(bright music) - Coming up in the next hour of local news on Arizona PBS, on Arizona Horizon, it's our annual Martin Luther king Jr. Day special.

Take a look at the push for voting rights in Arizona.

On Cronkite News, I'll look at efforts to overcome vaccine hesitancy in Tuskegee.

And I'll break it down, what Martin Luther King Jr. really believed.

That's all ahead in the next hour on Arizona PBS.

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Thank you.

- [Announcer] Arizona Horizon is made possible in part by the generous support of the Pakis Family Foundation.

(bright music) - Good evening, and welcome to this special Martin Luther King Day edition of Arizona Horizon.

I'm Ted Simons.

We start tonight with a look at efforts to expand voting rights, on both a state and national level.

We spoke with Roy Tatum Jr., President of the East Valley NAACP about how Arizona is playing a role in the fight to restore and expand voting rights.

Roy Tatum Jr., thank you so much for joining us.

We do appreciate your time, and good to have you here.

Good to see you again.

I want to talk about the Martin Luther King Day to celebrate.

The official holiday's here, and yet the Martin Luther King family, you and your family, they've gone ahead and said official holiday's one thing, but we got other things in mind.

And so we saw what happened here in Phoenix.

Talk to us about why Phoenix was chosen and what that was all about.

- Well, Phoenix has chosen for a couple of reasons.

Phoenix, Arizona has passed some of the strictest voter suppression laws.

They're trying to call them election reform laws, but they're truly voter suppression laws.

So they want to bring attention to that.

Many people don't even know that that's happening, but also as we talk about voting rights on a national level, Senator Sinema has been in the way as we talk about removing the filibuster.

Talking about the rules of the Senate.

So the King family wants to send a clear message to the Senator that they want to see action as it relates to federal voting rights legislation.

- Does it make sense to you, though, to say to the federal holiday, that's fine.

You go do what you're gonna do, but we're gonna to do what we're gonna do?

I mean, you don't want to belittle at all the federal holiday, do you?

- You never want to belittle the federal holiday, but the family, I believe, has the right to say in the name of their father, in the name of Martin Luther King Jr., who vigorously fought for voting rights, particularly in Selma, Alabama in 1965, who was instrumental in getting into the '65 voting rights legislation passed.

So if anyone has the right to dictate how the holiday should be acknowledged, it is the actual family of Martin Luther King Jr. - And let's talk about some of the legislation here, two bills in particular.

The Freedom to Vote act makes it easier to vote, election day a holiday and these sorts of things.

Why is that important?

- It's important because we've seen on election day after election day, some communities have easy access to the ballot and they are able to cast their ballot.

Some communities have to wait in long lines.

Some communities, the equipment is not working, and there are other barriers to just casting a ballot.

And so many people are not gonna wait around in long lines.

Many people don't have the time or the luxury to spend a significant amount of time voting because they have to go to work.

So many people either cast their ballot before they go to work or when they get off from work.

And we all know that polls close at seven o'clock.

And so if a person gets off work and they're going through the normal day, they don't have time to go to cast their ballot.

So to make election day a federal holiday, it alleviates that worry of going to work or having to cast your ballot before going to work.

- And this is now being blocked, as we should mention by Senate Republicans.

What's the message you want to send to the Senate Republicans in particular, because they're the ones saying no.

- They've supported voting legislation for years.

I believe the last ballot for voting rights went passed 98 to zero.

Even prominent Republican senators such as Strom Thurmond supported voting rights legislation.

- That's saying something for those of us old enough to remember who Strom Thurmond was.

- It absolutely is.

It absolutely is.

And so there's no reason, there's a logical reason, for any Republican official to oppose voting rights legislation.

- The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act basically restores the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Again, why is this important enough to have this kind of attention thrown onto it?

- It's important because we see that voting legislation, voting rights is back under attack.

Some states, staying at the state level, because many people don't understand that the voting election laws are made at the state and local level, and run, controlled at the state level.

