Watch Now: Community members, Greenwood Chamber blast city's claims about BLM mural's removal: 'We were lied to'

The fight over whether the Black Lives Matter street painting will stay escalated Tuesday when the Mayor’s Office was accused of mischaracterizing the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce’s position on the matter.

“This is something that the mayor of Tulsa is using to divide the Black community,” Freeman Culver, chairman of the Greenwood Chamber, said at a news conference. “And I say no to that. Because the Black community is not a monolithic community. We think differently.

“But I’m going to tell you one thing: This Black community, we all love Greenwood. And we love what it stands for, and it stands for resiliency. There’s no more resilient people than Black people.”

Culver said Mayor G.T. Bynum’s office mischaracterized the organization’s position when it claimed in a news release that neither property owners nor the chamber wanted the Black Lives Matter street mural to remain.

He said the city gave him and property owners on Greenwood Avenue the option of having the mural removed or taking ownership of the street so the mural could stay — something he said was well outside the chamber’s financial ability. He said the city is trying to split the community over the painting’s presence.

Culver and other community members at the news conference decried moves by the city and Bynum in their handling of the mural. The criticism stems from a news release sent Monday afternoon in which the city claimed that the owner of the property on both sides of the street — the Greenwood Chamber — and the chamber’s Tenants and Merchants Association “did not want the mural to remain.”

Culver said the Greenwood Chamber is committed to restoring the street’s buildings, making it a difficult if not impossible proposition to take on the burden of street maintenance, as well.

Culver said it’s been a struggle to get improvements from the city, including the street that now bears the mural.

”I’ve been in leadership almost three years, and I’ve been trying to get help from the city to help trim our trees, to work on our sidewalks, to resurface our street, and we haven’t gotten any help,” Culver said. “We had to use our resources, little things, to trim our trees. We had to use our resources to work on ADA-compliant streets.”

C.J. Neal, president of the Greenwood Arts & Cultural Society, said he and others wanted to voice “unanimous support” for the mural at Tuesday’s news conference. He said the city’s actions amounted to a “political flip-flop” and were “an act of political cowardice that should not and cannot stand.”

”We’re willing to stand with the community members that have said they want the mural here,” Neal said. “We’re willing to stand with the businesses that we were lied to yesterday and told they said they wanted it removed.

”But every individual that I’ve gone to and I’ve talked to have said not only do they not want it removed, but they believe in the message it represents.”

Neal said he doesn’t want to see the city use Greenwood as a “political pawn,” referring to the street as “holy ground.”

“Come with facts, Mr. Mayor,” Neal said. “Come with facts, those that say they represent this area but just want to use it when it’s of political convenience to them. You come here and you say what is actually true. The people in this area want it; our organization wants it; and we’re going to continue to stand and make sure it stays here.”

Bynum did not take long to respond to the Greenwood leaders’ comments, taking time out of his noon COVID-19 news conference to address the matter.

He said that after the City Council indicated last week that it would not permit the “Black Lives Matter” sign, he learned that the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce had not been consulted about the sign’s future.

So he approached them later in the week to explain their options, he said. The options include having the city “vacate” the street and the chamber take over its ownership and maintenance, Bynum said, or the chamber could apply for City Council approval of a permit to allow the sign to remain on the street.

“The City Council has the ability to issue a permit for the use of messaging on public property,” Bynum said.

The mayor did not specify for what type of permit the chamber could apply, and his statement seemed to contradict what councilors were told last week. Senior Assistant City Attorney Mark Swiney said then that “there really isn’t anything in our laws that makes a street into a canvas to convey a message or to essentially make a sign out of a street surface.”

The intent of Bynum’s statement became clear later in the afternoon when the city provided a letter it had sent to the Greenwood Chamber saying the city had prepared an application on the chamber’s behalf for a license agreement with the city that would allow the “Black Lives Matter” sign to stay in place.

