'A conspiracy of silence': The Tulsa Race Massacre was absent from schools for generations

The story on the tape couldn’t be real. 

That’s what Oklahoma state Sen. Kevin Matthews thought as he watched a VHS film, given to him by his great-uncle, depicting a white mob destroying Tulsa’s Greenwood District.  

Matthews, 61, was in his 30s at the time. He had grown up in Tulsa and graduated from Tulsa Public Schools.  

But, he had never heard this story before. 

“I watched it, and I thought it was a fictional movie,” Matthews said. “I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was shocking to me. I couldn’t understand how I could get to be an adult and not know...