What happened in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma is our history as a city, a state, and a nation. It is not something that happened to a group of people that lived 100 years ago.  It happened to US – and it is still happening to US. Books have been written by historians that cover the facts of these events.  Community elders have spoken out and debated how to move forward and what reconciliation means.  Not until Fire In Little Africa (FILA) have we heard from the voices of the young artists raised on 100 years of this trauma. With this curriculum, FILA: The Wisdom, and with the help of the FILA artists, we attempt to help current and future generations understand what occurred in 1921 Tulsa, what followed, where we are, and what the future holds.

Many of the truths of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the most violent incidents of racist hatred in the nation’s history, were lost in the rubble of Black prosperity built in the face of Jim Crow laws and in the hundreds, if not thousands of lives buried in that debris. We lost, in eighteen hours of death, destruction and hate, at minimum seventeen years in time. It’s a gruesome, gaping hole in the story of Tulsa and the nation.

The FILA: The Wisdom curriculum was developed by Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson, Tri-City Collective and our FILA Curriculum team (Dr. Nick Alexandrov, Najah Amatullah-Hylton, Prof. Quraysh Ali Lansana and Prof. George Lee), all veteran teachers whose classroom experience spans from Pre-K to Ph.D. Tri-City Collective, Inc. was founded in 2016 by seasoned educators with a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and providing learning & artistic opportunities outside the classroom for youth and adults. 

This curriculum is to commemorate the ancestors that we lost, but also acknowledge the living ancestors that we are working to build up in this present moment: our children.