mercantile Building is historically significant for Commerce and Ethnic Heritage/Black, says SHPO. For more information on the State Historic Preservation Office and properties click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
