Efforts to Rename Brady Arts District

[Conan71]

I'm sure the "MLK District" would fly right through.

"You on MLK?!?!?!?!...GET THE F$%K OUTTA THERE!!!!!"

[Gaspar]

Celebrate things for what they are, not what they used to be.  The name does not change the history.

Brady was an asshat, well so were a lot of people back then.  I'm willing to bet that most of the buildings in Tulsa with a family name can be traced back to an asshat, but that's history, and the names are the ghosts that remind us of where we were, and how we got to where we are.  

It actually thrills me to know that some dead bigot is rolling in his grave because "those people" are living in a thriving and diverse community on the streets and neighborhoods with his namesake.  You want the ghost to suffer?  Own him!  

[DolfanBob]

"You on MLK?!?!?!?!...GET THE F$%K OUTTA THERE!!!!!"

One of Chris Rocks funniest skits.

Also: I like that Gaspar. Well said.

[Red Arrow]

Sometimes changing the name of places is actually useful historically.  You can "date" things by what they were called and when.

Istanbul / Constantinople

There was even a song about that.

[tulsascoot]

This one article has caused a lot of talk around town and got many to start this campaign to rename the area. However, the article has no sources cited! And any research I can do online, including scholarly journals and historical journals through a university library, I can find scarce information about Tate Brady as a whole, and absolutely nothing to corroborate MR Chapman's story. It is yellow journalism at it's finest.

My thought is to get rid of the word "district". I can stand that nobody can seem to think we name a neighborhood without calling it a district. It's too clinical for me. Dallas has Deep Ellum and Lower Greenwood. Denver has LoDo. Kansas City has Westport and the Bottoms. New York has the Garment District, right, but they also have Hell's Kitchen and many more.

I just hope we can keep the Pearl just that. No district needed there. It's just "the Pearl".

[rdj]

Many people had dropped "District" from both Brady & Blue Dome.  I only ever see that in print.

[Conan71]

This one article has caused a lot of talk around town and got many to start this campaign to rename the area. However, the article has no sources cited! And any research I can do online, including scholarly journals and historical journals through a university library, I can find scarce information about Tate Brady as a whole, and absolutely nothing to corroborate MR Chapman's story. It is yellow journalism at it's finest.

I'm glad you caught that and it's not just me.  This is one of the worst essays masquerading as journalism I've seen in a long time.  He's a master at innuendo and managing to stir up a hornet's nest.  Ironically, Chapman cites some of the yellow journalism and journalists of the late teens and early 20's in Tulsa in his article.  Of course none of those articles are useful sources about Tate Brady or his beliefs.  Check Chapman's FB page, his sole purpose in life seems to be re-naming The Brady.  If he wants to so bad, he's more than welcome to raise the money for all the signage, paper goods, etc. which the city and merchants would be on the hook for.

[AquaMan]

I take bus parties/tours through the area. No one uses the term district. Mostly just Brady, Blue Dome or downtown. I try to pimp the East End, Pearl, Cherry and Brookside as well. I would like to see the Deco area drop "district" and be a little better defined. We just drive by the Vault and along Boston but Deco and East End are the hardest to identify so far.

The article was interesting but I know that a lot of print media coverage at the time simply disappeared. Its likely in someone's basement or attic but very difficult to do more than recount
family recollections and stories passed through generations. One of them had the guard dropping bombs from bi-planes. That would have been pretty cutting edge back then.

[custosnox]

I'm glad you caught that and it's not just me.  This is one of the worst essays masquerading as journalism I've seen in a long time.  He's a master at innuendo and managing to stir up a hornet's nest.  Ironically, Chapman cites some of the yellow journalism and journalists of the late teens and early 20's in Tulsa in his article.  Of course none of those articles are useful sources about Tate Brady or his beliefs.  Check Chapman's FB page, his sole purpose in life seems to be re-naming The Brady.  If he wants to so bad, he's more than welcome to raise the money for all the signage, paper goods, etc. which the city and merchants would be on the hook for.

There were some solid facts in the article, such as court records.  However, the tone of the overall article is obviously a run on trying to show that Brady was such a horrible person, and it draws as many conclusions as he thought he could get away with from any inference.  To be honest, of the sources that he sites, I've only seen one that actually connects Brady to the Klan, and that is him saying that he had previously been in but had left.  There might be more that I haven't found, but that is all I've seen thus far.  Chapman has an ax to grind, the only question is to what end.

[DolfanBob]

Mr Chapman seems to have quite a few of Tulsa's finest as friends on his FB.
I wonder if he is a regular reader of Tulsa Now?

