Dreisen Heath is an advocate at Human Rights Watch and author of its May 2020 report, “The Case for Reparations in Tulsa, Oklahoma: A Human Rights Argument.” She delivered the following remarks during the “I Too, Am America” Juneteenth Rally for Justice in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood on June 19, 2020.

I stand here today only because of the resolve of my ancestors, the relinquishing strength of my Tulsa family and friends, and the possibilities that we can break from the chains of injustice.

Humbled and honored to hear my colleague @dreisenheath speak at the #Tulsa #Juneteenth rally, on her own experience being born in Tulsa and the continued legacy of slavery+the 1921 race massacre. #ReparationsNow @hrw pic.twitter.com/N3DmGIsjdX
— Ida Sawyer (@ida_sawyer) June 20, 2020

I was born here in Tulsa just down the road at Hillcrest Medical Center. My parents were patrons of Mt. Zion [Baptist Church], which is often pictured in smoldering flames as a result of the targeted and vile racist destruction of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. They tried to make a life for themselves here for several years and relied heavily on this resilient community to guide and nourish them. While my young parents did their best to provide their first child with the life that they had envisioned, they were forced to leave Tulsa because of homelessness and uncertainty.

I would hear stories about Tulsa growing up. How welcoming the people were, the stark differences between neighborhoods in north Tulsa versus south Tulsa, the disappearance of “Black Wall Street,” and the constant fear that came with walking the same streets as the KKK. Community members shared oral histories with my parents about the aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre; many said they never knew where their neighbors went and never heard from them again. The Black community in Greenwood was forcibly separated and displaced from one another, some never able to live to tell the tale of survival.

I’d never imagine that what would eventually bring me back to Tulsa would be the continuation of the massacre. Human Rights Watch brought me back home, and not because Tulsa’s Greenwood District was restored to the prosperous Black economic hub it once was, but because oppressive and unchecked police violence, a legacy of slavery and the massacre, stole the lives of Terence Crutcher, Joshua Harvey, Joshua Barre, and too many others.

The legacy of slavery and the persistence of structural and other forms of racism are like being stuck in quicksand. You will either sink because of no fault of your own, but because our institutions have been designed to pull you down, keep you under, and drown you out. Or you must save yourself from submersion, pulling yourself out a few inches at a time, but still feeling weighed down by the burdens of racial injustice.

While many of our ancestors were taken away from us, many others pulled themselves out of the quicksand of slavery and racial injustice. Let’s be clear: The Emancipation Proclamation, a piece of paper, a declaration, did not set us free. Enslaved people were liberating themselves by the thousands and political interests followed thereafter. But while Juneteenth is a celebration of liberation, of freedom, obstacles to Black freedom in the United States still exist after 155 celebrations.

What is freedom if you can never escape the intergenerational traumas and impacts of slavery? What is freedom when Black families have to relive the killings of their loved ones over and over by police, every time they utilize their power to take another innocent Black life? What is freedom when Black Tulsans live less than their white counterparts? What is freedom when wealth that was once established, was then stripped away deliberately and never paid back?

It is because of people and leaders in our community like Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, Kristi Williams, Chief Amusan, Pastor Robert Turner, Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, Attorney Damario Solomon Simmons, Greg Robinson, and Representative Regina Goodwin [several of whom are featured in this article], among others, that we can imagine and systematize what freedom actually looks like. Conditions in Black and brown communities must change, and Human Rights Watch is honored and so humbled to stand in solidarity with and lend our support to our heroes on the front lines of change.

Healing and restoration are only possible if we use today and the rest of our days to address slavery’s legacy head on. The pathway towards equality in Tulsa requires economic justice. It requires reparations for the massacre survivors and descendants and the broader Black community that have not yet seen economic opportunity. It requires targeted investments in the Black community in housing, education, employment, business development, and other forms of economic development. It requires an end to everyday abusive policing and racial profiling, and an end to the economic conditions that cause police to abuse their power.

Tulsa, while unique in the severity of its destruction, shares a similar past and present with many other cities across the United States. If we don’t get it right in Tulsa, we will never be able to get it right.

There may be distractions near and far, but we must never surrender. We must reclaim our freedom.

Thank you.