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News, events, updates, and tidbits from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Use tags to read related articles or sort by author for similar posts written by PHS staff members and volunteers.

The Tulsa Massacre

May 26, 2021
Overhead view of Tulsa, 1928. Watch Tulsa General Assembly film here.

On June 1, 1921 the Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma--Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street, where Black migrants from the South had prospered in the city’s oil boom--was burned down by white rioters. The governor called in the National Guard and evacuated Tulsa’s Black population, some 6,000 people, to the city convention center and fairgrounds. Three hundred people are estimated to have...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Tulsa, Oklahoma, African American History, Lynchings
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The “Problem” of Native American Church Membership

September 11, 2018

--by Jennifer Graber

Session minutes of the Anadarko Presbyterian Church, founded in Indian Territory in 1889, referred to the “problem” of Native American church membership on the very first page. Rev. Silas Fait, along with an elder, examined an “Indian named Emma.” Though she “accept[ed] Christ,” the leaders rejected Emma’s application as she maintained that Christ could not “interfere with her own gods.” In the follow-up notes, Rev. Fait worried that “great harm will come to the mission if care is not exercised...

Author: 
Guest Blogger
Tags: 
Scholar Research, Native Americans, Mission History, Oklahoma
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Oklahoma Travelogue

July 27, 2017

In the first week of June, PHS Records Archivist David Staniunas went on a three-city tour of Oklahoma, attending the tri-presbytery gathering in Enid; speaking at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City; and spending a day at First Presbyterian Church, Tulsa. 

I had come packing video from PHS's collections. First, of the 1928 General Assembly in Tulsa, which featured footage of First Tulsa's since-destroyed Greek Revival building, and of the Art Deco Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, then under construction. Second, footage from the...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Oklahoma, Archives, Congregations
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