[Conan71]

Funny, Chapman claims that the investigator for The National Civil Liberties Bureau "repeatedly" named the police chief and Tate Brady as perpetrators of the mob, yet the name Tate Brady never even appears in the official report from the NCLB.

The man's cries were ignored; every man was whipped, tarred, and feathered. The incident became known "The Tulsa Outrage," and was reported in the national press. According to multiple interviews conducted by National Civil Liberties Bureau investigator L.A. Brown, two men were repeatedly identified as perpetrating the torture: Tulsa's Chief of Police, Ed Lucas, and W. Tate Brady, one of Tulsa's founders. That's Tate Brady, as in Brady Theater, Brady Arts District, and Brady Heights. [6] - See more at: http://thislandpress.com/04/18/2012/tate-brady-battle-greenwood/?page_num=1#sthash.bDFg0FQI.dpuf

"Your investigator states freely that there has not been any
attempt to learn who composed the mob, either will there be
any attempt made to bring any of these law violators to justice
under the present regime. And your investigator does
not recommend that any legal proceedings be undertaken until
such time as there can be some show of obtaining justice.
"Justice to the people of Oklahoma demands that this report
attempt to correct another newspaper falsehood ; that is,
that this mob violence met with general approval. Your in
vestigator talked with more than 200 citizens both women and
men, none of whom approved the mob outrage.

http://libcudl.colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i73704829.pdf

I read the entire report and never saw the name "Brady".  If anyone else finds it, sixer of Marshall's on me.

[Gaspar]

Funny, Chapman claims that the investigator for The National Civil Liberties Bureau "repeatedly" named the police chief and Tate Brady as perpetrators of the mob, yet the name Tate Brady never even appears in the official report from the NCLB.


I read the entire report and never saw the name "Brady".  If anyone else finds it, sixer of Marshall's on me.

You know, it also makes me wonder why This Land is so consumed with stories related to racism in Tulsa.  Sure, that is a dark part of our past, but it's not part of our future.  Unfortunately, it seems that this has led them to publish things that satisfy this agenda without much research.

I really like their design and format, but I wish they could take a few steps forward and be a bit more thorough in their investigative stuff, rather than just providing a narrative platform for folks like Chapman.

[custosnox]

Funny, Chapman claims that the investigator for The National Civil Liberties Bureau "repeatedly" named the police chief and Tate Brady as perpetrators of the mob, yet the name Tate Brady never even appears in the official report from the NCLB.


I read the entire report and never saw the name "Brady".  If anyone else finds it, sixer of Marshall's on me.

okay, I want to know where my sixer is

On the night of Nov. 5, 1917, while sitting in the hall at
No. 6 W. Brady St., Tulsa, Okla.

[Lee Roy Chapman]

Hello all.
I'll be happy to meet anyone who disputes the facts contained within the Brady article. I can show you the documentation. The NCLB published a report. The report did not contain Brady's name. The elusive papers of L.A. Brown, the NCLB investigator who wrote the report, contain the names of Tate Brady and Ed Lucas (TPD chief). All 17 union members identified Brady. That is origin of the "repeatedly" reference. Princeton couldn't find their copies of his papers so we had to get them from the New York State Archives, you can contact them for copies. The Nightmare of Dreamland is based on facts and accurate. Recently, the article  received support from North Tulsa Historical Society, University of Tulsa History Professor Brian Hosmer. And the Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalism awarded the article 2nd place in 2012 for feature magazine writing.
I'm still waiting for the Oklahoma Historical Society to amend their biography on Tate Brady. 
The Brady story and the movement behind the name change just happens to be "trending" right now. I've been a history recovery specialist for 15 years. In 1998 I helped establish and raise the seed money for the Woody Guthrie Coalition, the first Okemah based movement to restore Woody's history to his hometown. That effort resulted in the annual festival. I work with the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, recovering artifacts for a permant exhibit on Greenwood. I was the guy that got the Leon Russell Archive into the OkPOP Museum. In 2009 I recovered Bob Wills tour bus from a cotton patch out in West Texas. It just  arrived here in Tulsa today.
   
Again, open invite.
leeroychapman@yahoo.com
Dig it.

[davideinstein]

Make it stop.

I was at Tulsa Tough on Saturday trying to explain to someone that I was at an intersection with Cincinnati and they were lost trying to find it because at some point it was renamed MLK. Stop renaming things. Embrace your history and how it has evolved. Stop being politically correct and costing folks money. Don't give power to racism, make it such a moot point that it does not exist. And mainly, stop being a pain in the rear and do something better with your time.

Like getting more bike lanes in downtown.