Cutline: NOC celebrated Black History Month at the Enid campus on Thursday with Vanessa Adams-Harris speaking about John Hope Franklin. Pictured (L-R): Interim President Diana Watkins, Vanessa Adams-Harris, Diversity Committee Chairman Dr. Mary Ann McCoy, Candy Oller, Director of Development and Donor Relations.
Vanessa Adams-Harris speaks at Black History Month program in Enid
Vanessa Adams-Harris, Director of Outreach and Alliances at the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, spoke at NOC Enid Thursday morning as part of Black History Month.
The event was organized by Dr. Mary Ann McCoy, chairman of the NOC Diversity Committee.
Adams-Harris, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from Beggs, Oklahoma, is an actor, artist, producer and documentary film maker among several other talents. She is also a human rights activist, a peacemaker and the vice-chair of the Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission and president of North Tulsa Historical Society.
Most of all, she is a historian.
She told the story of John Hope Franklin, an Oklahoma native who became a historian of Black History writing the generational 1947 book, “From Slavery to Freedom,” one of the most read works in the academic field. He taught over three million students in his lifetime.
When Adams-Harris met Franklin, he told her to, “investigate everything and ask questions and most importantly to tell history like you find it.”
“There is no such thing as Black History or Native American History, it’s American history,” she said.
Franklin, native of Rentiesville, Oklahoma, attended high school in Tulsa, then Tufts University in Tennessee, and finally Harvard where he earned a PhD in 1941. He taught at a number of universities including Duke and the University of Chicago. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995.
He also advised presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
The John Hope Franklin Center is located in the Greenwood District in Tulsa. Franklin’s father was killed in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
“Center allows for people just to take a walk and think” she said.
Adams-Harris will return to Enid in June as part of the Chautauqua Teacher Institute where she will portray Rosa Parks.
NOC’s Candy Oller presented gifts to Adams-Harris, Interim President Diana Watkins closed the event by reiterating Adams-Harris words, “tell history like you find it.”
The program started with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem.