Bunchy Carter
I'll Take The Money Over The Honey
A historic all-Black town wants reparations to rebuild as a ‘safe haven’
Once thriving, Tullahassee, Okla., was ravaged by policies that divested Black communities
By Emmanuel Felton
Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Listen to article
15 min
Darrius Moore rides his horse Flip as he dunks a basketball in Tullahassee, considered Oklahoma's oldest all-Black town. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
TULLAHASSEE, Okla. — If you really concentrate, you can imagine the town that this community’s elders describe. There was the grocery store on the highway, and the gas station. There were the shops where children walked to buy lunch for 50 cents on school days. There was Ms. Sadie’s chicken shack and Dr. Minn’s office. All of that’s gone now. In their place, either vacant lots or dilapidated buildings.
Today, you’re more likely to see loose dogs than people on Lincoln Street, the town’s main drag. There are a couple of horses in a yard just across from the town hall, which used to be the center of a bustling commercial district. Now, Lincoln Street has a handful of homes, the low-slung cinder-block town hall, two churches and just one storefront, Bates Barbecue.
The once-thriving all-Black town of Tullahassee was ravaged by government policies that divested it and other Black communities, said Mayor Keisha Currin. And she says the city is owed reparations to get back on its feet.
Tullahassee Mayor Keisha Currin is working to revitalize her town of 83 and seeking resources to address decades of anti-Black government policies. ( Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Last year, Currin joined Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity (MORE), a group founded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. It counts more than a dozen mayors across the country as members, and its goal is to become a laboratory for new reparations programs that address slavery and the decades of explicitly anti-Black government policies that followed.
“There’s never been a moment like this in American history,” said Ron Daniels, convener of the National African American Reparations Commission. “I’ve worked on this issue my entire adult life, and it’s only recently that I’ve seen reparations move from the political fringes to the mainstream of discourse.
“There are initiatives that are sprouting up daily all across the country, and that’s a recognition of the growing demand, and of the generational damages and harms not only of enslavement but all of the legacies of enslavement, all the racially discriminatory policies, including redlining and policies like the GI Bill where Black people were excluded,” Daniels said.
Supporters say they have the votes in the House to pass a reparations bill after years of lobbying
As the idea of reparations is being explored in communities across the country, Tullahassee stands out. In addition to being the smallest member of the MORE coalition — population 83 — it has a unique connection to the idea of reparations. Other cities are seeking ways to redress the harm they inflicted on their Black residents; Tullahassee was the victim, not the perpetrator, of racist policies. Oklahoma’s Jim Crow laws, banks’ refusal to lend money to residents and businesses, and the fear that engulfed people as the government stood by and allowed White mobs to ravage and destroy the nearby Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, all helped bring down Tullahassee. Its vision of reparations involves finding resources to rebuild the town and, by doing so, creating a blueprint for the hundreds of all-Black communities that once dotted the United States and drew African Americans fleeing racial violence.
“Oklahoma’s Black communities are overdue,” said Mayor Currin, 38, a fourth-generation Tullahassee resident. “Tullahassee has always been in a fight, always fighting to exist and always fighting to thrive. You’re talking about decades of withheld funding and opportunities for these towns. So we are owed reparations, reparations to rebuild all of our Black communities.”
The Carter G. Woodson School closed in 1990. Tullahassee students now attend school in another town. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
An abandoned home in Tullahassee. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
A sign along Lincoln Street and Route 51B tells of Tullahassee's history. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
On a bright, brisk February afternoon, Tullahassee’s town hall took on the air of a family reunion as current and former residents came together to talk to planners from the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Quality Communities about what they wanted for their town. As people laughed over barbecue and distant cousins worked out how they were related, community members sketched out their vision: more housing, fewer loose dogs on Lincoln Street, the renovation of the old gym, more spaces for kids to play and the clearing of overgrown lots. By the end of the weekend, the team from the University of Oklahoma had drawn up an action plan that then-Town Manager Cymone Davis planned to pass on to another team, this one from Oklahoma State University, to help build out.
This had been Davis’s job for the past year and a half — finding and marshaling resources to rebuild Tullahassee. Davis, a native of Kansas City, Mo., first learned about Tullahassee from the documentary “Struggle and Hope,” which chronicled the history of Black towns in Oklahoma. At the time, Davis, a former educator, was planning a private Black boarding school inspired by the 100 such schools that existed across the country before desegregation. After seeing the documentary, she decided it had to be in Oklahoma. That’s when she contacted Currin on Facebook.
