Ellison visits greenwood, 1921

Abstract

POETRY ellison visits greenwood, 1921 by Quraysh Ali Lansana oklahoma sun an oppressive neighbor in august 1920. churchgoers settle after-dinner stomachs. deep deuce a murmuring disquiet: raid at the chandler’s. moonshine & melanin the news on the street. daddy chandler & one officer dead & young claude jailed with alleged murder on his shirt. the christian sabbath a buzzing lynching bee three white men freed claude from his cage one thousand armed black men on 2nd street mayor & police allow one of three cars of now unarmed black men to find claude to return the next sweltering midday without him, his body rotting meat ten miles from okc beaten & shot. miss ida had had enough. her lewis gone years now, she frets when ralph delivers the dispatch & herbert still too young to spell KKK. maybe indiana. maybe gary, where brother works steel. a stop in greenwood to visit family on way north. hundreds of shops businesses, elegant houses, hospitals. vibrant black life in the face of jim crow, so unlike the deuce. closer to the harlem ralph would know. gary was not negro paradise. ida jobless, the boys eating garbage from trash cans. okc was hateful but at least familiar. dry heat stings black skin irritable but somehow bearable with family. highway leads them back to tulsa before 2nd street. greenwood was gone. black wall street now invisible. The author of twenty books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature, Quraysh Ali Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow as well as writer in residence, adjunct professor, and acting director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Oklahoma State University– Tulsa. He is executive producer of KOSU radio’s Focus: Black Oklahoma, and his forthcoming titles include Those Who Stayed: Life in 1921 Tulsa after the Massacre. He is a member of TriCity Collective. GORDON PARKS, UNTITLED, HARLEM, NEW YORK, 1952, COURTESY OF AND © THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION WORLDLIT.ORG 51 ...