The Historic Greenwood District and Tulsa’s Black history were front and center in the third hour of the “Today” show Friday morning.
Al Roker, Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones appeared in front of a live audience of hundreds at Guthrie Green, an open-air event space downtown. The hosts celebrated Tulsa’s culture, businesses and local celebrity chefs. Greenwood Rising and Black Wall Street featured prominently during the show, shining a national light on the history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
“The Greenwood District, (it’s) really just this epitome of resilience and what a community can do when they face what’s happened in the past as you move forward into the future,” Roker said in an interview with the Tulsa Flyer and The Oklahoma Eagle. “It was really moving.”
Roker donned a hat and jacket from Greenwood Ave. for most of the broadcast, after it was featured alongside several other Tulsa-area businesses.
“Trey (Thaxton) started this brand to honor that history,” Olivia Jordan, the Oklahoman who was crowned Miss USA in 2015, said while promoting Tulsa brands on air. “But (Thaxton) said this is not just Tulsa history or Black history, this is American history.”
Several other Tulsans made appearances, including Mayor Monroe Nichols, who quizzed the hosts on their city knowledge. The event was sponsored by Visit Tulsa, the tourism arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
Union Public Schools’ marching band soundtracked the broadcast with “Oklahoma” alongside Booker T. Washington High School’s varsity cheerleaders and mascots representing the state’s teams and colleges.
Trevor Tack, executive chef at Pastis Hospitality, and Cat Cox, James Beard-winning owner of Country Bird Bakery, joined for a cooking demonstration. The show wrapped with a live performance from pop-rock trio Hanson.
The trip to Tulsa also served as a homecoming for Jones, whose second job in news was at what is now Tulsa’s FOX 23. The city’s developed quite a bit since she left in 2005, Jones said, but the feeling of home has stayed the same.
“They were some of the best times of my life,” Jones said. Several of her relatives from Wichita, Kansas and Claremore, Oklahoma attended Friday’s broadcast. “I was kind of wrapped with family here.”
She said her family’s ancestry research recently revealed more ties to the American West — and to the legacy of Black journalism. Her great-grandfather, Grant Brown, started and ran a Black newspaper in the small town of Atchison, Kansas.
“They were telling our stories long before we had mainstream press to do it — and I think it’s so important to preserve it,” she said. “So the fact that they’re (The Oklahoma Eagle) still doing that here in Tulsa, that legacy is strong, it’s pretty impressive.”
The Eagle is the longest running, Black-owned paper in Oklahoma and 10th-oldest in the U.S. It took over for the Tulsa Star, which was destroyed in the race massacre.
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