When Nkem Ike was a freshman in college, her mother suggested she write about the Tulsa Race Massacre for an English assignment.
Although born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ike had never been taught about this tragic event. At the time, people rarely discussed the day in 1921 when a white mob descended on the city’s Greenwood district, killing scores of Black citizens and setting fire to their homes and businesses.
But after walking through Greenwood and visiting the Mabel B. Little Heritage House — a structure built immediately after the massacre in 1925 — Ike came to a firm conclusion.
“I knew I was going to write about the Tulsa race massacre,” says the assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “I always knew it would have a place in my academic and personal life. Though at the time I didn’t know when, or how, or where.”
Years later, when her PhD dissertation chair invited her to work as the graduate student on a Greenwood archaeology project, Ike began her life’s work.
She has since spent her career examining the historical impact of three race massacres that took place in the early 20th century.
She studies the generational impact of the massacres through the lens of material evidence such as artifacts, archives, and memorialization. The terror events she explores took place in Springfield, Illinois (1908); Rosewood, Florida (1923); and Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921).
“The goal of the race massacres was to kill as many Black people as possible and reframe the landscape in a way to make it virtually unlivable — to displace them and dispossess them,” Ike says. “It’s an ongoing project that we very much see continuing in the present.”
Racial violence against Black people is a tragic constant in American history, and Ike contends that many significant problems facing Black communities today can be traced back to these massacres.
Before they were destroyed, Black neighbourhoods in Springfield, Rosewood and Tulsa were diverse and dynamic. But in Springfield, damage to Black-owned businesses in the wake of the massacre amounted to $100,000, the equivalent of $3 million today. Rosewood, once a primarily Black, self-sufficient town, was left devastated, its inhabitants forcibly exiled. And though Greenwood managed to rebuild after being attacked, it has suffered for years due to practices that became commonplace in American life.
I am trying to articulate how Black people are placing themselves on the landscape. I’m looking at how they’re figuring out ways to incorporate these instances of violence into their own national identity, their own sense of belonging — and how that shows up on these landscapes of erasure in the contemporary world.
Such practices include redlining, or the withholding of financial services from people who live in majority Black areas. And there are others.
“When the federal highway system was being built in the 1950s, the highway was intentionally built through Black communities in order to displace Black people,” says Ike. “Tulsa has seen ongoing landscape violence. You see it in the federal highway system. The gentrification. The redlining. You see it in the Greenwood district being labeled as blighted, so that it could then be cleared out. The race massacre laid the foundation for all of these things.”
Today, Black community members are memorializing the race massacres in different ways, such as the preservation of archives and newspapers from the time. In Tulsa, museums like the Greenwood Cultural Center and the Mabel B. Little Heritage House are now open to visitors who wish to learn about this tragic chapter in history.
Both Springfield and Tulsa even offer educational race massacre tours. “In Springfield, they have a map for tourists which allows them to follow in the footsteps of the mob and go to different locations of significance,” says Ike. Such tours provide educational opportunities, says Ike. “But it must also be noted that when sites of anti-Black race massacres and death become tourist attractions, this contributes to the continuing displacement of Black people from these communities.”
As an archaeologist, Ike says she is “trying to articulate how Black people are placing themselves on the landscape. I’m looking at how they’re figuring out ways to incorporate these instances of violence into their own national identity, their own sense of belonging — and how that shows up on these landscapes of erasure in the contemporary world.”
Poring through the archival evidence herself, Ike is always trying to answer questions. “How are these communities using archives? Where are they? Artifacts are highly contested, highly political forms of materiality — and for so long, Black communities in these specific instances didn’t have access to them. So what does it mean when you do have access, and how do they illuminate and animate Black life?”
My work speaks to the overarching realities of anti-Black violence — but at the same time, it speaks to the overarching reality of Black aliveness, of people’s need and desire to belong and be a part of something. And to have this identity that unfortunately still exists alongside this violence. But it exists.
Ike’s own life experience attests to the fact that for a long time, the massacres were concealed and underreported; Springfield, Rosewood and Tulsa were but three of the unknown number of race massacres that have taken place since the American Revolution, leading to the deaths of an unknown number of people.
“One thing I had to be really honest about with myself when I first started doing this work is that there are things about this that we might want to know and that we’ll never know; we have to be okay with the fact that we might never know how many people died,” she says.
“These things are so hard to quantify, not just because of the time period, but also because of the intentional nature of this violence, to conceal and displace. Not knowing is the hardest part, because for researchers our job is to know. But it’s the reality of being Black.”
Although archaeologists deal with tangible evidence of historical events, Ike says that material evidence from the massacres represents ideals that transcend the objects themselves.
“Whenever we’re thinking about placemaking,” she says, “we’re thinking about what communities are fighting for. It’s become evident to me that it’s not just the materiality that’s important. It’s the sense of belonging. It’s in the intangible that placemaking is made real, and it’s made relevant, and it’s made evident.”
Asked what she hopes people will take away from her work, Ike replies that she hopes it dispels myths.
“Especially the myth that there’s only one way to think about Black life. My work speaks to the overarching realities of anti-Black violence — but at the same time, it speaks to the overarching reality of Black aliveness, of people’s need and desire to belong and be a part of something. And to have this identity that unfortunately still exists alongside this violence. But it exists.”