“There is Hope for Us Yet”: Eddie Faye Gates Collection Community Commentators
By Quraysh Ali Lansana

During the Summer months of 2022, the Helmerich Center for American Research (HCAR) at Gilcrease Museum hosted several meetings of a lively intergenerational group of eight Tulsans to explore the recently acquired archive of noted teacher, activist and 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre historian Ms. Eddie Faye Gates.

Who was Eddie Faye Gates?

Ms. Gates, born Eddie Faye Petit in Preston, OK in 1934, was the second child born to sharecroppers, Vivian and Ferman Petit. Gates’ grandparents, whose parents were enslaved in Texas on a cotton plantation, came to Indian Territory along with 12 other families in a caravan of wagons in 1904.

Ms. Gates attended the Tuskegee Institute (now University), where she met her future husband, Norman Gates, an engineering student. After living on various Air Force bases with Norman, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Dakota.

The Gates family arrived in Tulsa from North Dakota in 1968, and Ms. Gates began teaching at Edison High School, the second African American to teach there. In 1974, she obtained a Master of Arts degree in history from The University of Tulsa. She taught at Edison High School for 22 years and served as the Curriculum Coordinator in Social Studies for Tulsa Public Schools for two years. 

But the most significant legacy of Eddie Faye Gates is her work on behalf of the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. By the 1990s, the survivors of the massacre were well advanced in years, and many were deceased. Their stories were lost because of the fear ingrained in those who survived and the silence of the community.

Gates led the charge to ensure survivors were heard, fighting along with Senator Maxine Horner and Representative Don Ross to seek reparations on their behalf. The photographs and videos documenting oral histories of Race Massacre survivors and descendants that she collected, as well as the books she wrote, helped lay the foundation for much of the knowledge we have today. She also served on the original Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, which was established in 1998. Her book Riot on Greenwood: The Total Destruction of Black Wall Street, was instrumental in identifying 136 living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1997 prior to her appointment to the Commission.

Ms. Eddie Faye Gates’ archive of photographs, video oral histories and papers now reside at Gilcrease Museum for generations to come to visit, learn and be inspired.

Ms. Eddie Faye Gates joined the ancestors on December 9th, 2021, less than seven months after the Centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Who and what are Community Commentators?

Upon receiving Ms. Gates’ collection, Gilcrease had a good problem--to determine the most effective methods to examine, categorize and catalogue hundreds of documents, photographs, and video oral histories. Not only for the purposes of proper preservation, but to also ensure, as Ms. Gates wanted, easy public access to her collection. The goal of Gates’ work was not for it to gather dust in the basement of a museum, but for Gilcrease to share the stories of Race Massacre survivors and other prominent Black Tulsans with both young and old in perpetuity.

Museum staff invited four elder community members and four high school students to help with the tagging of photos and videos in the Gates collection. “Tagging” in the archival sense means creating keywords and search terms around the topics found in the material. According to the National Archives, “…the best tags are the ones that add new information to a record that isn’t already available.” Tags provide context clues for a particular item that make it easier to search for that item. Many archivists think of tags in the same manner readers think of the index of a book. 

The decision to bring together an intergenerational group to engage in the work of tagging a small selection of this massive collection was very much in concert with Ms. Gates’ work. She spent her entire life educating the city’s youth while illuminating the experiences of older Tulsans. 

The four teams worked in pairs, with an elder working side by side with a young person. Bobby Eaton, himself from a distinguished Black Tulsa family, is the owner of the KBOB 89.9 Radio Station and host of the Bobby Eaton Show. Mr. Eaton teamed with Miss Sofia Fermo, a student at Edison High School. 

“I really love that I attend the school where Miss Gates taught,” Ms. Fermo said. 

Fermo also enjoyed her time in the archive with Mr. Eaton and the other seniors.

“Working with elders was my favorite part because I would see a photo but wouldn’t know what was going on behind it. Hearing the elders is very knowledgeable. The whole experience was very knowledgeable.”

Eaton considered it a tremendous project.

“Looking at the photos and seeing some iconic people that I hadn’t seen in years was a great thing.”

Miss Erika Hanes, a student at Tulsa Community College, found optimism for the future.

“I discovered that there is hope for us yet--young people--as they learn the truth and the facts, that they’re not as fragile as people would make them seem. So, through this project I am hopeful that we will learn how to continue to move forward, as a part of humanity.”

