Sarah Lewis Instagram – Just coming on here to say….It very well could be that the power of a photograph is in its afterlife. Images may mean the most long after we’ve taken them. To see this image now is to understand so much history that has been denied, edited out, and not honored about how Americans—all—truly have lived on this here soil.
This image is a photograph of John Hope Franklin’s father, Buck Colbert Franklin, the icon of a lawyer. He lived through the 1921 Tulsa Riots. He witnessed the murders. He wrote a book about it. Much of what we know about that history comes from his work.
I was thinking back to what Tom Hanks—yes—said about how stunned he was that he had never ever heard about the Tulsa Race Riots and massacre. And how important it was that someone like Tom Hanks who said this, not me. Check out his op-ed on this in the @nytimes. Excellent.
So, I’m just here saluting the work of that has gone into amplified unseen histories, and thinking of how much photography has contributed to that invaluable work for the world.
When I teach Vision and Justice again at Harvard this Spring semester, I’ll do so undaunted. I will do so feeling that it is an honor to tell the full, rich, expansive history of this extraordinary American project, especially when many of us are being intimidated for doing so. We will stay in the light. Stay filled with joy as we do this work. And I also look forward to bringing this course out of Harvard and into the world.
#tulsa #visionandjusticeconference | Posted on 11/Jan/2024 07:19:46
