TALK OF GREENWOOD
Dr. Jerry Goodwin
All-Black town tour participants visit the Boley Community Center, which offers services and programming for its senior citizens to infants. Boley is recognized as the largest and most well-known of the 50 All-Black towns of Oklahoma. Photo provided
In observance of Juneteenth, the Tulsa City-County Library’s African American Resource Center (AARC) and the Tulsa Library Trust are sponsoring the 25th Annual Historic All-Black Town Tour on June 1.
The tour will visit the town of Langston and historic sites in Oklahoma City. It also will visit the African American History Exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. This year, Shirley Ann Nero, distinguished historian, native of all-Black town Clearview and board member of the Oklahoma African American Educators Hall of Fame, will return as a tour guide. She will be joined by Darren Williams, a teacher at McLain High School of Science and Technology.
The tour serves as the AARC’s celebration of Juneteenth, which memorializes the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, honored annually on June 19. It was on this date in 1865 that African American people still enslaved in Texas, particularly Galveston, learned of the Emancipation Proclamation that announced the end of slavery and the right to freedom from bondage, by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. The annual All-Black Town Tour celebrates existing and historical towns and communities that were built after emancipation.
Tickets, which are nonrefundable, can be purchased for $55 each in advance and in person at Rudisill Regional Library by card, cash or check. Tickets include breakfast, lunch, and museum fare. Seating is limited to a first-come-first-serve basis, and seat sharing is prohibited. Youths ages 17 and under must be accompanied by an adult guardian.
The bus will leave at 8 a.m. from Rudisill Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford Ave., and return to the same location at 5:30 p.m. Breakfast and sign-in will begin at 7 a.m. inside the Library.
For more information on library programs and services, call (918) 549-7323 or visit www.tulsalibrary.org.
###