Haynes worked with Miss Francine Johnson Campbell, a retired science teacher who returned to the classroom in 2021 due to the teacher shortage. Miss Campbell met Eddie Faye Gates in the 1990’s when she owned the Future Vision Fine Art Gallery.

“I learned from the project about a lot of iconic people I had heard of but didn’t know who they were, like Miss Jackson. I painted a picture of Miss Jackson going to prom and I didn’t know that she was actually the person who was the inspiration for one of my paintings of prom night, 1921.”

Another elder on the project who knew Ms. Gates personally was the late Mr. James Kavin Ross. In fact, Mr. Ross helped to create parts of the collection as the photographer/videographer for Ms. Gates. Ross, an educator with Tulsa Public Schools, continued to be deeply involved with research related to the Tulsa Race Massacre. His work included serving as Chairman of the City’s Mass Graves Investigation Public Oversight Committee.

“I was honored to be with Eddie Faye Gates for the numerous testimonies of Riot survivors in the late nineties, which today is a big joy for me as I’m seeing people from around the world enjoying those testimonies and getting a lot out of them.”

Ross was also profoundly moved by the dedication of his young teammate, Miss LeQuincia Brown, then a student at Booker T. Washington High School.

“I love the fact that LeQuincia was so into it, and very vocal and asked those questions that need to be answered from our elders. I’m hoping the young folk will continue to ask the elders questions on what was life like back in the day.”

LeQuinica, now a freshman at OSU studying music, was not apprehensive about the age gap with the project elders.

“My partner was the fantastic and extremely knowledgeable Mr. Ross. And one thing I thought, well one thing I found really interesting about the entire project was how the elders and the youth had different experiences but had similar ways of describing them. It was just really cool, and everybody was just a cavalcade of knowledge, and I was like, oh, my gosh! And it was just so, so much fun to learn from everybody.”

Miss Lucinda (Cindy) Montecella Driver, a retired educator, administrator, and community activist, was also inspired by working with a young person.

“My partner was Iana Redman. Iana was a very busy person, which is good. She's involved in so many things …but I enjoyed working with her. There was a cross-generational component in this cause, and I think it's so important for the more mature to have conversations with the young people and the young people to have conversations with the older people. So that was important to me.”

Miss Driver also learned a few things about archival work while on the Community Commentators project.

“One of the surprises for me was just learning about some of the processes of a museum, and how information is stored and disseminated. So, it was really interesting for me to be a part of this.”

The Elders, the Youth, and the Collection: A Learning Experience

Do the elders fear the youth as a lost cause? Do young people dismiss the elders as having nothing to learn from them? Miss Fermo reflects on this matter regarding her work with Mr. Eaton and the Gates Collection.

“Why I feel what you're saying is educational for me was like in schools, they do not have as much of a conversation as we have had here and what we've been having and, I think, seeing the photographs, seeing how real it was, also made it very real. To see [how] this happened and … you can see how these people, I mean mainly in the videos, you can see more of the heartbreak in it. But in the photos, you can just see them being humans, and how they moved forward with their lives. I … was truly inspired by it, and, by seeing so many of these important people, was also seeing their histories, all their relatives, like all the elders here, like their relatives were in these and they could like talk about them. So, hearing it from their personal perspectives was also very educational. And then for the disconnect, I feel it's probably on both sides, maybe, cause, some people are scared to have this conversation, and they all want to be hush, hush! about it. Then young people may be interested in this conversation. I feel like we should start introducing it younger. So maybe people will be more interested in having this conversation later because I don't think younger kids should be hearing here about the Massacre part, but just introducing the idea and Greenwood in general. But I think introducing the idea to people can also open the conversation when they're older, and gradually grow.”

The photographs, videos and conversations with elders left an indelible impression on LeQuincia.

“It was just a very, very dense learning experience. It was honestly really amazing, and almost kept me in awe every single meeting we had, with how many stories the elders had, how much knowledge they were bestowing on us. And I was just like, okay, definitely did not learn this is school. I’m glad I'm learning this now.”

Erica also shared more about the experience with the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre and working with the elders.

“I agree with what Sofia said about introducing it early on. And then, as students get older, going more in depth, because obviously teaching a kid about the Massacre is not something that we should be doing. But, I was also blown away by the amount of information that I was taking in every single time we would come into a meeting. I really didn't have really an expectation coming into every meeting or gathering that we had. But it was always so mind-blowing, like how one story would lead to the other, and then it would circle back around, and it was just awesome to hear that. And I really hope that we have those stories written down somewhere, or we get them written down.”