So the federal legislation makes sure that the bad actors, for those that are practicing voting suppression, that they have to get approved through the Justice Department if they want to make any changes to voting laws.

And now that's not the case, but that is what the '65 Voting Rights Act did.

Particularly Southern states, before they made any changes to voting laws, they had to get approval from the Justice Department.

- Arizona was involved in that for awhile.

- Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

- Again, Senate Republicans, and again Senate Republicans are the ones blocking this.

Your message is?

- The message is there's no logical reason to block voting rights.

This hurts, I believe it hurts the Republican electorate as well, because there are many rural voters that depend on mail-in ballots.

There are many voters as well trying to go to work and they have to cast that ballot as well.

They like to cast the ballots in person.

So if it's harder to vote, Republicans may see a lower voter turnout as well.

- Now we're talking about Republicans blocking this, but that's because of the filibuster.

Now we get to the Democrats, and we get to Senator Sinema, who've you've mentioned.

Senator Kelly still has not mentioned publicly how he stands on this.

He's still kind of waiting on this.

What is your message to them?

Because let's face it.

Get rid of the filibuster, these things pass.

- Yeah.

Get rid of the filibuster and we have voting rights legislation.

We have the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill.

And so unfortunately there's a school of thought that if we remove the filibuster and if the Republicans down the line, a year from now, two years from now become the leaders in the House, that they will do the same thing.

Well, they've done the same thing.

And so right now they were elected to pass specific voting protection laws.

They were elected, particularly African Americans.

I know that Senator Sinema herself received over 130,000 votes from the African-American community, and many supported her because they believed that she was an ally.

- Do you want to see a carve-out for these laws, or do you want to see just an end to the filibuster?

- Well, we definitely want to see and end to the filibuster, because we know the history of the filibuster was in place to prevent civil rights legislation.

Many of the progressive laws that we enjoy or we pushed for had been interrupted by the filibuster.

So we know the history.

- Okay.

Everything being said here, and of course the attention on MLK day, are you optimistic regarding voting rights in the US?

- I have to be optimistic about voting rights.

I have to be.

The President made a very strong position, the President and Vice President made a very strong speech in Atlanta, Georgia just this week around voting rights.

So this was the focus of the White House.

This is now a focus of the House, of our congressional delegation.

And now it has to be a focus of the Senate.

And I know that many community leaders, we're having this conversation right now because voting rights is at the top of the issue, of the top of mind for many Americans right now.

- Roy Tatum Jr., East Valley NAACP.

Thank you so much.

Good to see you again.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

- And up next, a look at the Tulsa Massacre that occurred over a hundred years ago.

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(bright music) - More than a hundred years ago, white residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma looted, burned, and bombed a business section of the city occupied by African Americans.

Hundreds of residents of the Greenwood District were killed, and much of what was known as the Black Wall Street was destroyed.

We talked about the legacy of what happened in Tulsa with ASU Professor, Rashad Shabazz.

What happened in Tulsa 100 years ago?

- Thank you for having me.

What happened was a national tragedy.

A thriving Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma known as Black Wall Street was marauded and burned to the ground and looted, and innocent civilians were killed by a ruthless mob of a white Tulsans who were intent on destroying this community because they felt some threat had been made or a violation had been made from a white woman who had accused a Black man of assaulting her, as was the case in so many other instances such as this, particularly throughout the South, during this period.

And a white vigilante group went to the courthouse to lynch this young man who had been accused of this crime, and Black residents showed up to defend him.

A gun went off and the white residents looted, marauded, burned, and killed over 300 members of the Greenwood community, ran many others out of town, and then they bulldozed the town, built over it, and erased the history of this horrific crime.

- Those that took part in this, and it sounds like a lot of the white residents took part in this, were there arrests?

Were there repercussions?

What happened?

- There were no arrests made.

There were really no repercussions.

The members of the Greenwood community did press charges.

They did issue lawsuits, but there was no justice that was given.

And those who perpetrated this crime got away with it.

