“What most people don’t know is that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t bring freedom to everyone and especially not people enslaved to Indigenous Sovereign Nations in what was known as Oklahoma and Indian Territory,” African diaspora archaeologist and #NatGeoExplorer Dr. Alicia Odewale explains. Odewale researches sites of African heritage in the U.S. and Caribbean region, including her home state of Oklahoma. “My work in Tulsa illuminates the fact that the path to Black Freedom in Oklahoma is a completely different story from the rest of the country as people were still enslaved to tribes struggling for freedom more than a year after ‘Juneteenth’, June 19, 1865. [It also] illustrates that freedom is a struggle and a never ending process.” “While the people I am researching in Tulsa and my own ancestors had been free for decades by the time [Tulsa’s Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street] was built, their generation had their own battle for freedom before, during, and long after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to overcome the impacts of racism and anti-Black violence. A reminder that we are a strong and resilient people that continues to make history, resist, empower, rebuild and stand together in spite of all the challenges we continue to face.” Want to learn more about Odewale’s project “Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa,” led alongside fellow Explorer Parker VanValkenburgh? Stay tuned for next season’s schedule to attend one of Odewale’s National Geographic Live shows, “Black Wall Street: Stories of Resilience”: natgeo.org/natgeolive. Seen here, Odewale in her lab at the Historical Archaeology and Heritage Studies Laboratory, formerly based in Tulsa, now in Houston. (Photo by Bethany Mollenkof)
Gyobutsuji
1mo
Good point.
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1moTotal interessant. Thank you for this informations. August.A.