Is the current gap between generations too large to bridge? Miss Driver believes it is not, but there is much work to be done for both young and old.

“We don't always have to lecture crossing generational interactions. I think that we must be deliberate and setting up sessions like you guys did with cross-generational conversations, so that we can learn from each other. And I say that those of us that are more mature can learn as much from the younger people as they can learn from us. In fact, my knowledge of the computer comes from young people. My knowledge of Zoom comes from young people. So, I try to stay connected to young people in whatever organizations that I belong. I think when you make deliberate conversations of experiences between the generations, among the different generations, I think there is a richness that happens and an appreciation of different groups. Because we all have our own beliefs about different age groups. It's interesting to see those beliefs or stereotypical beliefs sometimes be knocked down because of interactions like these. I always say that the more you interact with someone different from you the better the relationship becomes.” 

Mr. Eaton thinks our young people need more support, encouragement, and truth from older folks.

“If we can invest into our youth, and not be afraid of them. Some of our elders are afraid of young people. I think we can possibly get back to a good space. I’m hopeful about that the young people will continue to move us forward in our humanity as human beings, because it's sort of frightening what we're going through now.  People are beginning to try to pull the curtains on the truth and the facts about history.”

Miss Driver has her own viewpoint regarding this history, what it means. and how it continues to inform the future of Tulsa.

“I really don't believe in Black history month. I’m not with it at all. I believe that's American history, you know, 12 months out of the year. Because the systematic control is they wipe out your history. You will never know, you never know about the best schools and about the other facilities that were once here in our community, because urban renewal wipes it all out. So, these young people who grew up don't know or even talk about integration and I'm not trying to be any kind of way. I think it really hurt us because it allowed us to go to other places where you got other races who got their own communities. You know you got the whites over here. You got the Hispanics over here. Yeah, you got everybody you got. You got small towns like Bixby and Owasso and Broken Arrow, who have less people than North Tulsa. Who have more economic development in their cities. I thought a lot about our black people not sticking together and building up that brand like Black Wall Street. We talk about Black Wall Street now, but we don't build anything in our communities. But I don't know what the answer is. I keep saying we must get together like we are here and have some very genuine honest conversations. We can't tiptoe around the tulips; we have to talk about the good, we have to talk about those things that tear us apart.”

The Museum and the Community

Gilcrease Museum was founded in 1949 as a private museum by Tulsa oilman and Muscogee Nation Citizen Thomas Gilcrease (1890-1962), who amassed the nation's most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, as well as major collections of historical documents and artifacts. The museum is in the Gilcrease Hills neighborhood, which is a predominantly Black community in North Tulsa. Our Community Commentator, Miss Campbell, shared her thoughts on the role of the institution and the neighborhood in which it resides. 

“Well, because the Gilcrease Museum is connected directly to the University of Tulsa, the University of Tulsa has archival information that can help to fill in the blanks. And some of the history that exists, some of the information, some of the visuals of North Tulsa, and setting in the community. They can be more proactive like they brought in the Memories and Inspirations exhibition and then also the outreach into the schools. Schools, particularly and specifically in North Tulsa, to make the collections available to students to learn from, and then specifically to reach out to the schools and community, to help show that you are partners and members of the community. Outreach to the school systems and invite children back in, because, as a child we went to the museums every year, and … Gilcrease was one of those museums. The Thomas Gilcrease Museum was one of the museums that we went to learn about Oklahoma history in elementary school, and I remember those bus rides up to Gilcrease. But here we are now knowing that we get this beautiful new museum that's coming. Knowing the fact that this Eddie Faye Gates Collection is going to have [a] secure home and many exhibitions. But one thing that I can see is Gilcrease Museum is flipping the script, and they're incorporating African Americans like Eddie Faye Gates.”

The significance of this intergenerational project is far reaching. Not only have these Community Commentators, both young and older, learned valuable skills in archival work, they have each learned life lessons they will cherish for the rest of their lives. Lessons that involve dissolving barriers and opening pathways of empathy and understanding. Lessons that emphasize the tenuous tether between yesterday, today and tomorrow. History is what we study and what we create, individually and collectively. Tulsa lost one of those iconic individuals, James Kavin Ross, in May of 2023. His work, like the work of his fellow Community Commentators and historians, will continue to live and feed future generations.