And not only did they get away with it, but vast members of the broader community were able to steal their land.

And that's one of the important things to remember here.

In addition to murdering people, wealth in the form of land acquisition was stolen from the members of the Greenwood community, and it has never been repaid.

And that stolen land was used to build wealth for white residents in Tulsa, for generations, many of whom live on that land to this day.

So there has been no justice in this case whatsoever.

- Is there a move now to get some of that money back into the hands of relatives, descendants.

I know there's like a 107-year-old woman, I believe, who was a child back when this happened.

Is there any move to get some of this money, to do something right here?

- There is a public acknowledgement.

The history is coming out, which is why we're talking today.

The President is in Tulsa today.

He is talking about this event.

As far as I know, there has been no move by the city or the city council for any kind of reparation.

There is a move afoot to offer some sort of compensation to the few remaining survivors, and I believe there's only a handful of those.

But what needs to happen is that the Greenwood community and Black Tulsans need a form of material reparation in the form of land, housing subsidies, building, helping to rebuild businesses that were lost during that time.

This is what is really needed to ensure that this is repaired to the degree that it can be repaired, because we are talking about intergenerational trauma over a century.

But what is needed is reparations for Black people in Tulsa, and particularly for those survivors.

- We're also talking about many generations in which this story, apparently this horrific act did not seem to capture the country's attention.

President Biden said that he was the first United States president to visit Tulsa on this occasion.

Why was this not a story then and in succeeding years.

- That's a really good question, and it's an important part of the story around Tulsa.

So in the aftermath of this horrific massacre, the police, the mayor, city council, the local Historical Society, as well as the press buried it.

They destroyed documentation.

They wouldn't do follow up stories.

There was threats.

The Black community was threatened to not talk about it, to not share any information, to not make it part of the historical record.

And so you have state power in the form of police, mayor, city council, as well as a kind of, you know, these cultural institutions such as the local Historical Society, as well as the press collaborating together to dampen this story, to bury it, and to ensure that it never makes the light of day.

And one of the reasons that it found some daylight is because of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.

And in the aftermath of that, both scholars and people in the press began to ask questions about had any other kind of bombings or terrorist attacks such as this occurred.

And then news about the bombing in Tulsa in 1921 came out.

And it was only through that that we start to get a little bit of information about it.

And then in 2000, a report was done by two prominent historians that really unearthed a lot of the information that we know today.

- Professor, we thank you so much for your thoughts on this and on this special day.

Thank you so much, sir.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you for having me.

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- We wrap up our MLK Day special with longtime ASU humanities professor, Dr. Neal Lester, who's been honored with the 2022 ASU Martin Luther King Jr.

Faculty Servant Leadership Award.

We talked to Dr. Lester about the award and his signature program, Project Humanities, which is now in its 10th year.

Dr. Lester, congratulations on the ASU Faculty MLK award, and 10 years of your project.

A lot of things to talk about.

Let's get back to basics here, Project Humanities.

What are we talking about here?

- Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Ted.

Well, what we're talking about is 10 years of successfully and impactfully bringing individuals and communities together to talk, listen, and connect in various formats.

And 10 years has really given us a lot to think about, a lot to look back on, reflect on, but also some challenges to think about as we go into the next 10 years.

- And was it originally a way to get folks, students in particular, just more interested in the humanities?

- Yes, that is an ongoing concern for those particularly on the administrative end, the deans, the provost, the presidents, those administrative central folks, who are looking for numbers of majors, people in seats, people to teach.

And that was certainly a concern that I had, but my concern became broader to sort of see how we could bring students who were both majors and non-humanities majors into humanities thinking, so that we could sort of realize that there's something that we share despite what our specialties are.

So the thinking was initially, how do we recruit more humanities majors, but I wanted to expand this so that we're looking at how do we bring all students at ASU and beyond into more thinking that is humanist specific and humanist centric, asking the why, the how, even though we're looking at details and data.

But why, how, what is the critical questions that should be asked?

- And I've heard you described this as talking, listening, and connecting.

Those are the big three.

- Yes, TLC.

- Yes, yes.

Are some of the issues that you've talked about here, some of the issues that you focused on here over the last 10 years?

- Oh my gosh.

They have been far ranging and nuanced, and for some people edgy.

We don't do it for the sake of being edgy.

We do it because these are topics that, first of all, we, as my Project Humanities team, want to know about these topics.

So such topics as toxic positivity.

In the spring, we've got a conversation about poverty porn.

We also have dispelled myths about critical race theory.

And we'll be talking about missing and murdered indigenous women.

But what's also exciting is that we're going into areas that allow us to expand our support reach, but also just the range of topics.

So we're doing one this semester that really excites me on aging and Two-Spirits LGBTQ.

When we talk about inner sexual identities, we often forget about aging.

- Yeah.

Interesting.

All right.

But in everything you've talked about here, and indigenous mascots, I think we once actually mentioned that at one time.

- Yes.

Well, that's ongoing.

When we talk about cultural appropriation and changing those names of those NFL teams and high school teams that still carry these very caricature-like images, allegedly, of American Indians, Native Americans, and we try to challenge why those things are problematic and how they do not uphold or respect traditions of people who are American Indian.

- The big question overriding all of this has been in the past, are we losing our humanity?

Is that still the big overriding question?

- You know what?

I think it will always be.

And in fact when I spoke to poet Nikki Giovanni about this a few years ago as she was being hosted here, I raised that question to her.

Are we losing our humanity?

And her response, which has had a profound effect on me, is well, when did we ever have it?

Anytime there has been difference, there's always been a group on top pressing down on a group at the bottom.

And this question of, we can only be tall if someone else has on their knees, Toni Morrison says, then how tall are we?

So that feels like that's a question that if we're gonna have any question about justice, any question about equity, any question about diversity has to start with this notion of humanity, and those things we call humanity 101, the respect, integrity, kindness, forgiveness, empathy, self-reflection, compassion.

- Yeah, and thus Project Humanities.

Hey, this is MLK teacher's award.

This ASU Faculty MLK award, what does that mean to you?

- Oh my Gosh.

Well, any time that my name is in the same breath as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm excited and humbled, but also challenged by that, because that's a huge legacy of values.

But I also think it speaks to the fact that we're often being watched.

And I don't mean it in some sort of stalker way, but being watched in terms of modeling what we try to talk about.

So for me, the award speaks to the impact that Project Humanities is having and the ways in which any successes that I have had or that Project Humanities has had has been because of collaborations.

And that includes you, Ted, and Arizona Horizon and Jose, and all the people that supported what we are doing and helping us tell our story.

- And last question, where does that story go from here?

What's next for Project Humanities?

- Oh my gosh.

Well, what's next is some new research ambassadorships for undergraduate students.

It's expanding our support base.

It's attracting new resources.

It's coming up with some programs that we never imagined prior to COVID.

It's about accepting possibilities and also embracing what President Crow would call nimbleness, being able to adapt and adopt at a moment's notice.

- All right, well, congratulations on the award.

Congratulations on 10 years of Project Humanities, and thank you so much for always being a good guest of the program.

Dr. Neal Lester, ASU Project Humanities.

Dr. Lester, thank you.

- Thank you, and happy new year.

- What you get from Washington Week that you will not get anywhere else are the best and the brightest reporters from different media companies, and they're able to have a real conversation about things that are happening in Washington and around the country.

It's also a show about issues that are relevant to different communities.

As the moderator, I feel this deep responsibility to bring in those other perspectives so that people understand how power and politics impact their daily lives.

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- That's it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.

You have a great evening.

(bright music) Coming up in the next half hour on Arizona PBS.

On Cronkite News, the News 21 project Unmasking America looks at hospitals in a rural parts of the country hit hard by the pandemic.

And on Break it Down, who was the real Martin Luther King Jr.?

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