Currin, who has a full-time job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Davis instantly felt a bond, and the mayor started pushing Davis to move to Oklahoma to help her rebuild Tullahassee. Davis was sold when she realized that she had roots in the area, and in 2020, she moved to Tulsa on the Tulsa Remote program, which provides grants to people who work from the city. After that, Currin offered her a job as Tullahassee’s first town manager.
Before Davis arrived, Currin had been working for years out of the limelight to turn around the town’s fortunes. When she took office, Tullahassee was facing a crisis. It owed the neighboring town of Porter over $30,000 in past-due water bills, and the mayor of Porter was threatening to cut off Tullahassee’s water. For a town that takes in less than $2,000 a month, that was a huge bill. It took Currin years to pay it off. She applied for grant after grant, but could secure only one, from the Eastern Oklahoma Development District.
What the story of one family reveals about reparations
Davis brought new energy to Currin’s dream of revitalizing her hometown. She became Tullahassee’s one-woman public works department, recruiting volunteers to clean up the roads and restore the A.J. Mason Building — constructed in 1912 and the only surviving building from Tullahassee’s heyday — and pushing through the annexation of land Tullahassee had lost over the years, something Currin had long tried to achieve. It was on a trip to Los Angeles, where Davis was on the hunt for resources for the town, that she connected with Garcetti’s office and learned about the MORE coalition.
“I was able to bring in resources and a network and then Keisha had the trust of this community, so we have been able to do a lot of things really quickly,” Davis said excitedly. “Sixteen months ago, no one knew about Tullahassee. Now we are in this MORE coalition, now we have [the University of Oklahoma] and [Oklahoma State University] here. It’s just like whiplash.”
Tullahassee is thought to be the oldest of the more than 50 Black communities that sprouted up in Oklahoma between the Civil War and the Great Depression. It traces its roots back to 1850 when a school was built in the area by members of the Creek Nation. The tribe had been forced into present-day Oklahoma, which was then called Indian Territory, from Florida and Alabama during the infamous Trail of Tears. The tribal members brought with them the enslaved Black people they had purchased in the South.
In 1866, during the aftermath of the Civil War, the U.S. government signed a new treaty with the Creek Nation that forced the tribe to give up its enslaved people and grant them tribal citizenship. These formerly enslaved people became known as Creek Freedmen, and across Oklahoma, they formed prosperous agricultural communities that supported schools, businesses and churches.
People attend a service at Pleasant Grove Church in Tullahassee in February. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Once thriving, Tullahassee, Okla., was ravaged by policies that divested Black communities
By Emmanuel Felton
Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Listen to article
15 min
Darrius Moore rides his horse Flip as he dunks a basketball in Tullahassee, considered Oklahoma's oldest all-Black town. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
TULLAHASSEE, Okla. — If you really concentrate, you can imagine the town that this community’s elders describe. There was the grocery store on the highway, and the gas station. There were the shops where children walked to buy lunch for 50 cents on school days. There was Ms. Sadie’s chicken shack and Dr. Minn’s office. All of that’s gone now. In their place, either vacant lots or dilapidated buildings.
Today, you’re more likely to see loose dogs than people on Lincoln Street, the town’s main drag. There are a couple of horses in a yard just across from the town hall, which used to be the center of a bustling commercial district. Now, Lincoln Street has a handful of homes, the low-slung cinder-block town hall, two churches and just one storefront, Bates Barbecue.
The once-thriving all-Black town of Tullahassee was ravaged by government policies that divested it and other Black communities, said Mayor Keisha Currin. And she says the city is owed reparations to get back on its feet.
Tullahassee Mayor Keisha Currin is working to revitalize her town of 83 and seeking resources to address decades of anti-Black government policies. ( Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Last year, Currin joined Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity (MORE), a group founded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. It counts more than a dozen mayors across the country as members, and its goal is to become a laboratory for new reparations programs that address slavery and the decades of explicitly anti-Black government policies that followed.
“There’s never been a moment like this in American history,” said Ron Daniels, convener of the National African American Reparations Commission. “I’ve worked on this issue my entire adult life, and it’s only recently that I’ve seen reparations move from the political fringes to the mainstream of discourse.
“There are initiatives that are sprouting up daily all across the country, and that’s a recognition of the growing demand, and of the generational damages and harms not only of enslavement but all of the legacies of enslavement, all the racially discriminatory policies, including redlining and policies like the GI Bill where Black people were excluded,” Daniels said.
