The following text is a transcript from the Alicia Odewale episode of the Hult Center Podcast, recorded on February 28, 2022.
Rich Hobby: Welcome to the Holt center podcast. This is Rich Hobby, Director of Marketing at the Hult center and I’m so pleased to have you listening in on this episode, we’re speaking with Dr. Alicia Odewale, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. Her research and teaching focuses on archaeological sites of African heritage in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands and Oklahoma. Dr. Odewale will be here in Eugene on Monday, March 28. For National Geographic Live Greenwood: A Century of Resilience. Welcome to the show.
Alicia Odewale: Thank you for having me.
Rich Hobby: We are so happy to have you coming to the Hult Center for this presentation of National Geographic Live. And it deals obviously with a very heavy topic of the Tulsa race massacre. So I was wondering if you could give us a brief overview of what your talk is going to be about.
Alicia Odewale: The talk Greenwood: A Century of Resilience is all about, t’s an experience rather than to go into a specific point in history. But to go on a journey to explain how the community of Greenwood has changed over the course of 100 years. And we’re doing so through a lens of archaeology but through a lens of history through a lens ofsort of ancestral knowledge as well. So it’s a it’s a lot of things packed together in one, but it’s a comprehensive story and experience that I’m hoping that audiences are encouraged to go along through, and it is, is 100 year journey. So we try and tell that story in 70 minutes. It’s a lot to accomplish. But we’re proud of the work that we’ve done.
Rich Hobby: And as a native of Oklahoma, why is this work important to you?
Alicia Odewale: It’s important to me personally, because this is part of my family’s story, but this is also my hometown. So a lot of the work we’re doing now to shed light on Greenwood and the fact that Greenwood still exists, it’s allowing us to disrupt a myth, a myth that has been circulating in like popular culture for way too long, that Greenwood or Tulsa or has been, was destroyed in 1921. And that’s the end of its story. But we’re able to completely change that narrative through this show. So that Greenwood still here, Greenwood never left and Greenwood still survives today.
Rich Hobby: For those unfamiliar with the term Greenwood itself, can you explain a little bit more about the context of what the town Greenwood was? And how? And well, yeah, just a little synopsis of just what it was and what it meant to the black community at that time.
Alicia Odewale: The Greenwood is a community and whole neighborhood a district that exists within the city of Tulsa. We have been, and I have been researching and writing about this as a black town. So Oklahoma has a long history of all black towns in it’s before Oklahoma even became a state and so Greenwood is one of those cities where you can speak about this as an all black town. It just happens to be situated inside the city of Tulsa. So as a predominantly black and indigenous space. This has been a an ongoing, lively community since before Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
Rich Hobby: And for this presentation, it it seems that you have a strong focus on on really the history following the incident. And why are you choosing to focus on that I saw on a previous talks about the difference between restorative and reparative justice or sorry, or archaeology, I may have gotten that wrong, restored versus retributive archaeology. And I would love if you could kind of explain a little bit about that.
Alicia Odewale: That’s opening up a can of worms. But let me first say that you asked first, why we’re talking talking about the aftermath so much. And that focus is because there’s been so much has already been written, research, produced about the Tulsa race massacre and Greenwood during that time in 1921, but not as much focus on this period of 100 years after and what has happened, especially as an archaeologist now looking at this through a completely different lens. But we we want to acknowledge that there’s been so many people who have dedicated their lives to the story and researching and writing about this before I even existed as a person, so that our focus on the aftermath is to acknowledge that previous work. But to shed light on this, this longer history and longer, longer cycles in history beyond just what happened at that one insular point in our history, but to show how these, these incidents are connected, and there’s a larger story here to connect the past and the present together. And so our restorative justice work is doing exactly that trying to repair those connections, and really ensure that we can draw linkages between past incidences and symptoms of oppression and how we can observe our present day and how things are these lingering impacts of trauma and oppression and inequality and a lot of things that we are experiencing in our reality on a daily level. So how do we connect these two together and really show for for larger audiences, but for other people who are maybe not as familiar with how these things relate to one another? How do we even get here? It’s kind of we’re trying to paint a picture.
Rich Hobby: Do you find that the work that you’re doing in Tulsa is relevant to other communities in the United States that had similar dark pasts, or dark past might not be the right but but past conflicts or stripes, between between different groups? Is there, is there value in that for other areas to learn from?
Alicia Odewale: I’d say absolutely. Our our city and our, our district, our community of Greenwood, I mean, there’s, there’s been so many other cities, other groups, other… other neighborhoods that have experienced mass trauma, what we call acts of anti black violence, racial violence, and basically domestic terrorism. So we’re using these terms, not lightly, but to describe these incidents of that that are terrorizing communities. And there’s been so many that have happened in our history. But but we are continuing to see that happen. So the way we’re wanting to kind of treat Greenwood as a standalone story, it’s because the story of Greenwood needs to be told before we compare it to these other sites of racial violence, but they are definitely out there and definitely have their own histories and archaeology and heritage that are definitely should be known as well. But I think Greenwood we have to really kind of separate out a lot of facts and fiction about Greenwoods story before we start a comparative analysis, but that, that could definitely happen in the future.
