TULSA, Okla. (AP) - One of Tulsa’s most historic Black churches is undergoing a restoration project to preserve what has become a memorial to 1921 Race Massacre survivors.
The wooden frames around the stained-glass windows at Vernon A.M.E. Church were rotting so much that the windows shook from Tulsa’s downtown traffic.
On Tuesday, crews began removing the stained glass and replaced them with temporary windows to last for the next six months. Pastor Robert Turner had been concerned that the windows would eventually fall out or break.
“They’re not just windows,” Turner told Tulsa World. “They’re a monument and a memorial” to the people who rebuilt not only the church but the entire Greenwood District.
The massacre in 1921 decimated Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, an economic and cultural mecca for African American people, which was located in the Greenwood neighborhood. The violence left 300 dead, 800 wounded and more than 8,000 homeless. The attack has risen to higher national prominence this year, including when President Donald Trump picked Tulsa as the site for the first of his trademark campaign rallies during the coronavirus pandemic.
The restoration will focus on the wooden frames that hold the windows and repairing cracks in the windows themselves.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation helped fund the restoration project, putting $150,000 into the effort. But that grant wasn’t enough to fund the whole project, Turner said. The Schusterman Family Foundation and other Tulsa philanthropists pitched in the additional funding.
“It would not be happening without them,” Turner said. “It would not have been possible.”
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