Supporters say they have the votes in the House to pass a reparations bill after years of lobbying
As the idea of reparations is being explored in communities across the country, Tullahassee stands out. In addition to being the smallest member of the MORE coalition — population 83 — it has a unique connection to the idea of reparations. Other cities are seeking ways to redress the harm they inflicted on their Black residents; Tullahassee was the victim, not the perpetrator, of racist policies. Oklahoma’s Jim Crow laws, banks’ refusal to lend money to residents and businesses, and the fear that engulfed people as the government stood by and allowed White mobs to ravage and destroy the nearby Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, all helped bring down Tullahassee. Its vision of reparations involves finding resources to rebuild the town and, by doing so, creating a blueprint for the hundreds of all-Black communities that once dotted the United States and drew African Americans fleeing racial violence.
“Oklahoma’s Black communities are overdue,” said Mayor Currin, 38, a fourth-generation Tullahassee resident. “Tullahassee has always been in a fight, always fighting to exist and always fighting to thrive. You’re talking about decades of withheld funding and opportunities for these towns. So we are owed reparations, reparations to rebuild all of our Black communities.”
The Carter G. Woodson School closed in 1990. Tullahassee students now attend school in another town. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
An abandoned home in Tullahassee. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
A sign along Lincoln Street and Route 51B tells of Tullahassee's history. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
On a bright, brisk February afternoon, Tullahassee’s town hall took on the air of a family reunion as current and former residents came together to talk to planners from the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Quality Communities about what they wanted for their town. As people laughed over barbecue and distant cousins worked out how they were related, community members sketched out their vision: more housing, fewer loose dogs on Lincoln Street, the renovation of the old gym, more spaces for kids to play and the clearing of overgrown lots. By the end of the weekend, the team from the University of Oklahoma had drawn up an action plan that then-Town Manager Cymone Davis planned to pass on to another team, this one from Oklahoma State University, to help build out.
This had been Davis’s job for the past year and a half — finding and marshaling resources to rebuild Tullahassee. Davis, a native of Kansas City, Mo., first learned about Tullahassee from the documentary “Struggle and Hope,” which chronicled the history of Black towns in Oklahoma. At the time, Davis, a former educator, was planning a private Black boarding school inspired by the 100 such schools that existed across the country before desegregation. After seeing the documentary, she decided it had to be in Oklahoma. That’s when she contacted Currin on Facebook.
Currin, who has a full-time job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Davis instantly felt a bond, and the mayor started pushing Davis to move to Oklahoma to help her rebuild Tullahassee. Davis was sold when she realized that she had roots in the area, and in 2020, she moved to Tulsa on the Tulsa Remote program, which provides grants to people who work from the city. After that, Currin offered her a job as Tullahassee’s first town manager.
Before Davis arrived, Currin had been working for years out of the limelight to turn around the town’s fortunes. When she took office, Tullahassee was facing a crisis. It owed the neighboring town of Porter over $30,000 in past-due water bills, and the mayor of Porter was threatening to cut off Tullahassee’s water. For a town that takes in less than $2,000 a month, that was a huge bill. It took Currin years to pay it off. She applied for grant after grant, but could secure only one, from the Eastern Oklahoma Development District.
What the story of one family reveals about reparations
Davis brought new energy to Currin’s dream of revitalizing her hometown. She became Tullahassee’s one-woman public works department, recruiting volunteers to clean up the roads and restore the A.J. Mason Building — constructed in 1912 and the only surviving building from Tullahassee’s heyday — and pushing through the annexation of land Tullahassee had lost over the years, something Currin had long tried to achieve. It was on a trip to Los Angeles, where Davis was on the hunt for resources for the town, that she connected with Garcetti’s office and learned about the MORE coalition.
“I was able to bring in resources and a network and then Keisha had the trust of this community, so we have been able to do a lot of things really quickly,” Davis said excitedly. “Sixteen months ago, no one knew about Tullahassee. Now we are in this MORE coalition, now we have [the University of Oklahoma] and [Oklahoma State University] here. It’s just like whiplash.”
Tullahassee is thought to be the oldest of the more than 50 Black communities that sprouted up in Oklahoma between the Civil War and the Great Depression. It traces its roots back to 1850 when a school was built in the area by members of the Creek Nation. The tribe had been forced into present-day Oklahoma, which was then called Indian Territory, from Florida and Alabama during the infamous Trail of Tears. The tribal members brought with them the enslaved Black people they had purchased in the South.
In 1866, during the aftermath of the Civil War, the U.S. government signed a new treaty with the Creek Nation that forced the tribe to give up its enslaved people and grant them tribal citizenship. These formerly enslaved people became known as Creek Freedmen, and across Oklahoma, they formed prosperous agricultural communities that supported schools, businesses and churches.
People attend a service at Pleasant Grove Church in Tullahassee in February. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
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I experienced so many emotions reading this post