Rich Hobby: Yeah, and I’m sure you get this question a lot. And I tried to think of a unique way of asking this, but what, how did… what was your life the day after Watchmen aired?Where was there a little bit of a Why did it take you all so long to know about this? Or I’d just love to know, like, your life before the pop culture acknowledgement of, of this moment to kind of afterwards and the catch up that’s been happening?
Alicia Odewale: Well, I can’t speak for everyone. But for me, Watchmen didn’t really affect my work at all. It was mainly the centennial. So once people were kind of getting attuned to the centennial, and then when the when watchmen aired, there was also Lovecraft country and other shows that are featuring this story. So I think a lot more people became aware of it, but I wasn’t getting a lot of phone calls, emails and texts and all that until the centennial hit. And then there was a lot of interest. And I’m specifically referring to listen to me on terms of 2021, 1921 to 2021. So when this happened, my… So we launched our research project back in 2019. So we’ve been doing this work a while, but it was only recently that we’ve gotten a lot of, like national interest in it. I don’t know if it’s Watchmen or a combination of things. Because right when the centennial hit, there were a good 10 documentary teams that reached out to me, and I’m like, what, why are you just now deciding that you’re wanting to do this but there there was a lot of a lot of curious people as well that were reaching out to me and asking questions about like, why why did I not know this? How can I do this? Do you recommend any reading, so I loved for people to reach out to me with those kind of questions. And this is why we launched the Tulsa syllabus back in on Juneteenth of 2020. To give people away to lean into more readings about Greenwood and about this heritage in history, if all they’ve learned is, you know, hearing about Watchmen it or hearing about the centennial or hearing about something else in the media. And they they don’t know where to go or where to turn to get some, some tangible like, local historian driven information. So yeah, it’s been it’s been a whirlwind. But I don’t know if it’s all generated as by Watchmen as a catalyst.
Rich Hobby: Sure, sure. Yeah. I think that there are just moments when topics just kind of bubble up to the top because I also wanted to mention Lovecraft Country, that there really did just all these things happen in conjunction to where it you couldn’t look away from the truth being out there, which I just know a lot of people in the arts were really kind of just shocked by what it took. For those things don’t happen all at once.
Alicia Odewale: It was curious, that a number in this moment, because I do want to highlight that, you know, while there were a lot of documentaries and media, news outlets and things being written about Greenwood, once the centennial was over, we then experienced this phenomenon where people are going in and kind of going out of town without having a real change happen in the community. So I would love to see a lot more engagement. That’s kind of what I encourage people to like, question or think about in the show, how the can you have a laster, a longer lasting impact whenever you are working with communities whenever you are trying to contribute to change in terms of collective healing from trauma, and what that looks like. So there’s there’s a lot of room I would say for more engagement beyond just telling a story or telling someone else’s story rather and leaving.
Rich Hobby: Well speaking about your show, could you give us like, what will this presentation be, and to is it appropriate for?
Alicia Odewale: This show is for everyone, anyone who is wanting to know more about Greenwood and this experience of like in Oklahoma, and how we even got here how we even got to this place where we we are still I would say socially segregated in the city of Tulsa. It’s not illegal segregation, of course. But there’s still a lot of work to do, in terms of how we relate to one another in this city. And Greenwood is in the heart of what we call North Tulsa. And North Tulsa is still sitting in a food desert today. So there’s a lot of real social issues that we are working towards solving. And this show is just a way to it’s a love letter to my community in Greenwood, but it’s also a love letter to educators. It’s a love letter to people who survived 1921 and stayed and rebuilt and changed history.
Rich Hobby: Now I see you’ve done a number of these presentations recently, what has been the reaction of audience members? Have you had any feedback?
