Tom Hanks calls out American schools for ‘whitewashing’ history and ‘tragic omission’ of Tulsa race massacre

Not many Americans and especially few Canadians were ever educated on the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, when white mobs attacked Black residents, their homes and businesses in the Oklahoma town, and killed as many as 300. Known as the worst incident of racial violence in American history, it's received criminally little acknowledgment over the years.

In fact, Joe Biden became only the first U.S. president to commemorate the massacre, when he visited the site to mark its 100th anniversary last week.

Hoping to help bring a spotlight (with a little more honesty) as well is none other than Tom Hanks, also known as America's dad and a bit of a national treasure. If you're questioning his impact, just consider when he and his wife Rita Wilson were diagnosed with the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic, and he became the poster boy for bringing more attention to its severity and to mask-wearing. He's also a massive historian, which has inspired many of his own films, including Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

This time, Hanks has put pen to paper, writing an essay titled “You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre" for The New York Times, published Friday.

In it, he first details what he was taught in school – a largely white American history, and the few Black figures he was made aware of: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hanks says he didn't even learn of the Tulsa massacre until last year, when he read a NYT story.

"For all my study, I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa, Okla," Hanks writes.

"My experience was common: 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. Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same."

Hanks goes on to say there was never education on the Slocum massacre of Black residents in Texas by an all-white mob in 1910, or the Red Summer of white supremacist terrorism in 1919. The lynching of Black Americans, too, he says were only described as "tragic" but it was never made clear that those murders were "commonplace and often lauded by local papers and law enforcement."

"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 continues.

"It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case."

Touching on the uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement since the murder of George Floyd at the hands of an officer in May 2020, Hanks asks, "How different would perspectives be had we all been taught about Tulsa in 1921, even as early as the fifth grade? Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered.

"When people hear about systemic racism in America, just the use of those words draws the ire of those white people who insist that since July 4, 1776, we have all been free... Tell that to the century-old survivors of Tulsa and their offspring. And teach the truth to the white descendants of those in the mob that destroyed Black Wall Street."

The essay, which is well worth your time, goes on to discuss how Hollywood has been slow to tell these stories but must do so to paint an authentic picture of America, with Hanks citing HBO's Watchmen and Lovecraft Country as two prime examples.

The actor concludes, "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. America’s history is messy but knowing that makes us a wiser and stronger people."

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