With racial tension flaring across the country, a Tulsa park dedicated to reconciliation is getting national recognition.
On Tuesday, John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, 321 N. Detroit Ave., officially joined the African American Civil Rights Network during a brief ceremony moved indoors because of the weather.
The AACRN is a two-year-old National Park Service designation whose sites include Little Rock Central High School, Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington.
Earlier this month, a National Geographic article named John Hope Franklin Park the most important place in the nation to visit at a time when the nation is reexamining the meaning of monuments and memorials.
Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford said Franklin "irrevocably transformed our understanding of American history through his scholarship, his activism while advancing the cause of African American civil rights in the 20th century.
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"Dr. Franklin was truly a champion for civil rights."
Franklin spent most of his his youth in Tulsa and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School before embarking on a distinguished academic career as a historian and writer.
The park that bears his name was created in the early 2000s as a result of a legislative investigation into Tulsa's 1921 race massacre. Sculptures on the grounds commemorate that event and the history of African Americans in Oklahoma.
The park is owned by the city but operated by the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, which also holds several annual events, including a community dinner in the fall and a symposium in the spring.
"We recognized early on that one of the issues that faces our nation and our country is the fear of the unknown," said John Hope Franklin Center Executive Director Reuben Gant. "To break down that barrier, we advocate to know your neighbor. Once you get to know your neighbor, attitudes and behavior tend to change."
"While painful," said Republican 1st District Congressman Kevin Hern, "it is only through honesty and dialogue that reconciliation and true and lasting changes can come."
Deputy Mayor Amy Brown said Mayor G.T. Bynum's first staff meeting was at John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park "because it is a physical reminder of our purpose to renew a spirit of high expectations."
State Sen. Kevin Matthews, D-Tulsa, chairman of the Race Massacre Centennial Committee, said the John Hope Franklin Center and Park "started this work long before we even thought" about the centennial.
Gant acknowledge the center's chairman, Julius Pegues, and said the park and its sculptures symbolize and recognize that "monuments and memorials don't just serve the project of remembrance. They re-enforce the power and possibility of the present."
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Aerial view of property at 31st and Peoria, where there is a plan for a mixed use development.