“Should you desire to proceed with seeking City Council approval to preserve the mural, please sign and return the attached documentation by close of business Thursday so it can be properly processed,” Bynum wrote.

The city has never entered into a license agreement with a private entity for a sign painted on a street. The agreements are typically used by restaurants and other businesses wishing to do business on sidewalks or other public rights of way.

Should the City Council approve the license agreement, it likely would be subject to the same potential legal challenges the council was warned about last week. The City Attorney’s Office cautioned councilors last week that if they allow one message on a city street, they would have to allow all messages, assuming they do not incite people to violence and are not pornographic.

Speaking at the COVID-19 news conference, Bynum said that neither the Greenwood Chamber nor the chamber’s Tenants & Merchants Association expressed interest in having the city vacate the street.

“They felt that the message that is there is associated with a national political movement that not all people are on board with, and they did not think that it should be in the middle of the street,” Bynum said. “They also conveyed to me that they were upset with me for delaying the removal of the mural yesterday morning and that they did not want to be in the middle of some big fight between activists and the legal team at the city over what we can do.”

Culver explained that he received an email from the Downtown Coordinating Council last Thursday saying Greenwood Avenue would be closed at 7 a.m. Monday. He said he alerted business owners on the street because he expected that the closure was to remove the mural after the City Attorney’s Office and city councilors came to a decision Wednesday.

Tiffany Crutcher, founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, organized an effort to put mock tombstones in protest on the mural Monday morning in an attempt to stop its removal. But city crews never showed up to remove the paint, and city spokeswoman Michelle Brooks said later that morning that the Mayor’s Office had halted removal plans the previous week.

The news release that followed Monday afternoon said that after discussions with stakeholders, plans to remove the mural would proceed “when such action can be scheduled.”

Black Lives Matter street murals appeared in cities nationwide amid protests after the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. According to Tulsa World research, Tulsa would be the largest and only the second city to take action to remove the mural.

The first was Redwood City, California, a Bay Area city in San Mateo County with a population of 85,000. The San Mateo Daily Journal reported July 17 that the city ordered the mural removed, citing code violations and threatened legal action from a lawyer who wanted to similarly paint “MAGA 2020” but was denied by city officials.

State Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, said the community is tired of how the city has handled the Tulsa mural. Goodwin said Bynum “passed the buck” to the business owners, and she said they “will not stand for the nonsense.”

“This started with the mayor and the City Council saying this was a legal issue,” Goodwin said, “that there were ordinances in place that would forbid this mural from being here. … And how do you go from talking about an ordinance and laws to then saying you reached out to the business folks on this block and that they told you they did not want this mural here, which we’ve found out to be a lie.

“The bottom line is this: We are not to be played with. We are not to be toyed with. This is sacred ground.”

Before Tuesday’s news conference, a woman set up a tent to camp out on Greenwood Avenue’s centerline on the mural. Neal said she told him she planned to camp there to take a stand if the city came to remove it, but she was seen packing up the tent by the news conference’s conclusion.

The Rev. Robert Turner, pastor at Vernon AME Church up the block from the mural, said the woman is an example of “someone who cares deeply about Black lives but happens to be white.”

”This should show the world once more that our leadership is out of touch with our citizens,” Turner said. “For those who don’t want this mural, I haven’t seen one person come to Greenwood saying, ‘Take this mural down.’ Where are they?

”Mr. Mayor, stop hiding behind rhetoric, and if there’s somebody against this mural, tell them to show up to Greenwood. Tell them to show up to Greenwood and try to tell us to remove it.”

Neal said the situation calls for Tulsans to stand up.

“John Lewis, the words I kept hearing all throughout his memorial service was, ‘Get in good trouble,’” Neal said. “The city of Tulsa, it’s time to get in some good trouble. This is a good cause.

”And I say that to say also that we need to make sure that that includes holding those that lie and hold public office accountable for the things they say that are inaccurate.”

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Hilary Pittman contributed to this story.