Actor Tom Hanks penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times that called for American schools to teach more on the atrocities that America has committed against Black people. Hanks wrote the article which was published on June 4, for the New York Times commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre and revealed he never heard about the murders while attending high school or community college in Oakland.
“I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case,” Hanks wrote.
Hanks also stated that many of the accomplishments made by African Americans were also overlooked and added that many incidents like Tulsa were commonly not taught “because history is mostly written by white people about white people.” The two-time Academy Award winner also expressed that the Tulsa Race Massacre should be taught as early as the fifth grade and that the country must learn from its mistakes.
“Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered,” he wrote.
Hanks also called on Hollywood to start telling the truth and not whitewash its stories.
“Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same. That includes projects of mine … Historically based fiction entertainment must portray the burden of racism in our nation for the sake of the art form’s claims to verisimilitude and authenticity,” the Forrest Gump star also penned.
You can read Tom Hanks’ full letter about the Tulsa Race Massacre at Nytimes.com.
