Search for a home for the Black Lives Matter street painting continues

Friday morning, a number of local officials spoke via Zoom about the latest idea — painting a new street sign a block south on Greenwood Avenue, where it would front the Greenwood Rising History Center when it is completed next year.

Here’s how it would work: The city would vacate that section of the street and the property owners on either side — Hille Foundation, 21 North Greenwood, GreenArch and Greenwood Rising — would take over maintenance of the street.

But City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, one of several people on the call, said she made it clear that she could not support the idea unless there was a guarantee that the vacated street would be deeded to a Black organization.

“I said I will not support any entity privatizing or vacating the street unless they are willing to sign the deed over to a Black organization and continue to maintain it and commit to the continued maintenance of that space,” Hall-Harper said. “If that is not going to happen, I am not going to support more white people gentrifying more land in Greenwood … and they understood that.”

Hall-Harper described the idea as “trying to rush to put some lipstick on the pig.”

“My position is, hey, we made that decision, we voted to do that (remove the sign) two or three weeks ago, deal with it,” she said. “Deal with whatever comes, but I am not concerned about trying to maintain a positive image for Tulsa (by) putting lipstick on a pig. The spirit of Tulsa was shown in the decision on that we made. Let’s move the hell on.”

After considering several options to retain the sign, city councilors approved a recommendation to Mayor G.T. Bynum early last month that the BLM sign be removed as part of a scheduled mill and overlay project on Greenwood Avenue.

Hall-Harper said Friday that she plans to continue pursuing a proposal she and Councilor Kara Joy McKee offered last month to permit a Black Lives Matter street mural in the Greenwood District through the city’s Main Street program.

During a City Council discussion of the proposal, Hall-Harper said councilors could limit the street sign permits issued under the Main Street Program to those that speak to the history and culture of the particular district and serve as a place-maker.

The idea has not been discussed publicly since then.

She and McKee are “researching national examples we can duplicate here in Tulsa (and) we start meeting soon,” Hall-Harper said Friday.

The nearly 300-foot-long yellow sign was painted by activists without the city’s permission just days before President Donald Trump’s June 20 campaign rally at the BOK Center and weeks after protesters took to the streets across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

Maggie Hille Yar with the Hille Foundation said the proposal was never intended to deflect attention from the fact that Tulsa’s elected officials chose to remove the “Black Lives Matter” sign.

“I just could not be more disappointed in our city’s decision to remove it, and she is right, I 100% agree, the message is more important than the manner in which it was put down,” Yar said. “We as a city should keep that mural there.”

Yar said the proposal was made with the intent of involving the public in every aspect of the project.

“A collaboration of community members (would) plan it, organize it, program it, pick the aesthetics, all of that, so it would be a space for reflection, reconciliation and thought for the city,” Yar said.

State Sen. Kevin Matthews, chairman of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, participated in Friday’s discussion.

“The bottom line is, if those two elected officials have an alternative they are working on, I am going to support that alternative, and it ended up being the Main Street option, so I support that,” Matthews said.

Bynum, who also participated in Friday’s discussion, said he was generally supportive of using space on the Greenwood Rising campus for a Black Lives Matter sign but added that the city has received no details on the proposal.

“On something like this, understanding the proposed details would be crucial before I could fully commit my support,” Bynum said.

Hall-Harper noted that other cities have chosen to do the right thing and allow their Black Lives Matter street signs to remain in defiance of local policies and federal guidelines that prohibit permanent markings on public roads.

“There are mayors now facing litigation,” she said. “They said, ‘I don’t care, sue if you have to, we are not taking up these murals.’ So they are standing socially and humanely on the right side of history. Tulsa said, ‘No.’”

But Bynum argued Friday that it is not the city’s place to treat one group of people differently from another, nor should the city selectively enforce its laws.

“Our laws apply equally to every Tulsan. As the City Council confirmed in its vote a month ago, no group is currently allowed to use Tulsa streets for the display of messages,” the mayor said. “I fully support the display of this message on private property, as has already been done without controversy in a number of locations around the city.”

Also participating in Friday’s Zoom meeting were Councilor Phil Lakin, Jeff Stava with the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and McKee.

Video: Let’s Talk town hall focuses on controversy surrounding Tulsa’s Black Lives Matter street mural.

Gallery: ‘Black Lives Matter’ painted overnight on street in Tulsa’s Greenwood District