When I was in elementary school, my grandfather, Theron C. Toole, pulled me aside at his house. He said he needed to talk to me about something important: our family history. He told me about my great-great-great grandfather, J.B. Stradford, and how he owned property, including a hotel, on Black Wall Street in Tulsa. I didn’t understand the significance of what he was saying then, but the words “Black Wall Street” stuck with me.

Now I know more. May 31 marks the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, when a white mob destroyed the thriving Black community of Greenwood, killing as many as 300 people. The attackers burned more than one thousand homes and numerous