John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park

Tulsa OK

Tulsa was the site of the most deadly race massacre in US history, in 1921. Race relations were raw for decades. John Hope Franklin was an historian from Oklahoma whose most famous work was a book titled “From Slavery to Freedom”. His father was a lawyer who defended African-American survivors of the race massacre.

A man fully armed for assault

A man with his hands raised in surrender

Maurice Willows, Director of the Red Cross holding a baby born June 1921.

The Reconciliation Tower. At the center of the Park, the 26 foot tall memorial tower depicts the history of the African American struggle from Africa to America – from the migration of enslaved men, women and children with Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, the slave labor experience in the Territories, the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry that won the Battle of Honey Springs – to statehood, the immigration of free African Americans into Oklahoma, and the All-Black towns and Greenwood. It honors Buck Colbert Franklin (prominent attorney and Dr. Franklin’s father) and other early Tulsa African American prominence.