When there’s an award.

Feature spread from ABA Journal Magazine

The Tulsa Race Massacre took place May 31-June 1, 1921.

This is not an event that was taught to many in schools, and sadly it is not an event that I had heard of until entirely too late in life. When a story came across my desk that featured a lawyer who has spent decades fighting for the victims of the massacre, I was determined to find visual evidence to tell the story of what happened.

The lawyer fighting for the victims is named Damario Solomon-Simmons, who grew up in Tulsa, yet never heard of the massacre until he learned of it in a college history class. It was then that he began dedicating his career to find justice for the surviving individuals of the massacre.

I was grateful Mr. Solomon-Simmons made himself available to meet with Nathan Harmon, the photographer I had hired to handle the photo shoot. I began my research for locations where he could be photographed that were also significant to the story.

In my research I came across a mural that stopped me in my tracks. (pictured above) The artist, Michael Rosato, did an amazing job capturing the destruction of property and the pain and suffering that occurred as a result. It is said that 300 were killed and 9,000 were left homeless - 6,000 ended up in temporary camps. This is a story that we should have learned about in school. I needed to incorporate the mural in this piece, and started my list. Mr. Solomon-Simmon's assistant told me of another mural of Black Wall Street that is located on the highway overpass that now consumes most of where Black Wall Street once stood. I also found through research that the Vernon AME Church had burned to the ground but was rebuilt. There was also a monument that had the names of victims inscribed. I was beginning to have a long list of locations to have a very busy lawyer photographed.

I have only been to Tulsa once, on an airplane that needed to refuel and head back out to Chicago. I turned to my friend Google Maps. Through searching, I learned that the mural of the woman was located at OSU Langston Campus. Thank goodness I grew up on Nancy Drew books, because I struggled to find an address for the mural. I read through articles, watched news footage, and finally found a nugget of hope that I discovered it’s location. I did a quick back-up check on Google Maps, only to find out that the street view was last updated before the mural was installed. I planned to tell Nathan about it, and emphasized how much I wanted him photographed in front of the mural, but only hoped my determination found the correct location.

I arranged for Nathan to meet Mr. Solomon-Simmons at the Greenwood Cultural Center. Rain was in the forecast for the entire week which pretty much sucked, but sometimes we have to settle for whatever we can get. As I continued to dig for exact addresses of locations, and used Google Street view to figure out approximately where each location was in relation to the other, I discovered that all of the planets aligned for this one, and they were all within the same block. The church, the cultural center, the memorial and both murals were all within walking distance of each other (and when I say walking distance, I mean “how far I have to park to get into a Target” walking distance). I sent Nathan my findings and my usual needs for a shoot. This was the first time I had been working with him, and I could tell I was in good hands based on the imagery on his portfolio site.

That’s just the beginning.

It’s easy to do a google search and find any old image, however, I can’t take any old image and throw it into a magazine, have it printed and let it go up on our own website. That’s a huge infringement on copyright laws, and when you design a magazine for lawyers - you make sure you are doing everything on the up and up. In general, historical imagery is a bit challenging to find, and when it’s related to an event that isn’t as well-known as it should be, I had to dig DEEP. Did I mention we are a non-profit, on a budget, and can’t afford to pay thousands in photo acquisitions for each story? Yeah, it’s a good thing they hired a thrifty shopper like me.

While I was interested in finding imagery of the massacre, I really wanted to emphasize what a thriving community this was BEFORE the massacre, and if possible, compare it to the aftermath. I tried Wikimedia Commons, Getty, AP, there wasn’t much to be found. A couple images, it was enough to fill the layout, especially if I leaned heavy on the photo shoot images, but it wasn’t enough for me. I moved onto a different project, fearing that I would go down the wrong rabbit hole and waste an entire afternoon of work and have nothing to show for it.

The following day was the shoot. If I remember correctly, it was at around 11am, and I couldn’t wait to find out what Nathan caught. In most cases a photographer will email me with a gallery of images from the shoot within a day or two, which is great, but Nathan called me that day with the good news. Not only was he able to get all of the locations shot, the weather held off until he was done. I was ecstatic. He got the shot in front of the mural! His enthusiasm gave me the boost to do another dive for historical images.

When I can’t find anything, I sometimes will do a google search and then try to dig down on the sources of the photos that I do find, and after clicking through a couple pages of the images I already could find, I came across exactly what I was looking for. The Tusla Historical Society and Museum has an entire catalog of photos from the massacre, and the Greenwood District where Black Wall Street was located. I found images fom before, and after. The photos that stuck out the most were those of black men lined up with their hands up and white men with guns leading them somewhere. There were images of white men standing proudly with their shotguns, and handwritten captions on the back that made it quite clear what their involvement in the massacre was. There was the carload of white men with guns, all of these images vetted and placed in the massacre collection at the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. These were the images I was looking for, the images that explain what happened, by who, and quite honestly most likely the reason why this event wasn’t taught in schools. As I clicked through the images of destruction, I found key points that were touched on in the story. The internment camps displaced families were relocated - I found an image of a boy outside of the tent they were living in. I found an image of families waiting in line for relief goods, and an image of a burnt out block that looked equally as devastating as the photos from after the Great Chicago Fire. I reached out to the curator at the historical society hoping he could help me with permission to use the images, and more importantly hi-res images that would look good in print. The following day he returned my email, and I moved onto layout.

Everything fell into place, and my hard work paid off. As soon as the issue closed, and the story went to press, I entered it into the GD USA American Graphic Design Awards contest, and won!

I am particularly proud of this award, because I refused to settle for “enough,” I didn’t make it easy for myself, aiming low to get the job off my desk. Mr. Solomon-Simmons determination is easy to catch, and I caught it, and I could tell Nathan caught it too. I know the ABA Journal isn’t on newsstands, and most Americans won’t read the story, but I hope that those that pick up the issue learn something, and teach others so that this historical event is not repeated. I’m honored to have won a GD USA AGDA award, and proud of myself for pushing when it was hard, grateful that the rain held off, and happy it all went to print on time.