Passing on a Blind Corner

Judy Woodruff’s on-the-road reports for PBS Newshour on the forces dividing our country are good television, making eyes open, minds boggle, heads shake and hearts ache. Never more so than the segment of her outstanding “America at a Crossroads” series chronicling her visit to her native Tulsa, Oklahoma. Woodruff’s subject is the 1921 race massacre there, a defining moment for her birthplace that did not come to her attention until just a few years ago.

Revealing her long-time blind spot to viewers doesn’t diminish the report, it makes it all the more powerful. It shows how history can be kept out of view, how truth can be buried. Woodruff’s admission was anything but surprising to me. I too was not taught about the Tulsa massacre in school. Was unaware of Black Wall Street until I was well into my fifties. Had never heard of the history of sundown towns, even though nearly every community I grew up around once fit the description.

More years were in the rear-view mirror than lay before…