Beyond Reparations for Tulsa鈥檚 Black Wall Street

Mar 15, 2024

More than 100 years ago, a violent white mob the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing hundreds of people and destroying a prosperous community, including a district known as Black Wall Street. Descendants of those who survived the so-called have for years been agitating for , to no avail.聽

In the meantime, a new generation of Tulsa鈥檚 residents is rebuilding what was lost. Writing about it for 大象传媒鈥檚 new 鈥�Realizing Reparations鈥� series is journalist Anneliese Bruner, whose great-grandmother, Mary E. Parrish, survived the Tulsa Massacre. Bruner spoke with 大象传媒 Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on 大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about her story, 鈥�Rebuilding Tulsa With or Without Reparations.鈥澛�

Sonali Kolhatkar joined 大象传媒 in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽大象传媒 Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.