Alicia Odewale: Oh, I love the feed back. And there’s been, I would say mixed reactions. Because I think this is an absolute way of seeing how people are how people learn the different learning styles, different ways of processing new information, especially information that can be challenging to what you previously knew, or you know, anything. So as audiences are in real time reacting, sometimes I’m getting a lot of applause. Sometimes I’m getting a lot of, oh, thank you so much for telling this story. I didn’t know about this. I’m so thankful that you’re doing this, then there are the people who want to argue and that are kind of challenged by the content. Wanting to know why we’re making it about race. There’s a there’s a lot of questions related to that. And we’re just kind of continuing to not change our narrative not change the way we’re doing things but make sure we’re trying to meet people where they are and try to bring them a bit further on in the journey of understanding this history because you cannot talk about Greenwood and what happened in 2001 without talking about race. So if you if you think the two are separate that we have to have a further conversation. Yeah, but it’s been a mixed bag in house due to how people are reacting but I’ve been enjoying it. And I’m just really enjoying the q&a portion that I know after this show, we’ll have a lovely q&a, I would love for people to stay, because it’s in those q&a sessions that I really get to know what people are thinking, how they’re responding, how they’re processing information, but also, it gives me a way to share more about Greenwood because at every show, during the q&a, I like to highlight or feature a local black owned business or organization in Greenwood, for people to patronize. And so there’s a lot more discussion that’s happening in the q&a that I can even do that 70 minutes show.
Rich Hobby: Well, as a science junkie, myself, I have to ask, What’s it like working with National Geographic? Is there kind of like a bucket list check that your that you got to mark off as an archaeologist?
Alicia Odewale: Definitely no, I, I had no like visions or plans and working with National Geographic. I, somebody reached out to me from Nat Geo Live and asked if I would be interested in telling the story that I’ve already been telling in the classroom, at my site, and other spaces. So it wasn’t something that was out of that I was working towards or like working to get. It just happened as I as people had heard me already doing this, and just wanting to make it a bit more structured for people around the country to hear.
Rich Hobby: Excellent. One other area I know that you’re very passionate about is education. And I know that you you’ve also run an education group with female archaeology students in St. Croix, if I if I’m correct, but I was wondering overall, like what, how is education connecting with this work that you’re doing currently?
Alicia Odewale: Yeah, this is an let me say that the field school that I that we are running in St. Croix, it’s not for women only it is for any student who is in specifically we target from high school up to graduate students. There are people that are my colleagues that have been partnering with HBCUs to bring in students around the country into this program. But we also have another partner who’s been training of local homegrown scholars in St. Croix, they do work. So my my purpose in this and sharing this show is to one bringing into classrooms faces, but also have a way to kind of go around some of our unique laws in our state that have been passed to make it that makes it a bit difficult to teach history in a way that is authentic to the experiences of our ancestors. So this show is a way to kind of go around those kind of restrictions, but still share a story that we feel is meaningful to us in our community. So it’s very important to me.
Rich Hobby: I always like to try to ask this question, but for the person sitting on the fence, the person that might say, this topics too heavy or too depressing. What would you say to that person to convince them that this is a show that’s important for them to see?
Alicia Odewale: Oh, that’s a good question. I think to respond to that critique, my, my response would be, you know, if people were strong enough to survive it, you should be strong enough to hear about it.
Rich Hobby: Wow, I like that.
Alicia Odewale: But it’s also. But it’s also something that I feel like so many people need to know, just to encourage them because it is not just a show about trauma. It’s a show about surviving and fighting in against all odds, finding a way to success and call, call a place home. Even if that that place has been a space of violence and death. Reframing the entire narrative to be a space of community like this. This is a story everyone needs to hear.
Rich Hobby: I maybe, I’m probably misquoting you a little bit here. But I was really touched by a phrase that you said regarding that, you know, not everyone in Greenwood was affluent, that it wasn’t, you know, this this collection of just super wealthy black people, but that it so and so in this quote, you kind of said that not everyone was affluent, but everyone had the choice for their own destiny. And I was wondering if you might be able to expand a little bit about that about what that environment was like before the the before the massacre, where was that hope? And and that freedom kind of generating?
Alicia Odewale: Yeah. So not to give the show away. But and I think, I think that when people come to hear this story, they’ll hear more about the roots of this community. Where did this resilience come from? And also where, how do we get to see a community that decides to, even after everything has happened, decides to defy the odds and thrive in this place? And then we are the products of that we are we are the descendants of that. So it’s an encouraging experience. So I’m hoping that people walk away with this. This is kind of why we get a lot of applause during the show is that, yes, we we have to walk you through a very difficult point of history. But we’re also talking about dreaming. And what would it look like to have this space where you can have exactly what I was saying in the other talk, that the color of your skin does not limit your ability to succeed in any environment? And what if we had, what a Greenwood would have been allowed to just exist and thrive? Undisturbed? And what would a healed Greenwood look like today? These are all questions that we can consider as we’re walking through this 100 year journey. But I don’t want to give any more of the show away because there’s lots lots of stuff that we dive into during the show.
Rich Hobby: Well, yeah, no, I think that’s the perfect time for us to wrap it up right there. But Dr. Odewale, we are so excited to have you here on March 28. For National Geographic Live: Greenwood A Century of Resilience. Tickets are available right now at Hultcenter.org And yeah, we look forward to seeing you very soon. And thank you again for speaking with us today.
Alicia Odewale: Thank you for having me.
