inkbluesky

basket and flowers

In May of 1921 a white elevator operator in Tulsa, Oklahoma let out a scream. A black man was seen running from the scene. In the days that followed buildings were burned including churches, 300 people had been killed - some of those tortured to death. The elevator operator never pressed charges. Conspiracies of Silence The Political, Economic and Sociological Correlates of the Tulsa Drama Triangle and Massacre of 1921

Tulsa was not unique among American cities in terms of racial wars during the 1920’s, but what were the causes? As in many other places (11) - Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City, Kansas; Knoxville, Tennessee - rumors that a black man had harmed a white woman were the catalyst. However, it would seem highly unlikely that a black man would assault a white woman in a busy public building at the height of rush hour. Indeed, Miss Page refused to press charges. Behind this precipitant, however, lay a variety of less obvious psychological, political and economic factors.

In the name of decency and public morality, the Tulsa Tribune had long blamed blacks for all manner of vice, labeling “niggertown” as a “cesspool of inequity and corruption.”(8) In reality, all of Tulsa at the time had a boom town atmosphere, much criminal activity, selective law enforcement and an active vigilante tradition. This was a period, it should be recalled, when the Ku Klux Klan was gaining strength. They became strong after the collapse of the Oklahoma Socialist Party, previously the strongest political group in the area.(7) Even before 1921, when Oklahoma was to be a Black-Indian state, the Kansas KKK had threatened to kill a black man who had been proposed as governor.

…..The police blotter soon disappeared, as did all copies of the fateful May 31 issue of the Tribune. Later, even microfilm copies of it also disappeared. Reference to the event dropped from most civil conversation, although there were weak, if differing, oral traditions in the black and white communities. By the 1970’s, however, many locals and whites knew nothing of it, but the careful observer could see its aftermath. The author directed a community mental health center whose catchment area included Greenwood, but neither black families nor their therapists would discuss the event in terms of its effect on families in treatment. Real estate agents directed their white clients south and for many years, blacks were rarely seen south of 21st Street after 5 p.m., a phenomenon that changed only when the collapse of the oil boom left many South Tulsa condos vacant.
Why did this event almost disappear from history?

go round and round

The new mania for neuroplasticity

In the 1970s, a researcher named Michael Merzenich discovered that when he severed a nerve ending in the hands of adult monkeys, the monkeys’ brains quickly “rewired” to continue to use the region of the somatosensory cortex that, according to conventional wisdom, should have gone dark; the brain had begun to process signals from other parts of the hand, where the monkey could still feel. As studies accumulated, the certainty in the neuroscientific façade began to crack.

That adults were incapable of expanding their minds was a source of snide pleasure when I was in my teens. Sure those old fogies controlled everything, but our brains were like sponges and capable of mental gymnastics that those over the hill thrity-five year olds were long past performing. That there is scientific evidence to suggest that we’re capable of establishing new brain pathways ” process signals from other parts of the brain” makes youthful arrogance a little embarrassing, but more important makes getting a few grey hairs less depressing. Too bad that the potential for lifelong brain training is also being saddled with inflated expectations and a dash of New Age mumbo jumbo.