Daddy’s Little Dividend

The town where we live is, to us, quaint. With a population of 300,000, it isn’t the biggest of towns but neither is it the smallest. It was a small territorial town until the oil boom of the early 1900’s hit our state and then suddenly it was the jewel in the crown of the Midwest.

One of the interesting things about it is that when the oil boom finally died in the 80’s, most of the downtown area was vacated. It’s changing now, albeit, very slow. The nice thing about all the vacant space is that there is a wonderful selection of locales to shoot at. Perhaps it’s not as diverse as Chicago or New York but what there is works.

During the last few years one part of town, the Greenwood neighborhood has been undergoing major renovation. Greenwood is important because it is the site of one the nation’s worse race atrocities. In 1921, 80 square blocks of homes, businesses and schools were burned to the ground by white citizens in response to a rumored attack on a young white girl by a black shoeshine boy. Posterity has proven this accusation to be false. Estimates vary but it is believed that between 800 and 3000 people were killed during the rioting and conflagration.

Now, the only part that is left of the original neighborhood has been restored and the state university has a lovely campus on one end.

Greenwood is where we found ourselves this weekend taking pictures. We decided to drive to the far end of Greenwood and take some pictures underneath a magnificent willow tree that sits next to a pond near the University campus. The shoot took some time because the Kitten, having never seen a willow tree before, thought it was mad fun to run around and between every single branch and shoot. Every. Single. One. Needless to say, that left me with a lot of free time in between shots until she would come running thru the particular place where I had my strobes set up and could snap a shot off as she went rushing by giggling.

I’ve seen enough pain and atrocities in the world during my travels that even the idea of what went on during the burning of Greenwood pains me. 80 years ago, in the same field where the Pussycat and I were taking pictures and laughing with our daughter … lives were stolen away and futures were forfeited because of stupidity and ignorance.

Lately, there has been alot of talk in the local city council of paying reparations for the crimes that occured then. Maybe that’s right, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. My ancestors weren’t there. At the same time Greenwood was burning one side was still fishing in the coastal waters of Sweden and the other side was somewhere in south Texas. Personally, I don’t think anything that happens now will appease the ghosts of those who lost their lives, it’s simply been too many years for justice to come from a court or a bank book. What I do believe though, is that when the Kitten grows up, we’ll have done a good enough job raising her that racism won’t exist in her mind and that she will have the proper disdain and hatred for those who practice it.