Dreamland: Tulsa, 1921

Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 31—June 1 From the Dreamland Theatre Complex to the Tulsa Massacre, one week after the Broadway premiere of SHUFFLE ALONG, May 23, 1921. I knew, from my own family, that there were stories that had not been told. I was fired with the ambition to dramatize this world of “unrecorded history,” a world that challenged generally held assumptions about African Americans of the past. To bring the world of Greenwood to life, I combined two forms: play and oratorio into what I call a “ploratorio,” set to music magnificently by the soaring themes of Marques L. A. Garrett. The vitality that characterized the Greenwood community was playing out simultaneously in cultural rebirths all over the country. It was a symbol of the richness of African American culture at that time. The musical Shuffle Along, which many believe inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance, had premiered in New York the week before with my relative Flournoy E. Miller, Aubrey Lyles, Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. I can’t help wondering if any of Oklahoma’s highly esteemed Black Tulsans had been in that audience. Yet as much as this world of teachers, doctors, morticians and businesspeople thrived in Greenwood, there was a stiff resistance, a desire to see this world extinguished. There was a belief that these individuals were less than human, that they should not exist as the rich, multi-layered society that they were, that they should not exist at all. I chose the Oklahoma state symbols the Scissor Tail Fly Catcher, the State Bird; “Labor Conquers All,” the State Motto; and Oklahoma Rose, the State Flower as motifs to show how deeply embedded the community of Greenwood was in a world that did not accept them. Many in Greenwood lived behind the veil. Inspired by the work of Mary E. Jones Parrish, a journalist who gathered the accounts of those who suffered from the violence and by the lives of Bill and Loula Williams, the entrepreneurs who built the Dreamland Theatre complex, I was determined to show the full humanity of the people of Greenwood. In doing so, I would show the cost of the Tulsa Massacre by showing this lively cultural scene that was torn apart but whose spirit and vitality lives on. — Sandra Seaton