Native America Calling: The Tulsa Race Massacre and a ‘dismal’ swamp

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Native America Calling: The Tulsa Race Massacre and a ‘dismal’ swamp

Thursday, June 19, 2025

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Shared Indigenous and Black history: the Tulsa Race Massacre and a ‘dismal’ swamp

Mayor Monroe Nichols of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is championing a $105 million reparations package for the survivors and families of the city’s 1921 Race Massacre.

It’s a philanthropy-driven city and housing rejuvenation project to offset the continuing repercussions from the coordinated attack more than a century ago. At the time, thousands of white residents besieged what was among the most successful and affluent Black communities in the early 20th century.

The Black Wall Street Times: Road to Repair

Three hundred Black people died and more than a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed. Years of efforts to compensate descendants for the violence have failed. Tune in to get perspectives from Freedmen descendants about the importance of this ambitious effort to set things right. [Speech: “Road to Repair” by Mayor Nichols]

Also, learn about a swamp with connections to Indigenous people going back thousands of years. On the homelands of the Nansemond Indian Nation in Virginia, the Great Dismal Swamp was a safe space for tribes.

The swamp also became a refuge for Black freedom seekers escaping slavery. Federal officials are exploring it as a new National Heritage Area. Some of the land is part of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

Lake Drummond in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is one of of only two natural lakes in Virginia, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Photo: Rebecca Wynn / USFWS

Guests on Native America Calling

Saché Primeaux-Shaw (Ponca, Yankton Dakota, Seminole, and Chickasaw Freedman), historian and genealogist from Oklahoma

Sam Bass (Nansemond Indian Nation), Chief Emeritus of the Nansemond Indian Nation, headquartered in Virginia

Alexandra Sutton (African American and Sappony), co-founder of the Great Dismal Swamp Stakeholder Collaborative and executive director of Indigenous East

Hannibal B. Johnson, author, attorney, and consultant in Oklahoma

Eric “Mubita” Sheppard, co-founder of Mubita LLC in Virginia

The 1921 Black Wall Street Memorial at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma honors the Black residents of the Greenwood District who were murdered by an arm mob of White rioters. Photo: Marc Carlson