Deep navy and beige, an Osage shield at the center on a background of an eight-pointed star. Tulsa's flag, adopted in 2018 after a long public consultation process, is one of the finest recent redesigns of American municipal vexillology. It pays tribute to the Osage, the Indigenous people whose lands were taken to found this city.
Tulsa was founded in the 1880s on the lands of the Creek Nation, forcibly ceded by the federal government. At the start of the 20th century, the discovery of oil beneath the Oklahoma plains made Tulsa "the oil capital of the world." The Art Deco skyscrapers that still punctuate downtown were built with crude-oil money.
At least 300 people were killed. 1,000 homes were destroyed. It is one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history, deliberately erased from textbooks for decades.
The centennial of the Tulsa massacre, in 2021, forced a national reckoning with this erasure. HBO's series "Watchmen" had revived the memory in 2019. The Osage shield of the new flag, designed with the agreement of the Osage nation, is a beginning of visual reconciliation. But the ghosts of Greenwood demand more than symbols.