This project shed light on the tragic and often overlooked history of the Tulsa Race Massacre by engaging hundreds of students in studying this period and then creating artifacts and displays to showcase what they uncovered.
A Century of Questions: Student-Driven Inquiry into the Tulsa Race Massacre is a project of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project that aimed to shed light on this overlooked, tragic episode in US history—the 1921 massacre in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Through this project, hundreds of students and their teachers have visited Greenwood’s cultural centers, monuments, and museums, and then created artifacts and displays to showcase to their peers the history that they uncovered.
Resources below are designed to support teachers and students engagement in place-based inquiry, composition, and sharing. Resources can be used to study the Tulsa Race Massacre specifically or used to support place-based inquiry in any local community.
Listen to this interview with educators involved in this project to learn how they supported teachers and students to do this work together.
Classroom Library Suggestions: In the video interview above, Shanedra shares the following suggestions for classroom libraries about the Tulsa Massacre with age-appropriate notes.
A Century of Questions Project Design Resources: In the video above, Shanedra shares the following slides (PDF) and describes different design aspects of this project; highlights include:
Framework for building teacher knowledge:
Building a classroom library:
Using local place as “text” with students and teachers; map for visiting the Greenwood neighborhood:
Supporting students to share their inquiries by creating with a range of tools and technologies:
Knowing Your History: Place, Photography, and Poetry: A multimodal photography/writing activity developed by Shelley Martin of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project. Developed originally for Write Out 2021.
This episode features Rob Cameron, a teacher, linguist, and writer who organizes the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founded the Constellations Mentorship program for the Octavia Project. Rob is interviewed by Max Limric, a pre-service elementary teacher who became interested in the power of children's and young adult literature, having grown up with speculative stories like Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story.
Ellen Oh is an award-winning author of numerous middle grade and young adult books including The Spirit Hunters series and Prophecy trilogy, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Melissa Thom is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in Connecticut with 22 years of educational experience and former president of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians.