Tom Hanks Urges Americans to Learn About Tulsa Race Massacre: Schools Must ‘Stop the Battle to Whitewash Curriculums’
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Tom Hanks lamented the widespread omission of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre from United States history, urging Americans to learn the “truth” about the devastating event.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Hanks faulted both the education system and the entertainment industry for failing to highlight the massacre, adding that film often “helps shape what is history and what is forgotten.”
“Should our schools now teach the truth about Tulsa? Yes, and they should also stop the battle to whitewash curriculums to avoid discomfort for students,” Hanks wrote in the op-ed, published just days after the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
The Tulsa Race Massacre occurred between May 31 and June 1 in 1921, during which more than 300 Black Americans were killed and 10,000 more were displaced as mobs of White rioters pillaged businesses and residents in the Black neighborhood of Greenwood — largely referred to as “Black Wall Street.”
Despite the gravity of the massacre, which destroyed an entire U.S. neighborhood, and the sheer brutality displayed towards Black Americans, Hanks revealed that he “never read a page of any school history book about” the incident.
“History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out,” he wrote. “Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same. That includes projects of mine.”
“I knew about the attack on Fort Sumter, Custer’s last stand and Pearl Harbor but did not know of the Tulsa massacre until last year, thanks to an article in The New York Times,” he continued. “Instead, in my history classes, I learned that Britain’s Stamp Act helped lead to the Boston Tea Party, that “we” were a free people because the Declaration of Independence said “all men are created equal.”
Hanks questioned if the American perspective would be different today if the massacre was taught in schools, going after educators and school administrations for prioritizing “white feelings over Black experience.”
“The truth about Tulsa, and the repeated violence by some white Americans against Black Americans, was systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson for our young white ears,” Hanks said, adding that neglect of the massacre was “tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered.”
Hanks additionally went after “the ire” some White Americans feel towards the concept of systemic racism, adding that many “insist that since July 4, 1776, we have all been free, we were all created equally, that any American can become president and catch a cab in Midtown Manhattan no matter the color of our skin.”
“Tell that to the century-old survivors of Tulsa and their offspring,” he added. “And teach the truth to the white descendants of those in the mob that destroyed Black Wall Street.”
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